Preparing for the heat

33 degrees? Continuous sunshine on a bank holiday? Twice in one year??

Blinds (such as they are) down, cross-ventilation established, sundress found, going barefoot on cool floor, fizzy water to hand, ice for other drinks ready - ah, forget to make espresso for iced coffee.

Holiday at home!

Studio Saturday - carving the "Korean doll" woodblocks

My blog holiday continues. Part of the reason is the computer setup - I've been standing at the computer for a year and a half, since an attack of sciatica -

Note the worn area of the floor!

Finally - yesterday - I could bear it no longer, and took everything off the desk. Some "real beeswax" furniture polish emerged from its place in the cupboard, where it had been for nearly 25 years, and gave the surfaces a nice shine -

So I'm sitting down writing this, and getting whiffs of that "old beeswax" smell.

Now for a clearout of the peripherals - the items from the top of the desk are heaped to either side. (Not a pretty sight.)

But first, a report on arty progress this week. No pots were prepared, but some sewing was done in those quiet mornings in the studio - this lap quilt, started some 35 years ago (dreary colour, what was I thinking) will become a play mat -

And there were lots of goings-on with woodblocks, specifically the "Korean dolls" started a couple of weeks ago.

I'm happiest when a project contains, in its final form, traces of its evolution or making. The dolls on which the drawing is based were the result of a lesson in fabric dyeing in the microwave, a long time ago when that technique was new - we dyed and re-dyed, layering the colours.

To replicate that effect, the blocks are divided into three areas for each doll, with the collars a combination of those colours, which may look different depending on the order they are printed.

 One block will be red, one blue, one yellow - but the shades in different areas could be different, or there could be layering of areas. How to do this will evolve once printing starts.

Before carving started, there were minor adjustments to the drawing ... and I almost forgot to turn it over before transferring to the block.

First colour block underway - the many thin lines of the "black" block will have to wait -

The "easy" cutting does give a chance for practice with thin lines. I'm keeping a list of podcast episodes listened to: when podcasts are on autoplay, one tends to slip into another and be forgotten immediately. The hours pass unnoticed!

The shapes look like pieces of dressmaking patterns, which is totally appropriate -

 Another session and the easy bits were all done -

 Starting the tricky bits -

Meanwhile, I'm missing the family - they're having a great time in Greece -

At random

Some photos taken along the way this week -

Drop-in drawing at National Portrait Gallery, Friday evenings

On a green-chain bridge in Sydenham Hill Wood

Camera takes panorama shot - !

Young cone of Metasequoia after inadvertent laundering - it opened up

River Cam with Mathematical Bridge of Queens' College

Papers still to be sorted....

Work by Margaret Curtis at Contemporary Ceramics

Morning sun in the studio

Hunting for keys in every bag and every pocket -
a chance for a grand clearout

Textures of plants and Pavilion at Serpentine Gallery

Fantasy real estate, Muswell Hill

When a car is your castle

Interesting growth pattern - berries and flowers at the same time

Poetry Thursday - Poems on the Underground

Still Life with Sea Pinks and High Tide

Thrift grows tenacious at the tide's reach.
What is that reach when the water
is rising, rising?

Our melting, shifting, liquid world won't wait
for manifesto or mandate, each
warning a reckoning.

Ice in our gin or vodka chirrups and squeaks
dissolving in the hot, still air
of talking, talking.

Maura Dooley


From the Poetry Society website:

A new set of five poems goes live on London tubes on 1 July 2019 for four weeks. The poems all explore the relationship between human beings and the natural world. Some deal specifically with the urgent issue of climate change. Others reflect more generally on the ways in which human beings take solace and meaning from their living world of earth, sea and sky. 

The poems Still Life with Sea Pinks and High Tide by Maura Dooley‘Our melting, shifting, liquid world won’t wait / for manifesto or mandate…’
The Meaning of Existence by the late Australian poet Les Murray“Everything except language / knows the meaning of existence. / Trees, planets, rivers, time / know nothing else…”
I Am the Song by Charles Causley‘I am the song that sings the bird. / I am the leaf that grows the land. …I am the clay that shapes the hand. / I am the word that speaks the man.’
The shaft by Helen Dunmore‘Who would have thought that pain / And weakness had such gifts / Hidden in their rough hearts?’
‘My life closed twice before its close’ by Emily DickinsonTo the reader who suspects that the ‘events’ mentioned refer to abortive love affairs, the poem may not seem quite so gnomic. 

Poems on the Underground is supported by Transport for London, The British Council and Arts Council England.  Poems are selected by the writer Judith Chernaik and poets Imtiaz Dharker and George Szirtes.

Woodblock Wednesday - printing mountains

The small postcards received some bokashi along the bottom today -

 The large postcards, for the Morley College print swap, are finally ready -

The printing blocks are getting a lot of use, and showing subtle changes of colour -

New today, these prints on pages from a small japanese book found at the charity shop. The text was printed vertically, and the mountains are printed horizontally -

The blocks measure 10.5cm x 15cm (roughly A6 size), and so does the book, which is very convenient in terms of registration. Ordinarily, paper for a print from these blocks is cut 14.5x19cm to allow for the borders.

I like working small. Another recent print, "Elipticlipticality", is 8cm x 13cm -

Drawing Tuesday - Petrie Museum

Two weeks ago, this was - due to my impromptu "blog holiday" and being on a course last week, things have got a bit out of sync.

The report of last week's meeting, at The Pergola and Golders Hill Park, is on Sue's blog - https://suesharples.blogspot.com/2019/08/sketching-tuesday-13th-august.html

Now, to the Petrie; this was our 9th visit there. Let's set the scene with the wonderful wall of the UCL building in which is the cafe we usually go to -

In the museum, I revisited this shell collection. Has my drawing "improved" in the three years between then and now? Not sure - it was as easy as ever to get lost in the details, and again "more contrast is needed"...

 Judith used a white gel pen on her drawings -

 Mags used square pencils...

 ... and felt tips -

 Jo made a collection -

 Sue found stone and clay -

Extracurricular activities

Judith's ipad drawing of a Docklands scene -

 Mags has been eco-dyeing on fabric and paper -

Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge

We went up to Cambridge for a bit of Shakespeare, and discovered that the Fitzwilliam Museum, in fact just about every museum, was closed on a Monday - but the geology museum was open. 

What a revelation, just the sort of old-fashioned museum with handwritten labels and cupboards and drawers and vitrines and quirky things that I love.

Professor Adam Sedgwick's walking boots

The obligatory dinosaur

Rocks and fossils large(ish) ...

... and small

Dinosaur bones and ammonites...

... and starfish ....

... and sea-lilies (crinoids)

Microfossils - how do they even find them?

A quiet room with chemical explanations

Fog oak- "Part of a tree found March 1839
near the Reach in Mildenhall Fen at 7 feet from the surface
by men digging for clay. Its head pointed west by north.
Height with its branches 250 feet.
Height to the first branch 159 feet."

The all-too-familiar touristy view of The Backs and Kings College Chapel. Living in Cambridge in the 1970s, I used to cycle from the Sidgwick site, through the gate [now shut] at lunchtime to the market. (The site (departmental buildings) was named after the philosopher Henry Sidgwick, who studied at Cambridge in the 19th century.)

 Across the road is the Fellows' Garden, or is it the Master's Garden -

 It's big.

The evening wasn't particularly warm, and the actors, as night fell, weren't easy to hear. There was a lot of rushing about, if only to get on "stage". No doubt the tower of the University Library has seen stranger things -

The Mathematical Bridge of Queen's College, on the way back to the station -

 ps - what delight to happen upon a labyrinthine sculpture (Between the Lines, by Peter Randall Page), which set off my labyrinthine trousers -