Drawing Tuesday - tools of the trade

The porcelain palette has given me so much pleasure, seeing the colours laid out against the whiteness and feeling its smoothness and stability (it's rather solid). For the drawing, I used the colours that were in the wells, and liked the self-reflexivity of that!  It didn't seem like a good idea to use watercolour for drawing the brushes, and in fact it was a relief to get back to straightforward pencil (and eraser).

From Jo - I was demolishing a cotoneaster which had grown to 8 feet plus and then just died. These were the tools (at different scales) -

From Carol - I had so much fun with today’s topic that I actually used A4 paper! It was so good to get out these little characters and think about when I last used them and for what event and that at one time they were regular ‘tools of my trade’. Now only Sally comes out with me and helps with the difficult questions with Reception children. She has a bell inside her which jangles when she is happy.

Puppets Left to right:-

Basil – the Newshound

Todd – the donkey

Charlie the Parrot who likes jokes and Neville the Dragon – both phonic wizards

Sally – the rather forgetful and menopausal sheep

Joey- the sandwich chef tortoise

Sabastian the snail -  a superhero postman

Bip and Bop – vegetarian alien shipmates.


From Janet K -  A few tools in my collection.

From Sue - A selection of Tools for my upholstery projects - which have been few of late! Here’s my sketch, in pastel.

Hammered home! 

From Joyce - Here are my scissors, in charcoal, inspired by the rather sinister lithographs by Jim Dine.

From Richard - Garden tools, mostly passed down from my father’s mother, I think, so beautifully made and a treat to use. Watercolour with some caran d’ache.

From Judith - Tools are such lovely shapes. Memories of CityLit Drawing 2!

From Najlaa - From my collections of scissors and I am sure I have more

From Ann - My inspiration for "tools" - the ever handy brushes and pencil pot! I enjoyed the elegant shapes of the brushes and pencil.  
The other two images are quick sketches of pen and ink and watercolour sketches of the window ledge in my room.  

From Janet B - I only had time for two 15 minute sketches this morning: my left hand drawn by my right hand and vice versa.

From Mags - a quick sketch of some of my sewing tools ( definitely not to scale ! ) Just noticed that many of them are Japanese  although the humbug pincushion was my  mums and the needlecase a gift for shepherding an elderly couple through Paris . 

From Jackie - A beautiful old hand powered sewing machine.. This has made curtains and a variety of things including recently  a couple of face masks

and more to come! 

From Gill - A very rough drawing. My excuse is that I wanted to be free!

Drawing Tuesday - jewellery / treasures

While messing around in search of the next woodblock-print idea, a couple of days ago, I painted some "cave mouths" (bottom row) -

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and moved on to similar things (top row), and the last one (duplicated top left) led to something else -- page after page of "gemstones" in my A6 notebook -

Years ago, in a textiles course, I did a collage incorporating "jewels" - the red rectangles in middle of left-hand page are enlargements, done in pastel - aiming to get the reflective qualities of the facets, and the strange depths -

It was thought-provoking to revisit that fascination with facets, which dates back to 1993, and to see how it has now become an abstraction.

From Jo - Brooch - Danish 1960s.

From Carol - So lovely to do something in detail which would be almost impossible in a museum, and so much choice.

A Victorian bracelet, silver wire, enamel with a small cameo. Given to my Mum in her teens by an elderly neighbour for ‘her kindness’. Old but of no particular value except to me.  I do wear it sometimes, it is a beautiful little thing and reminds me of the better qualities of my Mum.

From Judith - Playing with Procreate,

a necklace made from horse shoe nails

and a very quick watercolour.

From Najlaa - I kept this picture of the necklace in my inspiration folder to do something with fabric. I like the idea and hope to do it one day.

From Sue - Here’s my sketch of a variety of my ethnic necklaces on tailor’s dummy. Must wear them more often when dressing up when we’re allowed out to ‘party’!

From Janet B - Two necklaces chosen purely for their colouring-in potential. 

From Richard - Oh dear, precious to me but possibly grounds for divorce, and Sue will very definitely want to go to the hairdresser now.

From Janet K - My favourite necklaces. watercolour, coloured pencils and a bit of gouache

From Mags - Took me ages to select which of my hundreds of earrings to draw, I've been wearing a different pair each day in lockdown ! I mostly wear dichroic glass ones  so it was good to rediscover those bought on my travels and at craft/ designer shows.

From Ann - These are brooches and items of jewellery that I consider treasures too! The watercolour and coloured pencils brooch is a treasure of my mother's and the pencil drawing of an art nouveau silver brooch... a gift from my husband many years ago! Enjoyable in many ways to look back and reflect on.

From Jackie - difficult to choose which treasure/jewellery to draw... but found this unexpectedly ... a sliver charm bracelet which was a present from my parents.

 I added charms which I collected as souvenirs from holidays in the 50’s ... 

a strange motley collection of 'charms'… it was a treasure to me and I loved wearing it!

From Gill - This is my very heavy marble jewellery bowl.

It felt quite nostalgic drawing pieces I usually wear when I go tango dancing. Can’t see me wearing any of this for quite a while!

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 -