Studio Saturday - sketchbooks, sharpeners, shadows

An idea about colour seeping out round the edge of a hole in the darkness -

 and later I see this, at the edge of a large painting (detail shown) -

and hear a quote from Goethe, that colour is what happens at the intersection of light and dark.

Some digging deep under the workbench, to find an old sketchbook (the colourful one; 1993) -

 in which were collages that just sort of happened -

 and an outline of my favourite fairy tale, Mother Holle -

 The industrious girl gets her reward, and her lazy sister - well, she was not a pretty sight.

A flurry of pencila sharpening

 led to the imposition of order

 and the complete revamp of "the most used tools" that sit in mugs on the window ledge.

Another old sketchbook, 2017 - shadows drawn (no, traced) outside Tate Britain, with the only watersoluble pencils I possessed at the time -

 Early mornings find me sitting here, getting a dose of natural light and listening to podcasts (the newest discovery is Kitchen Sisters Presents) -

 Sunny mornings make it possible to draw the shadows of those jars of pencils -

 or to paint them -

 Two sunny mornings in a row and we have two renditions of the same scene -

Peanut butter cookies

The ingredients -

The recipe -

Peanut Butter Cookies

Cream    75g (salted) butter
             175g peanut butter

Add a total of 225g sugar (approx 1/3 granulated, 2/3 brown)

Mix in 1 egg

Stir in 140g plain flour
             1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

Roll into small round balls. Placed on a lightly greased baking sheet and flatten with a floured (or sugared) fork.

Bake 12-15 minutes at 180C (350F, gas 4). Makes 4-5 dozen.         


The criss-cross is crucial -

Result -

 

Woodblock Wednesday - finally, a consortium of octopuses

Second layer on these -

 ... for a grand total of nine -

 ... and these, either finished or just the one layer printed, belatedly -

Deciding what colour to use for each took quite a while. I wrote the colour on the back of the print and put them in the damp pack.

The block had been cut back to make little holes in the suckers. Printing went smoothly. These are on paper from a hosho pad -

 and these are on other papers, which take the "ink" much better -

 The eyes were carefully tipped in as a separate layer -

I hope you can see the effect for the little holes in the suckers.

Done and dusted? Maybe. So, on to the next....

During the week I remembered seeing a print ... somewhere ... with narrow areas of colours around the edge of a circle, white (unprinted) interior and black (ink?) background, or perhaps foreground. I wondered if the layers of colour (from overprinting the colour blocks) would make a dark enough background, or if a layer of black would be needed.

 Experiments -

 Overlap (a slightly Turneresque quality?) -

To be continued...

Drawing Tuesday - plants / flowers

A birthday posy of pretty flowers from Sylvia's garden has been gracing my table -

I drew it (in the A4 sketchbook) with the left hand and coloured it in with the right hand and my limited collection of watersoluble pencils.

From Carol - On the left, what is eating my Swiss Chard and why have they gone to seed straight away? On the right flowers from hubby because I was lockdown sad.

From Joyce - here’s my watercolour of plants on my patio.

From Judith - Watercolour, sometimes it works and often it doesn’t!

From Jackie - Here’s an assortment of little flowers in the garden on a hot afternoon...like forget me knots ... dont know the names of the others.

Ink and water colour.

From Sue S - My choice was this Phlomis Russeliana (Jerusalem sage). Shadows changed after 2 hrs so called it quits.

From Richard - Good to be in the garden, quite noisy with birds, bees, squirrels. 

Mine’s a watercolour but looked rather mimsy so a bit of definition of edges added with caran d’ache.

From Ann - A white and pinky red camellias in a bowl vase with golden coin. I wanted to loosen up with watercolour but then it became insipid so went in with ink and coloured pencils to sharpen up the composition.  Enjoyable to do but over-worked it.

Another is a  drawing is of a magnificent rose in the garden and I'm still working on this one in coloured pencils...

From Najlaa -

From Janet B - Another enjoyable morning in the glorious sunshine with all my coloured pencils spread out in front of me. The potted garden plants were too big to move on to the garden table so I brought out a couple of indoor plants.

From Hazel - I spent the morning drawing my sweet peas growing through a trellis. I like the structure of the trellis in contrast to the vigorous sweet peas. I stopped before the image became too heavy and it was getting very hot in the garden too!

From Gill - Used Chinese ink and my new sword brushes.

Pushed this as far as I could in a new direction for me.

May develop this idea into a painting.

From Janet K - This is my clematis. Done with watercolour and inkintense pencils. I find it really hard to achieve the right colour of green.

My other garden drawing was inspired by the plants and many geraniums on our neighbour's terrace that we are taking care of.

From Sylvia - Bit disappointed with this and took ages!

From Mags - On Sunday I did an hours 'Zoom' course with the London Drawing Group on Mattisse Online :drawing with scissors. Mixed feelings about it but I enjoyed the last few minutes cutting out leaves ( the trick is to move the paper ). So today I gathered a sprig of Cotinus and did some weeding of dandelions and cut into some of my stash of ColourCatchers. Botanical Illustration is too much like work , this was much more fun !

From Jo - "Last year's honesty" - candle wax, pencil, white wax crayon, Derwent china white pencil, water soluble pencils, lead pencil, thumbnail