Drawing Tuesday - ingredients

The theme is self explanatory: the bits that make the whole. But the whole of what - most likely, a recipe, but it could be other things too.... 

Sidenote ... It's October, and for the daily drawing crowd, that means "Inktober". I started and was enjoying the "visual research" inspired by the prompts, but very quickly fell by the wayside. In researching "how to draw with ink"  I watched a couple of videos that may be of interest. One is 20 tips for beginners, and another gives two simple warm-up exercises that will help develop a steady hand and fluent lines.

From Helen - 

From Ann - Coloured pen drawing of ingredients...and collage of onions.

From Hazel -  an illustration made using scraper board for New Society in the 1980s. It was for an article on food entitled 'Fish - festive, frugal ...' I think fish is more expensive today!

From Judith - Know your fungi, are these an edible ingredient. Found on Marshes south of Walberswick

From Najlaa

From Richard - I keep trying to reproduce a meal, with these ingredients, which the mother of friends of ours in Puglia gave us once. Unforgettable aroma from the kitchen then it tasted fantastic. I’ve not quite cracked it yet! 

From Sue S - A colourful array of fruit ‘n’ veg. Caran d’ache & soluble wax crayon.

From Jackie - neocolour crayons... fridge veg basket full again ... supper decisions to be made!

From Joyce - here’s one I did in lockdown for Urban Sketchers.

From Mags - Ingredients for Waldorf Salad (  apples and walnuts) using homemade botanical inks bought from Amanda Thesiger during East Kent Artists Open Houses. No green so no celery ( perhaps I should have drawn with it.. ) 

From Janet B - Bread and butter pudding; most of the ingredients

From Sue B - a quick sketch of white and red onions in a favourite provencal green bowl…pencil only!

From Gill - I scratched into a piece of Tetra Pak , took a print from it by hand, then added crayon.

From me -  "Ingredients for a takeaway curry ... and ecodisaster"

Studio Saturday - a useful trick for awkward division

Another batch of facemasks is underway -

Another recent project is "tracing my daily walks" - over the week it has taken a more definite shape and has reached what will probably be the furthest point south, which coincidentally lies just north of the point where the map changes scale. (I walk the walk without the street atlas to hand.)

As I (temporarily) labelled the areas (Highgate, Hornsey, Stoke Newington) I discovered that an entire quadrant lay empty (Tufnell Park, Camden Town) -

That was soon remedied -

The walks are a way of defining "my local area" - places I could reach on foot. I worked out that the radius was just over two miles (45 minutes' steady walking) but that I was usually out on the streets for over two hours, tsk tsk too much "daily exercise"!

The random routes make interesting shapes ... perhaps the project will take its shape from these shapes? Sheer fabrics, overlaid perhaps? Printed areas defined through stencilling? Thinking of the latter, and longing to do quite a lot of woodblock cutting, I looked for some simple travel-lines that could be traced and cut -

It took several hours to trace, and this is the result of several hours' cutting (half a dozen podcasts). It's about a sixth of the tracing -

At one point in the week another project nearly got underway, one that needed a 30-page accordion book. The book took longer than expected and is still only half finished. Each strip of paper needed folding into sixths and was an inconvenient measurement for "doing the maths". If awkward division is something that ever happens to you, this geometrical method will be useful.

I had folded the strip in half so I needed thirds. 12 (inches) is easily divided by 3, so I put the end of the ruler in the corner of the paper and swung the ruler so the 12 hit the edge of the paper. (That made the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle.) Then I marked the 8 and the 4 along the ruler. At this point you can draw your fold line with a set square or similar 90-degree tool, or you can repeat the measurement from another corner and line up the two dots.

The method works for any awkward division, fifths, sevenths, etc - just find a measurement that can easily be divided by 5, 7, etc and swing your ruler accordingly.

Christmas 2019

It's been a busy time, one way and another.

Today, a quiet morning and a chance to peacefully and appreciatively open the collection of cards kindly sent. It's amazing that the one from Germany reached me through the rain!

I'll be sending New Year "cards" by email, which saves paper and postage and allows funds to be diverted to various good causes (it's that time of year).

Over the past few days the joy of the season has centred around Freya, who has no idea what it all means but is just getting on with her fresh-every-day life. She's starting to crawl - watch out, world! -

The new puppets were a delight both to her and to all the adults who watched her reaction -

What she notices, and what she explores and returns to, is a constant surprise -

I got much pleasure from finding books on my shelves that might interest friends, and wrapping them in fabric from my stash -

(Actually it was a selfish ploy in the ongoing fight against the accumulation of possessions.)

More fabric wrapping, in the form of (book) bags -

When there are many to be made quickly, the algorithm simplifies itself. What evolved was a process of fabric (and cord) selection, approximate sizing, cutting or tearing inside and outside fabrics, sewing a "tunnel", pressing the drawstring casing, sewing it to the open ends of the (turned, pressed) tunnel, sewing up the sides, and threading the cord. Exact timing is unknown, but I can make one in less than half an hour, including finding suitable fabrics.

Woodblock Wednesday - trying out papers

Week 1 of the advanced woodblock printing course. First task, print on different papers, keeping the variables as much the same as possible.

The usual Hosho, from sheets and pad -

Plentiful papers of various sorts -

 ... and a lot of single-sheet samples from John Purcell, ranging from 9gsm to 89gsm -

Another factor is the watercolour paint;  Holbein watercolour paints are commonly used in Japan -

First off, I needed a back-to-basics for consistency of nori and pigment -

 ... and tried to be uniform in the amount of each used each time -

 ... with these results (Mission Gold paint, cerulean) -

 Laying out our prints -

I tried some Holbein paints too, crimson lake (not right with cerulean!) and a yellow that got contaminated by blue that was still in the brush -

Consensus was that the "top three" were Shoji Natural, Atsukuchi (both 39 and 57gsm), and Bunkoshi white. Bibtenguyo (12gsm), Inbe, and (for me) Tosa Washi were also good.

Two more weeks of the advanced course are to come; next week I'll talk about the Chinese woodblock printing course I attended in the summer.

Studio Saturday - sewing a slippery slip and a cosy cover

The main event in the home studio this past week was a bit of garment sewing, thanks to a bit of slippery fabric found in the local charity shop. It suggested "bias cut slip" and I went along with that suggestion, first making the pattern from a slip on hand, then laying it out on the fabric... 

 ... and cutting bias strips to face the neck and armholes and extend into delicate little straps...

The slithery, limp, cheap, synthetic, floppy, slippery fabric was a nightmare to work with. Cutting with a rotary cutter was All Wrong. Sometimes, good old-fashioned SCISSORS are the right tool!

It took me a while to realise that visible pencil lines could be drawn on the back of the fabric (rather than invisibly on the front) for cutting the bias strips - and that delicate straps could be made by simply pulling on the strips, which obligingly rolled up, ready to pin and stitch. Of course an extra hand would have been useful for this manoevre -

 Sewing the french seams, on the (uncertain) bias, was another slippery-sloppy nightmare. Lots of pins, use lots of pins....

 Uh-oh, what happened to the hem??

Pinning it up to hang evenly was challenging. In the end I put it on over the dress and pinned it at an inch above hem length, which gave 1/4" at the shallowest part. Adding a bit of false hem (deeper hem would help it fall better?) did my head in - this was after about 10 hours of grappling with the whispy item, figuring out how to get the bias binding to lie flat and undoing and redoing those wobbly side seams even as they willfully frayed....

Instead of prolonging the hem agony, it was basted, cut to 1/4" all round, turned up again, stitched, and is DONE. Now to finish the top, simply attaching the straps at the right length and without too much lumpiness -

For a quick'n'easy project, I made a hot water bottle cover out of on old woolly jumper, first making the pattern out of two pieces of A4 paper, to be cut as one for the front, and to have a bit added as overlapping hems on the back.

The front is two layers (the hidden layer has lots of moth holes and has been in and out of the soapsuds and freezer to deal with any sneaky lurking moths). A bit of intact ribbing adds a jaunty look -

The back uses intact ribbing as the hems (any holes are hidden in the bit turned under) and decorative embroidery hides the unavoidable mothholes -

It was pronounced cosy and serviceable. Job done!