Printing

I've been doing a lot of printing this month... trying to do a Print a Day as well as my usual Drawing a Day. ..

Beans on toast!

Speedy sketching

Sometimes it's the speediest sketches I like most.  When I think I've run out of time or just want to be quick, I'm sometimes pleasantly surprised at the result.  This one was done while eating two slices of toast.  Not very accurate but it'll do nicely for its page in the book.

Holiday breakfast

I celebrated having a day off last month by having these for breakfast... Such a treat.  Sadly I got a bit carried away with the sketching so they weren't very warm by the time they were eaten! Still delicious though!

Summer

Summer has flown! Here are some sweet peas from June. They are still flowering in the garden now.

New stock!

A lovely new larch cone

Delicious cake!

this was a belated birthday cake baked by a very good friend of mine, and it was delish!

Florence

Yup, more Italy! Florence this time. I was very excited to be a the fountain that features in 'A Room With a View' and so thought it only right that it should feature in the Drawing a Day book.

Sketching under an Olive tree

I'm pretending I'm back in Italy by uploading some of my sketches from my trip last month!

This was sketched and coloured in sitting under an Olive tree. I then had to flap the book about a bit in order for it to dry while walking back!

Olive groves

I went to Tuscany in half term. It was lovely. There were Olive groves, they were lovely.

Digging

A few weeks ago I popped home and while I was there Dad was doing some digging. We put a few potatoes in (I was allowed to help in my sisters absence!).

Over Easter both my sister and I were at home and so she resumed her role and I resumed mine - supervising with my sketchbook!

Easter!

Behind the scenes...

This is my sister and her co-conspirator, in their detective themed fancy dress, frantically texting whodunnit clues from their public house headquarters a few weekends ago. The case-busting text recipients were (merrily) working their way from one secret location to another, celebrating the 30th birthday of my brother-in-law.

Drawing whenever and wherever

The idea of the Drawing a Day was to make me better at drawing and to be better at spontaneously drawing - getting the sketchbook out when I saw something I thought I'd like to draw. I still need to make myself do this and many, many things I think about drawing and for one reason or another (normally too self conscious) I don't draw get the book out. Sometimes, the book comes out of the bag, and even the pen... sometimes the lid even gets off the pen before I chicken out and it all goes away again! This day however, I just got on with it and drew the coaster while my friend and I had a drink and a catch up one evening!

(I didn't actually have a Stella, that was just the mat that was there!)

(Turned out not to be the most sociable move of mine as I was looking at the beer mat and my sketchbook for way too much of the conversation!)

Inspiration

I have been having a look at a couple of my favourite illustrators recently. The first is Emily Gravett. She has a lovely website and I have quite a lot of her books now as I love them. I really like her drawing style and recently invested in this book of hers;

The Little Mouse is fabulous - although very scared throughout. I tried to draw him, copied directly from the book. I find trying to copy someone else's style fascinating and way trickier than I think it is going to be. I try and work out which order they drew which part of the picture - where they started and how they worked. I think Emily Gravett is left handed, and I am right and so I expect we tackled this mouse in different ways. I realise I always start my pictures in the top left and work across and down - probably so I don't smudge the work as I go. I only realised when I had a go at drawing on a tablet and it recorded the drawing as I did it - then I could watch the replay which was really fun.

Here is my version of the Little Mouse. He is a bit taller and skinnier than Emily's. I love the pencil he clutches - it gets smaller as the book goes on as he nervously nibbles it more and more! 

Potato prints, pigeon and pizza

Last Sunday I had another go at some potato printing. Inspired by a search on Pinterest before starting on the spuds, these two were made. I really like the little bunnies - Easter Cards might be on the horizon! The leaf flower I'm planning on experimenting with as a repeating pattern, think it might work quite nicely.

 For my drawing a day I was keen to draw a Pigeon that kept proudly pecking outside. However, as soon as I got my sketchbook and pen he vanished - not to return! I'll have to wait for another day to draw one!








I ended up drawing my supper - pizza! Quite a good way of avoiding burning my mouth on the hot little tomatoes - drawing it before I'm able to eat! Well - I did the outline then the smell was too much so I had to eat some. These were left for my packed lunch on Monday - delish!

Spring is springing!

I love this time of year - I look for new signs of Spring everywhere . Today I was excited by new Elder leaves, one Red Campion in flower and Hawthorn coming into leaf! The world is slowly turning back to green from brown. 

zzzzzz

New item in the pencil case!

A new favourite in the pencil case is my water brush. I've had this for a while - handy to carry around rather than a separate water bottle and container and paintbrush, but recently I've added some black ink to the water. This means I now have grey ink on hand whenever I want it! It makes it very quick to block in some colour or shading and I have been using it nearly every day.

This was the first experiment with it...

A Friday night in, watching an Italian cooking programme on the telly (or listening to it and occasionally glancing from page to screen).

In pride of place my beautiful Alice Palace print. I love it. The text says 'love, simplicity and calm' and it makes me very happy. Have a look at the Alice Palace website - I've read the blog for the last 5 years and its a real favourite.

Ladies that lunch

My Mum and I went out for lunch this week. It was such fun. Particularly as it was a very late lunch (3.30 - 4.30!). We managed to indulge in a good quantity of people watching from our window seat and I managed to do my drawing for the day in the gap between ordering or meal and our food arriving. 

Robert Clive or Clive of India as he is known, in 'The Square' in Shrewsbury. 

I had a play with photoshop to see how Bob would look if it were a very sunny day... he doesn't look terribly impressed. Perhaps I shouldn't have called him Bob. 

We even managed to have a very successful shop following our ladies lunch! - perhaps the secret to successful shopping is a good lunch beforehand and only an hour time limit...

People watching...

... is one of my favourite things!

I like to watch how people walk - slowly, purposefully, scuttling, urgently, thoughtfully, happily, sadly, excitedly, routinely... on their own or with friends, relations, loved ones

I like to see what they are wearing - is it related to the weather, where they are going, or coming from... school, work, dog walk...

I like to wonder where it is they are going to and what is on the agenda for today... briefcase, instrument case, handbag...

I've recently re-discovered speedy people sketches. On a small stretch of pavement that I can see I've been trying to capture those that go by in the short amount of time they are there for. The pavement is only about 30 metres long, and so it is under a minute that it takes people to cover it - coming into and going out of view.

A day of screen printing...

On Sunday I spent a happy day on a beginners screen printing course at Unit Twelve run by Iain Perry. 

I have wanted to get over to Unit Twelve for some time, their exhibitions always look lovely and the studio artists' spaces look like such fun.  It reminds me of my art foundation year - individual workspaces in a shared environment, with beautifulness on every wall (... but on a bigger, more grown up and successful scale!).

So, I took some images, mainly from my drawing a day books for print ideas. As I understood more about the process though I realised some of the images wouldn't work as a screen print, and so settled on this familiar friend:

A lino bunny that I did last term on my evening printing class. I drew a plan from this image... I don't think the background box shows up very well on the scan below, but it is there, with one ear just sticking out of the top of it. Originally I thought the bunny would be brown and the sky blue, but this wasn't sitting very well with me. 

So I changed the colours to a grey bunny against a purple, wintery sky and then the printing process could begin. This is the order that it was printed... 

1) the purple background

2) the grey bunny

3) the detail

 

These were the test pieces for each of the layers. 

We each did 5 prints - my grey bunny ended up in a slightly different place on the purple background on all 5! I did a couple of just they grey bunny to see what that would look like too. 

Here are the final bunnies - I confess I have added a pupil on them now, the detail was just a bit too tricky and I was concerned that the bunny could easily look very drunk/ angry /cross with a printed pupil in the wrong place! Not entirely sure I've got them in the right place / right size now, but at least the poor bunny can now see! My scanner isn't quite big enough to capture the whole image - I decided to make the whiskers and fur venture outside of the background and below the grey of the bunny.

It was lovely to see all the different prints that appeared. Unit Twelve have put them on their Facebook site for all to see!

Time flies

It is almost a week into February already! Although I may not have posted this week, I have still been drawing...

Some beautiful blossom, found on the grass (so I could take some home to draw in the warm) on a particularly chilly day...

I went on the train a couple of weekends ago, and challenged myself to draw something at every station we called at. Luckily the train arrived early and so I had a head start with the first drawing before departure! The rest of the sketches were even more hurried, which was quite fun. 

New Book

I have got a lovely new book. I first saw it in the Tate Modern shop on the Saturday that I was in London. I resisted the investment as I couldn't carry much more home. However, following the Sketchcrawl I decided to invest and have been eagerly awaiting the delivery.

Yesterday, it arrived. I hadn't done my drawing for the day so thought this would be perfect! ... however, it took me sooooo long to draw I didn't even open the book yesterday after all!

I found it a really interesting exercise though, to try and copy the front cover (Piccadilly Circus by James Hobbs)- to draw in the style of someone else and to try and think how they had viewed the scene when they drew it. How they chose to record the different elements of what was before them. I loved stumbling on more and more detail as I went on. I wondered what my drawing would have looked like if I had been in the same spot sketching the same surroundings (- this is another joy of a Sketchcrawl, many different interpretations of the scene in front of you).

So, the important bit... the book is called 'Sketch Your World', it is by James Hobbs, and published by Apple and it is brand new for 2014.

So, tonight I'm going to read (and gaze at the pictures) of my new book!

Beautiful pens

I have recently rediscovered the dip pen. I love the sound it makes on the paper. I love the ink, and I love the gamble of whether I've got the right amount of ink on the nib... or not! (often too much). I also love that my friend Barb has recently got the dip pen bug, and we've been having dip pen appreciation chats.

I plan to dig out my bamboo dip pen and have a go sketching with that.

Red toes

Looking at the floor, wondering what to draw...

Sketchcrawl...

In a moment of last-minute-rashness I decided to go to London last weekend. I had a lovely day with my sister on Saturday, walking for miles along the river as we always do.

We paused opposite Big Ben so I could draw a London Lamppost before it got too dark to see the detail.

On Sunday we had a very exciting bus ride through the big city (both the bus and the city are exciting for this country mouse!).

Timberyard cafe

After a brief bit of admiration of the Lions, the Blue Cockerel and Nelson, in Trafalgar Square, we scampered up to Covent Garden.


At the Timberyard cafe I joined the Urban Sketchers London Sketchcrawl. It was lovely to be in the city and drawing with fellow sketchers.

I often chicken out of a) drawing in public and b) drawing people, and so today was great as it got me doing both of these.

Neal's Yard (outside until I got too chilly! then in the cafe)

I'm overly strict on my drawing a day rules - once I close the book, that drawing is finished, no colouring in later or tweaking the picture. However, pictures like the one above make me think about changing this - I wish I'd stayed cold for a bit longer and coloured the buildings in (picture on the left), but as it was I went inside, ordered a hot chocolate ... and closed the book (briefly!) so it will have to stay as it is.

I left the fellow Sketchcrawl-ers while they were still in the warm at Neal's Yard, as I had to head back to meet my sister and then walk towards Marylebone for my train home (we like to walk!). We met back at Trafalgar Square and stayed for three songs by these guys. I was still in sketch mode so did these really quickly (Beatles songs are short!). I hadn't thought enough about the spacing and so poor 'Ringo' is crammed in the corner and the drum hardly gets a look in!