Drawing from memory

I am on a roll now and you will have to bear with me. I have pages in my sketch book of little drawings of bits I can remember from my granparents' house and I am using them to illustrate my Norfolk Holidays book. I have decided not to be too precious about it, otherwise I shall agonize over every sentence and drawing, but just to get it all down. I am sharing it with you, but his is a long entry so skip it if you wish, but I hope you enjoy the drawings. The weather is miserable and we are stuck at home, so this is a great way for me to occupy myself. Mr T is making progress, but  we are not 'out of the woods' yet and still having weekly visits from the District Nurse. So here is part two...

If you have managed to read all that, thank you!! It is for my sake really, but I am happy to share.

Wednesday

My give away draw will stop this evening - there is still room for one more! Meanwhile I will share with you my hand made books I made at the Frances Pickering workshop. They are nearly full now.

First J is for ....

Now 'Come into my garden'...

I have a lot of Euphorbia wulfenni, it fills in lots of spaces and always looks elegant. 

The darling buds of May were inspired by ...

clematis montana 'Elizabeth'  that fills the garden with perfume.

You may recognise the pink campion from the previous post.

Can there be any gardens without dandelions?

And finally the daisy, one of my favourite pages, at the moment.

The turning of the year

So it is August. How did that happen? July, been and gone. At least keeping a visual diary like this helps you look back and see what did happen.

Unfortunately I should have kept my mouth shut on my last post about Mr T as the next day he developed an infection and will probably have to return to hospital for some more work. He is on mega antibiotics and a district nurse is calling weekly to change dressings. What a wonderful service they provide - last year they were calling for seven months!! Goodness knows what that would cost if we had to pay. (PLEASE don't let it go on so long this time!!) Meanwhile we are keeping cheerful and busy.

I had an inspiration for my August page when I saw this picture in The Guardian from the Garima Gospel. You can read more about it here.

As I say on my journal page the colours remind me of Italian majolica ware which I love for its association with some great holidays so that was my inspiration for August.

What will August hold?

The summer seems to have peaked early this year. I do hope the brighter weather returns for all those who are forced to take their holidays within the school break. But I have been spending time in the garden this week. Not only tidying up, but doing some drawing. This year I have lots of Rose Campion - Lychnis coronaria. I love the way it brightens up the dullest corners.  I had lost all of mine, but seeds from a friend have brought them back to the borders. Only a process red acrylic ink would be bright enough for this flower.

The pinkest pink in the garden!

There are lost of great seed heads appearing and some leaves are turning red early so here is another composition from my A4 journal.

This is drawn with a waterproof pigment liner pen and coloured with Brusho powder watercolours. I have some jars of mixed up colours and I enjoy using the limited palette, mixing the colours only by layering them, some times dry and sometimes wet in wet. It certainly helps keep the piece loose and lively.

If you have been, thank you for 'listening'. I hope your weekend is turning out well and have a good August.

Figgy Pudding

I rather liked this old fig tree at the Walled Garden.

But what really attracts me are the figs.

I photographed them and did some on the spot sketches

This led me to play about with their shapes and draw them in pen

I thought they would look good as a lino print

(Whoops - that last one looks quite good up-side-down)

I don't know what the weather has been like with you, but here it has been rather chilly and wet, so it was a good opportunity for me to practise my free embroidery skills.

I am finding free embroidery a bit of a thrill - take off your foot, drop your feed dogs, and put your (other?) foot down - hard!!  The trick is to run the machine fast and move the cloth slowly. It is a bit like learning to drive. At first I just watched the line I'd drawn and tried to keep to it, but that is a bit like driving with your eye on the kerb - I am beginning to look ahead and follow the line a bit more instinctively, but I broke the cotton umpteen times (thank goodness my machine as a built in needle threader!). The damp weather also gave me the opportunity to have a play with Photoshop Elements and a technique featured in this months Digital Photo magazine.

"Oh excellent! I love a long life better than figs"

William Shakespeare - Antony & Cleopatra

This was the best 'fig' quote I could find - most of the others were long and Biblical, but perhaps it indicates how highly prized figs were, in fact even now fresh figs are something to be relished when they come into season. (I don't care for the dried varieties too much but Mr T hankers for fig crumble like he had at school. Does anyone have a recipe? I can only find 'posh' ones)

Mr T is cooking dinner this evening,  but no figs or pudding!

ERRATUM - it's date crumble he wants not fig! I've still no recipe.

Let us hope the promised fine weather returns tomorrow for the holiday weekend. Luton Carnival is on Monday and so much effort is put into it, it is a shame when the weather is wet. (A couple of years ago it rained so much they had to cancel it). Last year I took lots of photographs, but not sure whether I shall go this year, but it is a wonderful colourful family day out for anyone in the area.

Hope you are having a great weekend, Jill

Come into My Garden

I thought I'd show you what I had been doing in the "Come into my Garden" book I had started at the Frances Pickering workshop, just to show I am not a total flipperty-jibbert and can see an idea through (that is my image of myself, not yours, by-the-way. Well it might be, but you are too polite to say so) .

This double page spread with the little half page, uses one of the vintage  flower labels my sister gave me.

I have been collecting garden and flower quotations.

The flowers are all mine, but the butterflies are customised scanned images from a chart.

I was a bit disappointed with the book to begin with, but it is beginning to take on some character now. I may well add a bit more to some of the pages.

The sun was out this morning so I managed to cut the grass and do a bit of tidying up in the garden, so much nicer than housework!

Hope your week is going well, Jill

An invitation to see my etchings

I had a wonderful day at an etching workshop run by Karen Cameron at Great Linford Arts Workshop which is in Milton Keynes. So let me take you through my day.

I decided to use the sketch I had made of some echinacea which I have already posted in my blog

here. So here I am revealing the first print from my plate...

... and here it is

 (if you click on it you can see all the detail)

I haven't explained stage two, which means covering the plate with a soft wax and then adding some texture. I experimented with pressing some leaves and fibres into the soft ground and making sure the flowers were masked, gave it another acid bath.  Here is the plate inked up.

You can see the textured surface, which resulted in this print...

I had such a great time I decided to go again.

Here's my friend Sally who told me all about the course, working on her plate...

and here is Karen (on the left) and another view of the workshop. It is in a wonderful setting and Karen was a great tutor, inspiring and instilling confidence.

Splatter patterns

Since starting to keeping an art journal and making lots of collages on a regular basis my clothes, incuding all this year's tee shirts have aquired interesting spatter patterns mainly from opening bottles of gesso and acrylic paint that have got a bit gummed up - sooooo ....

+

I promised myself I would always wear an apron when doing my art work - so now my clothes have a more exclusive spatter pattern- ( Pics inspired by Cathy's - hope you don't mind)

September

September is an emotive time of year especially for those involved with schools all their lives like me. It has always associated with new beginnings for me, even more than January. Seeing the school children making their way for the new term this morning made me think of new books and sharp pencils and new resolutions for the term ahead.
I conveniently forget the weeks of planning, sorting, ordering stock, relining pinboards for displays and staff-meetings and records, records, records to read and start to fill in.
In the 'old' days I also enjoyed starting the new class register with its red zig-zags and blue 'O' s. I always joked that I only wanted to be a teacher so I could keep a register. I used to make my own from my dad's spare football pool coupons - something else only fellow uk readers of my generation will know (Do they have them any more?). Now the register is computerised and far less romantic.
When I was a school-girl myself, I loved walking to school on September mornings when there was a morning dew.The cobwebs on the front garden shrubs would be magically transformed to diamond necklaces and the air would be scented with chrysanthemums and damp leaves. There was often a early morning chill with the promise of warm sunshine. The leaves would be starting to turn and the pavements were often slippery with berries and ripe fruits shed from overhanging trees. As I generally walked to school by myself I was able to keep in touch with my nature-loving self - not too cool for a young teenager if in the company of her classmates.
This is my second September since retiring - I was looking forward to a glorious Sepember last year, but it did nothing but rain and was gloomy most of the time, so may be this year will be glorious. The leaves seem to be turning early and the blustery weather is putting paid to the apples. They are being blown down before we can pick them and then they get bruised and won't keep.
I found the quote from Alexander Theroux on the internet, and although it does not quite match my sentiments voiced above - there is that whistful feel of summer's done.

Can you have too many watering cans?

Here is my collection of watering cans. In fact I have found another one since I did this drawing.  The classic family along the bottom are for decoration only as they are either too heavy or a big wonky, but most of the others are in use.  However I still manage to fail in watering my plants. The idea is to keep a can near a plant but of course I am supposed to use them.  The plants that I do manage to water are my orchids that sit on the kitchen window sill. Watering them is easy as is usually means delaying using the sink!