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Sketchbook Challenge and Cabbage Art

Have just completed my first piece for the March Sketchbook Challenge. The subject is Spilling over. My first attempt is of a hanging baskets with flowers spilling over....looking forward to Summer. I have ideas for further pages so watch this space ....but you will probably have time to have a coffee, a three course meal and a weeks holiday while you are waiting!


I have also been experimenting with abstracts using coloured pencils. I recently bought a rather good book called Painting and Understanding Abstract Art by John Lowry. In addition to lots about the different types of abstract art and about abstract artists past and present, it also has a serious of exercises to start you creating your own abstracts. The first exercise involved photocopying the cut half of a cabbage in black and white, drawing round the resulting shapes and using those as the basis of a masterpiece!. Not having a cabbage to hand I found a picture of a cut through cabbage online and used that. These are the results. I am rather pleased with them. They are both 2.5" x 3.5" so I could use them as ATCs in the future.

Vanity, vanity.......

I found out last week from Vicki who attends Penny's Tuesday afternoon class, that my picture of peaches appeared in an article about the EAC Art Awards in the February issue of the Dorset Magazine.

Unfortunately, by the time I found out, the March issue was on the shelves. Vicki kindly provided me with a copy of the relevant article and the part referring to my "masterpiece" is reproduced here. Look back through my blog for a picture of the peaches. I have to say being described as a younger entrant put a smile on my face.
Onwards and upwards!

EAC Entry Finished

I have finally finished my entry for the EAC. Having started out being not too happy with it, I am quite pleased with how it has turned out.
Still haven't done anything for this month's Sketchbook Challenge but now I have finished the EAC entry I can spend the rest of the month working on some pages.

Work in Progress

I have started a new still life which, hopefully, will be entered into the EAC Over 60s Art Awards. The closing date is 4th March so I think I will have time. I am not over happy about work so far but I will persevere and hopefully it will pass muster. My problem is anything other than perfection is not good enough!!!!!

Hopefully, the completed picture will appear here by the end of the week.

I had hope to do some pages for the Sketch book Challenge but have go too involved with the above picture. Once I get this finished I will try to do some pages before the end of this month.

A scam and an STC

I had hoped to do a posting at the beginning of the week but unfortunately I was the victim of someone hacking into my email and contact list. The result was that a number of people received an email from me saying I was in Malaysia, had been mugged and needed money! I was totally "unmugged", apart from a mug of coffee, and safe at home. Unfortunately I was logged out of my email account for 24 hours or so because my password no longer worked. Strangely enough, I could not get into gmail to use Blogger and when I tried to reset my gmail I was stymied because the email address to do this through was my hotmail address. Generally I love computers and email etc but other times I want to scream and throw the whole lot out of the window....and just because some greedy little ..*!!** wants to try and get some easy money. Grrrrrr.

Anyway I am back in cyberland. Have just completed another Artist Trading Card for Scribble Talk. I am about to start on a still life which includes grapes so I thought I would kill two birds with one stone by doing an STC of grapes (see above) as a practice run. I am pretty pleased with it. I hope the recipient will be.



Now to do some more work for The Sketchbook Challenge is Opposites. I am at the brainstorming stage. Hopefully I will have something done in a day or two

Sketchbook Challenge - the story continues

Another page for the Sketchbook Challenge. This represents Tuesday afternoon painting classes and the friends with whom I paint...especially those who sit with me in the naughty corner. I am so lucky a) to be able to attend these classes and b) to share the time with such jolly good friends. We paint, chatter, drink coffee and generally enjoy ourselves. Most of the people in this class have been painting together for a number of years. It is a very "comfortable" group. Above all, no one "judges" what any one else does. We share ideas, advice and so on and any criticism is constructive. And we are lucky enough to have a very good teacher, Penny, who is also a very good friend.
Without going into too much detail Penny, painting classes and my "naughty corner" friends have been such an important part of my life in the past 7 years, picking me up from the depression I had sunk into and giving my life a purpose and meaning. And they are always there with a helping hand and kind words when needed. I love them dearly. Bless you, girls!

January Sketchbook Challenge - Episode 1

At last after a week of procrastination I have finally done my first sketchbook page for January. If I could draw as well as I procrastinate I could be up there with Signor da Vinci!

This sketch represents the opportunities I have had to travel, often to places off the usual travel track. This sketch amply illustrates that. It is part of a silver cruet from Iraq. In 1949, when I was a lot younger than I am now, we moved to Iraq where my father, who was in the RAF, was posted. This cruet was bought by my parents whilst there. I remember my mother telling me it was made by a silversmith who called himself John the Baptist.....either my mother or the silversmith or both were having a joke.

Since then I have travelled widely, both with my parents and on my own. With my parents we went to Australia and Germany as well as around the UK. By myself I have been to the Middles East, North Africa, Nepal and Thailand. Two years ago, I was fortunate enough to sail across the Atlantic and up the Amazon with my painting teacher and friend, Penny Wilton when she was teaching on a Swan Hellenic Cruise. I have also done a couple of trips to Menorca with Penny and some friends who also attend her classes.

I have a stack of photos of these travels but, more importantly to me, a wealth of memories. I just wish I had had a sketch book for some of my earlier travels. You can capture so much more in a sketch book, bot in words and pictures than you can with a camera, no matter how good a camera is. My sketch book do not just have sketches but a lot of notes to describe the environment where I am sketching. When I look at those pages now such descriptions transport me back to the day I made the sketches.

January Sketchbook Challenge

The theme for the January Sketchbook Challenge is "Highly Prized", what is highly prized to me.....where do I start. Well, with a mind map. I know some people do lists and the like when they are trying to organise thoughts and get down ideas but I find mind maps more effective, for me, anyway. Above is my mind map for January. I began by splitting it into tangible, eg friends and family, wildlife, books etc and intangible eg the 5 senses, life and so on.

It seems a lot of things are highly prized in my world so I think I am going to have to narrow it down. I am going to start with the 5 senses first and see where I go from there.
Although I am going to use separate pages and form them into an accordion book, one for each month, for this month, at least I am going to work in a sketch book and take the pages out to make up into the book.
The cover of each book will be decorated to reflect book the theme and the month. As I plan to do each cover in a different colour I thought I would take the birthstone for each month and use that colour. The birthstone for January is a garnet so the cover will be a darkish red-brown colour.
I have also collected together a basic set of drawing equipment which I will keep in a pencil case. Graphite pencil, watercolour pencils and a wash brush, drawing pens and some coloured felt tip pens. I can add to this as and when.I can keep that and the sketch book plus a notebook together so I can work at odd moments as I get ideas and, hopefully, inspiration.
I think I am ready to go.