Going with the flow....

I'm letting the pictures do the talking, however I will add a few words. I'm still reconnecting with my creative direction. I've been taking a few proper photographs again, rather than snaps with the iPad.

Last week I went to the Isle of Wight to visit Dad. There was a beautiful sunset the first evening and this is the view from the pub where we ate.

Sunset at Gurnard, IOW

Wednesday I went for a morning walk on Egypt Esplanade, where Dad lives.

Egypt Point - the most Northerly point on the IOW.

A morning cloud

Crab shell

We drove to Bembridge for a wonderful seafood lunch, and then came home the long way round. There are lots of spots to stop and enjoy the view the Jurassic coast, the Needles are just round the point here.

"Jurassic Cliffs" given a vintage postcard treatment.

 Back home this poppy has appeared in our vegetable garden. Mr T has had special orders not to pull it up. When it opened, it was this dark beauty.  Next year I hopefully will have more poppies than I know what to do with, but not in the vegetable patch.

Of course I just had to draw it, but I had to work from my photographs as I couldn't sit in the veggies.

With the first two I wanted to just capture the glowing colour. I have a new, large selection of Koh-i-noor ink based watercolours which were perfect for the colours.  I outlined the petals with a permanent fine line pen. I have loads of them in different thicknesses, I also like them when they are beginning to dry up and they may a scratchy line.

This was an analytical drawing which I like to do so I can understand how a flower works, and then I can be more inventive. I also looked at lots of images of poppies.

 This drawing took quite a while using different size pens. It looks a bit rigid, what is wonderful about poppies are their floppy, crumpled petals.

I used the app Procreate to draw this purple version. You can change the background colour and the dark one gives the drawing a lovely luminous effect.  I keep going back to it and adjusting it, trying to make the petals look delicate and not thick.

This field poppy was 'made up' after looking at some images on the web. After drawing it in Procreate I opened it in Vintique which is a photo editing app for the iPad. I then added the distressed texture which seems to work well. Now I have learned what the Photostream does on my iPad I connected it to my Mac and recent pictures are shared on both machines without me doing anything!

I had to get out the sewing machine to sew a patch on Mr T's gardening jeans, so I used the opportunity to add some more stitching to this small piece I started on  Bobby Britnell's workshop. I can't decide what to do with it. Possible a bag.

I also made this little newspaper and wire rose after seeing a demo somewhere. (Photo given a vignette with Vintique)

Last and not least, of course I had to get my July calendar page ready. This was simply done by drawing round a 4cm square 31 times and then adding a wash round the squares using Brusho paints. I then added a few stencils - the letters belonged to my grandfather and the leaves are what I cut from a cereal box for some sketchbook work. So they didn't get too soggy, I used a nearly dry brush and block paint.

I have used rather more words than I originally intended, however I realised that I do like sharing how I do things. A lot of you are great practitioners in your own fields and very knowledgable, but if you would like me to document my methods and share them please let me know.

Lets hope the forecast is correct and we are in for some Summer weather at last.

Have a good weekend( I know I'm a bit early)

Jill