On your marks, get set... MAKE!

I had a wonderful long weekend with one of my best friends and chief motivator- Louise of  Louise Mary Designs ... a talented Jeweller and Silversmith based in South Derbyshire.

We spent a lovely long time in her fab studio (that she runs Jewellery making workshops in, which is the best fun!). We were both busy making, she in beautiful silver and gold and I with pen and ink. Often we were both silent and engrossed, but so nice to have each other's company. 

Louise has taken some fantastic product photos for me that you can see in my shop!

It seemed only right that I should do one of my Drawing A Day sketches of her hard at work at her desk, from sitting at mine! 

Louise Mary Designs working on her beautiful Love Grows collection

Drawing at the Good Life Experience

I'm slowly getting braver at drawing in public. This weekend was the perfect type of set up for this, relaxed crowds, places to sit and sketch, out of the way or sitting in a talk, in lovely company at The Good Life Experience. 

The picture on the left was done quickly of another member of the large crowd that were listening to Ben Fogle talk. On the right I had to draw Charlie Gladstone (one of the founders of the Good Life Experience) super quickly as he introduced Tristan Gooley and his talk on Natural Navigation as he was only there for a matter of seconds. I rushed to paint Tristan and so the ink ran a bit but learnt my lesson and managed to let the ink dry before painting next time...

It then seemed only right that I should try and draw Jennie Maizels as she did her talk about sketching and her sketchbook club.

Such a fun weekend.

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.

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.