Feathers & Sketches

A couple of days ago I tidied my desk...that's a bit of a misleading statement as it will never be 'tidy', but I sorted it out, cleaned it up and found a few things I had mislaid.  One was a bag of macaw feathers that we filched from Bird World last year, scrabbling with our fingers through the wire amongst the poop & dirt.  I love macaws, and even their feathers inspire me with their irridescent colours.  I painted a few of the smaller fluffy ones in watercolours, just for fun.

I also came across a couple of sketchbooks which had a few memories hidden away - here's a selection:

 Alderney...

 Alderney...

 Fuiggi, Italy

 Our old dog, Jasper, & an agapanthus, both sketched one summer in our garden.

 Jasper asleep on the armchair.

 Parrots - no idea where or how I did these but I am loving the central one's expression of bliss as he scratches his head!

 An experiment...

 St. Lucia

 A hibiscus painted in St.Lucia and a hummingbird came to feed as I painted - not a great painting of him, I was too excited and trying to gt it down on paper as fast as I could.

 St. Lucia, Rodney Bay

 St. Lucia

 St.Lucia

 Another experiment in watercolour

Some vase of flowers or other!

I often say that I don't do sketchbooks, but that's obviously not true - I think it's that the sketchbooks are never finished, I just have numerous half filled ones.

And now all my equipment is set out where I can see it - better do something!

A Turaco & An Author...

I finally finished this coloured pencil drawing of a turaco - the bird was finished days ago, but the shrubbery took a long time!  I'm very pleased with this, especially as it is my first foray into using Derwent Coloursoft pencils.   I need to take a better photo in daylight...if we ever get any decent daylight...then this one will be up for sale.

Last night on Twitter I joined in the W.H. Smith Sketch Off - they gave us a photo and it was our job to sketch it by any means within an hour and a half.  The photo was of Roald Dahl and was a lovely subject, plenty going on in that face!  I managed to complete it in about an hour, despite having it on my lap and wrestling with the dog who also wanted to be on my lap.  I think with teaching children on a regular basis and having to sketch all kinds of things at speed in order to show them what I am talking about has improved my own sketching skills immensely.

I received the February Art &Parcel package yesterday and was thrilled to see some Chinese brushes, ink &paper inside - can't wait to have a go!

Currently on the needles - this little beauty.  LOVE this yarn!

Hawthorn & Other Random Items...

 Yesterday I packed more into 5 hours than I thought possible - took the train to London, visited IKnit yarn shop (and spent far too much!), picked up my painting from the Mall Galleries, met my son, went to an art materials shop, visited Chinatown, ate dim sum, then walked back to Waterloo & took the train home.  So not surprisingly, I was rather tired but still had a lesson to teach in the afternoon.  I just grabbed some hawthorn berries while walking the dog, and that is what we painted.  It turned out that they were rather lovely and great fun to paint.  I ran out of time when our hour was over and was too tired to continue once my student had left but would very much like to paint these berries again without a time limit.

By the way, never a good idea to sleep on a train near me...

Amongst other projects, I'm using up three huge balls of aran wool I was given a few years ago and crocheting a chunky blanket with granny squares.  The contrasting colour is navy - I wanted to keep it very simple.

It's been a good year in our house for the tropical plants - this week the mimosa pudica, or sensitive plant, has put out a flower.  This plant is such fun, it shrinks & closes right up when touched - it's actually a weed when in the wild.

Can't Paint, Won't Paint....

Wow, I am having trouble this summer!  I finally have the time to paint but just cannot concentrate due to the incessant noise and vibrations from the building work going on three feet from our house.  It is very frustrating!  I did manage to sit out in the garden late yesterday afternoon and rattle off a few watercolour sketches - felt good to get something on paper, small and rough though it is.  Maybe today I might get a chance...

I discovered this yesterday - my hibiscus plant has not produced a flower for several years as our summers have been pretty awful lately. However, the warmth and light of this summer have kicked it into action and there are several buds growing.  This flower is about the size of a side plate - gorgeous!

See Me Run...

Something was strange yesterday afternoon....the builders were definitely there,six feet from our garden, but there was no noise...no axle grinders grinding, no generator buzzing, no saws sawing, and no ribald banter.  Not only that, the neighbours weren't playing their stereos, hammering and banging or shouting at each other...could it be that I would get the opportunity to take my drawing board outside? 

So I got everything together, fresh paper on board, pencil sharpened, kindle playing some suitable tunes,and decamped to the patio table.  Spent a very pleasant hour sketching out the next dog portrait, then decided to get the watercolours and do a few impromptu watercolour sketches of the plants around me.  The one above is my stevia plant.

Some green tomatoes and a few salad leaves.  I was just really getting into this when.....it rained!  What to save first, the kindle, my drawing board or the watercolours?  What a scramble! At least I got some quality time out there.

I've had my phone for a couple of years now but never worked out how to get the photos off it and onto the computer.  Yes, I am indeed a techno-numpty.  However, a penny dropped somewhere yesterday and I finally managed it.  Interesting to look at pictures I had stored on there from past winters. This peacock butterfly is from a walk yesterday.

I took my daughter to feed the fish at a local park - lots of ducks and a very wily heron, who makes it his business to wait on the sidelines, watch carefully until the fish are all there, busy eating bread, then swoops in and grabs his own fish dinner.

Did you know herons swim like ducks?  No, neither did I. I thought their legs would be too gangly, but here is a photo to prove me wrong.

Earlier this year we fed geese at Fleet Pond and one pair had goslings - how cute are they?

I wonder if I will get a peaceful afternoon today too?

Memories.....

While clearing out a corner of the living room the other day, I came across an old sketchbook which brought back some happy memories.  This was an experiment in painting teasels and dandelions following a tutorial in a book.

This was sketched sitting in the sand dunes on Braye Bay in Alderney, one of the smallest islands in the Channel Isles.  I spent my teens living here and look back on those years as the happiest in my life.  When I went back some 20 years later, it was incredible to find it so little changed.

The view to the left of where I was sitting for the above sketch.  We used to come down here after school (a couple of minutes walk) for a swim before going home.

Some brief studies drawn in the garden of our current house - can't quite believe I did them, they look a little bit like I knew what I was doing.....

The most poignant of them all, my little dog Jasper (a couple of years dead now) who used to spend all summer long sitting on the edge of the patio gazing into the flower bed.....there used to be a mouse that crossed his path in the evenings and he just sat and watched in fascination.
The agapanthus was one of many that I attempted to grow - never with much success - I buy them, they flower, the winter kills them!

I always say that I don't sketch much - maybe not as much as some artists, but there are these half filled books all over the house and it is surprising how a small pencil drawing can bring back so many memories, more than any photo, probably because it takes time and study to draw whereas a photo is a fleeting glimpse.

I'm in the middle of painting a horse at the moment, and best of all, have just parcelled up and sent off a big box of garter stitch scarves to the USA - perhaps now I will have a few days respite in order to get on with something a bit more interesting!

Traditional Methods

When I am painting or drawing a commission, I want to have the proportions absolutely accurate in order for the finished picture to be as close a resemblance as possible. This can prove a little tricky when you have two photographs to use as refererence of differing sizes. In this instance, I use the grid method. This involves taping a piece of tracing paper over your photograph and drawing a pencil grid, beginning from the bottom left corner to the top right corner. Here I have only drawn the grid on the section of the photograph I want to enlarge on to my paper.


On a larger piece of tracing paper, using the first diagonal in the smaller grid as a starting point to judge the correct angle, I draw a corresponding larger grid. If this was for an acrylic or to be transferred on to white paper, I would draw this grid lightly directly onto the paper. However, this picture is on green pastel paper and will be using Derwent Drawing pencils which unfortunately do not cover graphite even if it has been rubbed out thoroughly. So I had to use the large tracing paper and then draw in the basic outlines of the horse's head using the grid to place everything - remember those old puzzle books as a child where you had to draw the other half of a picture using a square grid?


I had to try an ancient method of transferring the outline - using a needle I made holes along each and every line.


The holey paper was then taped into the correct place on the pastel paper.


I then scraped a pastel into a small bowl in order to make some dust.


This pastel dust was then brushed through the holes using a fairly stiff hog hair paintbrush. At this point I remembered why I don't use pastels any more as my hands began to itch and my throat started to hurt and close up.


I lifted the paper very carefully and beneath was a pastel outline of the horse. I drew over this outline using a neutral ochre Derwent pencil.



With a soft brush, I dusted away the pastel residue and was left with......


...enough of an outline to then make the initial sketch of the horse, safe in the knowledge that everything was in the right place and in the right proportions.

This whole process took an hour and a half. Despite being very tedious, it is well worth it in the long run - better than getting a freehand sketch wrong, rubbing it out and making a mess on an expensive piece of paper!

Now I'm off to scrub my hands!