Sketchbook Development Classes

 Before you get too far into this post, a warning! I've included more photos than usual, so will attempt to keep the written part as brief as possible. 

One of the art classes I'm enjoying at the moment is about sketchbook development. Lucy Dean, our tutor, has called the theme for this term 'Repetition and Time'. The image below, a photocopy of some seaweed that Lucy floated onto a canvas was our starting point for the first session.

We made a small frame so that we could isolate an area from the seaweed image, and draw it out. From each successive drawing, we isolated another part of the previous drawing,until we had just a few interesting lines to play around with.

I don't know why, but as I reduced my drawings, I thought they were beginning to resemble tonsils!!

Above is my final reduced image which I traced off,  allowing me to play around with four identical images. I arranged them into what you can see below. The middle section reminded me of two fish, and as this seemed to fit in with the seaweed theme, I drew two fun fish surrounded by some watery shapes.

I took a photo of this large flock of Gulls, and cropped it to get a closer view of the birds in flight.

Using the same frame, I reduced the images as before, until I was left with the fourth one below.

I repeated the drawings into two folded concertina books, one in a portrait orientation, and the second in landscape. The abstracted shapes of the birds I have left white, but decided to experiment with the backgrounds using line in various ways.

I also quite liked the two gull heads from the bottom right of the cropped photo, so had a play around with that too.

During our second lesson, Lucy gave us each a razor shell to sketch. We were also given an A4 sheet of paper that had been folded into four, giving us four elongated surfaces to draw the shell. Lucy then suggested that when we had completed all four sketches/paintings, we were to cut the paper through the middle, joining the two pieces, making a concertina book.

I decided to experiment with different media for each drawing, so used ink and wash, watercolour, collage and a textured background for another.

If you've managed to stay with this post to the end, well done, and I hope you have enjoyed it.

Still not much stitching going on, but the whole point of these classes is to give me a new perspective, which will, I'm sure eventually inspire any future textile work.

Fingers crossed!

A Pembrokeshire Break.

I have just returned from a short break visiting family in Pembrokeshire, West Wales. We spent an afternoon in St. David's, and of course couldn't miss the opportunity to go into the Cathedral which makes St. David's  the smallest city in the UK! The original building, now a ruin, can be seen below, and stands just behind the more recent building, above.

Above is a photo that I took of the wonderful embroidery stitched by Amanda Wright, depicting the life of Saint Caradog, and below are a couple of  closer details.

The gate above took my eye one afternoon while we were walking along the seafront in Newport., and below I just loved the way that the stones and rocks had been placed to strengthen the shallow incline that was supporting the garden above.

So many Canadian Geese were milling and swimming around in the estuary of the river, I don't think I have ever seen so many in one place like that before. I took many photos of them, and am hoping to make some stitched pieces using them as inspiration.

We visited Picton Castle Gardens which are also beautiful, and where there are  a number of sculptures to be enjoyed, including a dragonfly with gorgeous bright blue wings. I thought the reflection in the water of the small lake made an interesting image.

Armed with plenty of inspiration, I'm hoping to get back into some stitched artwork very soon now. Many thanks for visiting my blog, and I hope your summer/winter breaks will also inspire your creativity.