Kew Gardens, always a revelation

The water lily house, with a bit of Chihully glass - one of the 26 installations of glass throughout the gardens -

 

papyrus

looking in through the old windows

 The big border, how fabulous, changing through the seasons -

 The Hive (buzzing, in the background) -

Wonderful trees - each one is labelled. After a lot of guessing and then searching from the label, by the end of the day we could identify various types of oak (holm, english, red) and planes (london, oriental) and discovered that corylus was hazelnut, and could just about tell an Atlas Cedar from a pine or spruce, and distinguish swamp cypress from metasequoia. Just about.

a pyramidal London plane

my Arbre Du Jour - grey pine

world's largest smoke bush???

And just when you think you've seen it all, you come across a glade full of hydrangeas ...

 ... so you really, really notice the hydrangeas in gardens on the way back to the station -

Garden after rain

The gardens needed the rain. Mine looked fresh and (almost) new...

Studio Saturday - this week's research

Textures in a photo displayed at Charing Cross station

how a manga artist shows a jazz riff 

more textures from the Manga exhibition at the BM

ceramic AND woodblock inspiration from Yo Thom's work at Contemporary Ceramics

shadows so often go unnoticed

unusual sky...

... echoed in a coffee cup ...

... and perhaps in this glass bowl

rediscovering a book on my shelf...

... and lusting after this one ...

Games we play...

The name of today's game was "fooling yourself into doing a little housework".

On getting home, hungry, I put some smoked mackerel on brown bread and sat down in the midst of unnoticed chaos to have it, along with a glass of IPA. "Very brown, this food" - that thought got me looking at not just the food but the setting, and that made the "brown thought" even more depressing...

So I made a salad as second course and before sitting down with it [delicious!], cleared the area somewhat -

You can see that the dining table too was very cluttered, too much so for eating at it - I had planned to print woodblocks this afternoon, but didn't get home till evening, so there they still were, waiting.

Instead of leaving it all out, ready for printing first thing in the morning, I "tidied up for the weekend" before getting out the third course -

The tidy-up took about 15 minutes in all (some sorting was involved), and to sit with fruit and cheese and the rest of the IPA without clutter was such a treat! (Why don't I do this more often? Why don't I keep it this way?)

Further reward was this lovely sunset -

Poetry Thursday - Brown Penny by W B Yeats

Among the lovely selection of poetry at the British Library Bookshop I found a new collection of short(ish) poems -

Centre, top shelf -  The Zoo of the New

"The Zoo of the New" is subtitled "A Book of Exceptional Poems from Sappho to Paul Muldoon" - but, why "new" if some of the poems are so old? Possibly because poetry is "news that stays news"... also, why "zoo" ... I don't have an answer for that.

The poems have been selected by Nick Laird and Don Paterson.  (And the zingy cover was designed by Richard Green.)

Opening the book at random ... here is Brown Penny by W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) -

Brown Penny

I whispered, ‘I am too young,’
And then, ‘I am old enough’;
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
‘Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair.’
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.

O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.

(via)

A "man of unsteady heart" (or just confusion; love and confusion are often associated)  reflects on the many kinds of love encountered throughout life (a full analysis is here).

A good source for dipping

Woodblock Wednesday - fits and starts

After much tweaking and cogitation at the weekend, I was almost ready to start on the actual carving of the four blocks.

First block cut and printed (Monday), just to get an idea of what it will look like ... even if you can see it in your mind's eye, the reality often has surprises, that "will it work" thing....

 

Second block cut (Tuesday), with an "island" in the middle of the cut area. Using long strokes for clearing away made me think that having some texture - just a little - inside the blank circle might be a good thing...

Today (Wednesday) the other blocks are traced on (using carbon paper) -- but what to do next in terms of cutting needs reviewing...

While the design stage benefits from stops and starts and sleeping-on-it and rethinks, when it comes to cutting it's better to do a longer session, rather than half an hour here and there, to keep focus and momentum - and enthusiasm.

I've been out doing other things today, rather than "working", but as much as possible will keep Wednesday mornings free for the rest of the summer. (Why is it so difficult to "carve out" the time for doing enjoyable projects?)

Drawing Tuesday - V&A

The medieval rooms are one of my favourite parts of the V&A, and it seems the others in the group like them too.

Najlaa scooted off to the Mary Quant exhibition first, then found an Islamic subject -

 Carol tackled stained glass and promised to finish it later -

 Sue was attracted to the stained glass too -

 The standing figures that Janet K chose are from 1500-25 -

Extra-curricular activities

Carol's close observation -

 Sue's encounter with a Henry Moore -

 Najlaa's continuing daily drawings, inspired by found images -

 Janet K at the V&A earlier in the week -

Nearly forgot to add my own work - I had settled down in front of what turned out to be the Syon cope, attracted by the dragon and the many-winged seraph, when a woman came along and said she'd be bringing a tour group in half an hour and they'd be standing right where I was sitting. Hmm.

I carried on and got this far by the time the group approached -

Nearby were these floor tiles* from about 1300 - a nice simple subject -

At home during the week I tidied it up a bit - lots of erasing -

Now you can actually see the pattern -

What I learned from this: Be Bolder! Get some contrast into the drawing. Never mind if it "goes wrong" ... go with the flow ... be bolder!!

* I spent a lot of time looking for a link to these tiles, and found many interesting things along the way. Can I draw your attention to an exhibition of old textiles collected by Seth Sieglaub that was held at Raven Row in 2012. A pdf of the catalogue is online and the textiles are beautifully photographed.