Everyday things

This is the view from my kitchen door into my back garden. It's a dull, drizzly day this morning, but at least my water butt will be re-filling after the last two fairly dry weeks. In addition to being a working mum and trying to be an artist to boot, I also garden a fair bit. In the front of the house is my vegetable and fruit garden, and in the back is this secluded, shady courtyard where I feed the birds, and sit and read, and enhance my calm!!!!!

The tin is one I painted when I was running a small business selling 'canal ware'. Oooh, it was about 18 years ago, and most of my family have bits and pieces left over from that endeavour. I called it 'Off the Barge' and it was fun attending craft markets and canal events in Manchester and the surrounding area. This is my tea caddy, full of whatever bog-standard bags I'm using. Coffee is for mornings, tea in the afternoon for me.

Water

From the V&A water sketches I've been playing around with applying Quink Ink. After a while painting on A5 I switched to a square format. I used the end of a wooden skewer, then end of a paintbrush and a watercolour brush to vary the marks. These are not finished. When they're dry I want to keep working over them, maybe cut them up, layer them, wash away areas if I can. I don't want to introduce too many medium, I think I'd like to stick to inks, just playing with wet and dry.

Composition doodles

Drawing every day, if there's nothing that catches my eye, and I'm pressed for time, results in 5 minutes playing with arrangements on a square format.

This time last week....

I was setting off to London to visit the V&A with my older sister. We had a fantastic time at the Quilts exhibition, stumbled over some breathtaking Rodin sculptures, and I was awe struck by Norwegian door carvings. The V&A is an amazing trove.

These are some sketches I did in the courtyard of people taking a break and of the fountain installation there.

Yawn!

What a difference a good night's sllep makes. Time for breakfast I think.

Chris Bolmeier, has generously added this image of 'Spring Climbing' to her blog in a format you can copy as a screensaver or print it. I'll be printing it for my kitchen calendar. I love having images of friend's works on there.

self portrait in pencil

oooh, I'm in a grumpy mood today. A shouty, kick the washing-basket, screech in the kitchen and slump down on the floor kind of day. Hubby suggested I go out on my bike, or go out sketching til I need to get the kids, but I couldn't be bothered to drag myself out of the house. So I hunched down in a corner of the bedroom & drew this self-portrait. Grrrr!
Good news is, hubby has been installinig our new pc, because our old one was full and sluggish. Hmmm. Anyway, after drawing, I mentioned i needed to blog again, so he showed me how to log in (same way as the old one) how to to transfer photos onto it (same as before), and how to mess about with photos on it (ditto again). So now I can sit at our new super duper pc, and play around with adding favorites on google, cos it's lost my old list for some reason.
So now I'm not so grumpy, and this self=portrait makes me chuckle to look at it. Everything changes.

After Schiele - bodies

"....the urge to look is interconnected with the mechanisms of disgust and allure." From Schiele by Grange Books.

Christmas dress #2

Christmas dress

Lounging on the sofa, having flicked through a book on Egon Schiele. Two more drawings followed which I have yet to paint in.

All I want for Christmas is.....

..... postcards, for my Tate Modern eternal calender, please. The pack came with lots of postcards to use, including some on the back of the months and numbers (there's a funny story about that which I'll tell another day). But they're not all my cup of tea. I already have a postcard from Gesa of her own artwork (bottom left in the calender) which is very special to me.

So I'd love more cards to use in the New Year. I'll put the address in the comments.