MICROSCOPIC MIRACLES

 

Stephanie, my granddaughter who loves rocks, is studying geology at Cardiff university so when she showed me some photos taken of microscopic sections of rock I was really inspired by the beautiful colours and designs. This is one of the textile art pieces I have created this week using various scraps from my stash like organza and velvet layered over a white linen base and stitched on the machine.

 

 

Here is my original sketch done in brush pen, black micron pen and watercolour pencils.  I had a lot of fun on dark winter evenings interpreting the photos I have stored on my Kindle tablet.

 

The back of the stitching on the white linen base looks like a lot of doodles!

 

 

Stephanie didn't tell me the names of the rocks but it doesn't matter too much as they are such lovely abstract patterns.

 

This piece was made by making some scrap lace using water-soluble stabiliser so that I could place those tiny bits of blue silk in spaces on the background which is made from a part of my grandmother's silk velvet shawl that must be at least 100 years old.

 

Here's my sketch, I think it looks a bit like a planet spinning in space!

 

The third photo looks like the world with the equator running across the middle.

The sketch is done in watercolour and I really like the way the colours mingled when I painted them which I tried to replicate in the machine stitched version.

 

The black patches are more scraps of grannie's velvet attached with zigzag among the pieces of organza and hand dyed cotton.

I haven't quite decided what to make with these now, maybe some birthday cards or pieced together as a cushion cover.....That means I'll need to do another one to make a square, oh well, back to the drawing board!

OCTOBER CATCH UP

 

What a busy month I've had so far! I'm off to England next week so I've been really busy making stuff to take for birthday and Christmas presents.  So here is a catch up of a few recent projects, but some will have to wait till later in the year!

 

Firstly this is the needlepainting I made of the sketch of the river at Chinon using organza, painted with acrylic inks for the water and in the trees.

 

In case you missed it here's the sketch that inspired the embroidery.

 

 

One day, sitting by the sea I was attracted by the different colours I could see in the water and when I came home I got out my fabric and yarns and stitched this little piece. I realised it was the perfect shape for a bookmark so I tidied up the edges and ironed on some backing, then gave it to Joanna who was staying at the time. 

 

 

Since then I've made several and given them away as cards with a simple mount that allows the bookmark to be removed for use ( for those of us who still prefer paper to electronic books!)

 

 

 

My friend Luba has given me so much inspiration with the fabric samples from her time as a fashion director that I wanted to make something special to say thank you.  I embroidered the picture while the lilies were in bloom and then bound it onto a notebook.  She was delighted when I gave it to her last weekend.

 

Here is one of my lily sketches from last year.  This year I sat by the pot, stitching and copying the shapes of the petals and adding the wasp when I realised that they were more attracted to the flowers than the bees were.

 

My lichen embroidery turned into a book cover too, a present for someone special.

 

I found a few scraps of this fun fabric from 'Get Cutie' in Brighton, part of the pack Justine gave me for my birthday.

 

 

I made them into a pencil case for Jimmy to go with the book I made for him in August.

 

 

Here's the book which he loved and drew lots of pictures in when he was here  for a few days holiday.

 

 

And finally my new hat.  No, I'm not planning to wear it in public, it's part of my fancy dress costume for Justine's party in November.  The theme is games and I've chosen to go as the black queen chess piece, hopefully I'll have some photos to share with you when I come back home in a few weeks!

 

I've prepared my sketching kit and a few yarns and fabrics to be working on while I'm away and I'm even hoping I'll be able to pluck up the courage to do some embroidery on the train to Paris and then the Eurostar (with Justine's encouragement).

 

SUMMER AT HOME

As most of you probably know already we live in a seaside resort on the north Brittany coast and this is the best place to spend the summer holiday months with all the festivals and fireworks going on every week somewhere or other.

 

I was sitting on the beach one day gazing at all the beautiful blues in the sea and realised I had most of the colours in my yarn and embroidery thread collection so I set to and made a few of these long narrow pictures.  The thicker yarns I couched onto the linen background as they were too thick to stitch with and I especially enjoyed sculpting the clouds and waves with a fluffy white wool.

What to make of them?  A perfect shape for a bookmark so I gave a couple away and turned the rest into cards with a slot at the top so the fabric can be easily taken out to use in a 'proper' book!

 

 

A friend came round to 'play' one afternoon bringing some of her fabric scraps and we set to with yarns and threads.  This is my effort and I'm still waiting to see Julie's when she comes back from a trip to England.

 

The lilies in the garden came into flower again in July, delighting me with their wonderful fragrance.  I was interested to see that the white ones particularly attracted wasps rather than bees and added one to this needlepainting I did using some crinkly cotton.  What a lovely afternoon I had sitting by the flowers, stitching and breathing in their perfume.

 

My granddaughter Sarah got her exam results during the holidays and I stitched another of my sun prints for her as a congratulation card.

 

What could be nicer than sitting in the shade of the parasol on a warm afternoon, stitching a portrait of my darling sister Rosi.  This is from a photo from 1979.

Mum got the same treatment too, a copy of a sketch of a 1985 photo where I pushed the colours a bit!

This is the start of the embroidered portrait quilt project I want to make over the next 2 years to celebrate the life and family of my mother who was born in 1919.

MY 300th BLOG!

Hello friends and followers, I've come to a landmark, my 300th blog post and I've decided to celebrate with a look back over the last 5 years of blogging.  This hydrangea was the first picture I posted on Nature sketchers after I was invited to join by Cathy Johnson who runs the Artist's Journal Workshop group on Facebook.  She had seen my drawings and thought I might be interested in contributing and to qualify for the group I had to have my own blog, hence the birth of Colours in the Breizh.

In January of 2012 I started to keep a nature journal to record the happenings in and around my home here in Brittany.  I really enjoyed the discipline of going out every day to find something to draw in my sketchbook and then later I re-visited all the pages again to post on the blog.  I've shown the book to several people here and I hope I've inspired some to start the drawing and observing habit too.

By the end of 2012 I was looking for a new project and discovered the 75 day challenge organised by Brenda Swenson, a watercolour artist and sketcher in America. The aim was to draw for 75 days using only pens, so I sorted out my rather large collection and found I had all sorts from fine liners, through brush pens and markers to biros.  At the end of the challenge I received my 'Artistic License' from Brenda and a nice handwritten card congratulating me on completing.

I found a black sketchbook at a car boot sale locally for 1euro and after covering it with a pretty fabric it became another occasional nature journal.  It's quite a challenge to find the right colours that stand out on black paper but I found it a useful learning experience.  I was using my newly discovered Museum coloured pencils which have a rich pigment that works well on a dark background.

My main love of sketching is to draw when we are on holiday and as we go to so many different places in our camping car I usually fill a sketchbook each time we go away.  I take photographs too but they don't get looked at nearly as much as the sketches which are also a useful way to identify places and dates when we're discussing them later.  In fact this sketch of Chinon chateau is different from the one I drew several years earlier before the extensive renovations were undertaken.

Another challenge I took part in was the 2015 January challenge where a different subject is posted for each day of the month.  It was fascinating to see all the other participants' interpretations of the same subject as we all posted them to a special page on Facebook.

When we go to England to see the family I love to draw my surroundings as well as trying to sketch live portraits. Joanna had moved to a new house in 2014 so I drew the lounge while we all relaxed on a Sunday afternoon.

Just occasionally I copy photos to complement the 'plein air' sketches, especially when there isn't time to draw everything I see!  These sheep at a farmer's festival were such fun to capture as well as the horses and the snail I drew afterwards.  I have a small tin of coloured pencil stubs that I take on our travels so my palette is limited which means I have to be a bit creative with my interpretation, as you can see I've used a lilac for the shadows which I think makes the picture more interesting.

I love to make my own clothes and I'm always on the lookout for interesting fabrics so when I found a stall in the market at Tenerife selling pretty sarongs I couldn't resist. In fact over 4 years I bought several different ones and each year when we returned I went to show the girls on the stall what I had made, needless to say they were delighted.  This is the latest one which I eventually made with 2 sarongs so there was a nice long piece left over to make a scarf.

In January 2012 I took a bookbinding class so I could learn how to make my own sketchbooks and it has changed my life.  Now I'm always looking out for interesting fabric to cover them with and unusual paper to draw on.  When a friend gave me a stash of old maps I made some of them into a couple of sketchbooks with hand-made drawing paper samples stuck to the plain back of the map and a square of gesso on the map side to draw on. The gesso was a bit hard on my drawing pens but I had a lot of fun trying out the different papers with different media.  Another trial and error experience!

I have a friend, Rose Jones, who is a brilliant photographer who has given me permission to use her photos as inspiration,  This one is done in pen only using triplus pens in different colours.  It's quite exciting to try out new products recommended by friends and most of them work very well for me, although there are a few lying untouched that I keep trying but then abandon again!

My family are my greatest love and drawing their portraits gives me a lot of pleasure.  I have a revolving gallery in our hallway where I frame the latest drawings as they are completed.  This one of Sarah with her cat Odin in graphite is a favourite.  I have a folder with all the portraits in and it's fascinating to see my progress over the last 15 or more years.

In the last year or so I've started to move in a different direction with my art thanks to my friend Luba who was the director of the Belarus fashion company. She gave me bagfulls of  samples which have inspired me to start using them as stitched collages using my sewing machine.  Each time she comes back from Minsk she brings another batch of amazing silks and linens, wools and jerseys in fabulous colours and textures that I can't resist playing with and turning into interpretations of my photos taken on our travels, like this one of Roussillon.

Well, I hope you've enjoyed our trip down memory lane, maybe if you have any friends interested in seeing what I do you could pass on my name, I would love to increase my readership.

A BIT MORE NEEDLEPAINTING.

After a while using my sewing machine for needlepainting, I felt the urge to do some hand stitching relaxing on the sofa instead of bent over the machine buzzing away!  We had spent a lovely evening with our friends and Luba gave me a bag full of scraps from her dress designing days.  Michel and Helene were also there and Michel was telling us about his latest photographic exhibition at Caen.  He showed us the catalogue and a light bulb went off in my head, here in one hand I had the exactly right coloured fabrics and wonderful abstract images in the other.  I couldn't wait to get started the next Morning.

Michel takes beautiful pictures of the light shining through stained glass windows as they reflect on ancient stone church walls.  His website is:  www.michel-follorou.fr if you are interested in having a look, I feel sure you will be as bowled over by what you as I am.

I made a collage of blue silks and linens with some black velvet all stitched to a black needlecord base with a selection of cotton knitting yarns which were all I had to hand at the time.  When it was finished I pressed it and backed it with iron on interfacing and then made a frame of the rest of the blue/green shot silk backed with interfacing.  The last touch was to back the whole picture with some plain black lining up-cycled from an old skirt and make a slot along the top so I can hang it on the wall.

I'm very pleased with my first hand stitched abstract piece of work and the second one is already under way.  What do you think?

I'll share the next piece with you and hopefully lots of sketches too when we come back from our summer camping car trip which starts tomorrow morning.

HELLEBORES

 

 

I've been so inspired this last couple of weeks by the new growth in the garden that I haven't done much drawing in the portrait book.

Here is the latest picture of the Hellebores in my garden given to me about 10 years ago by Justine and still going strong.

 

 

I can see the clump from my kitchen window lit by the morning sun when it passes through the cut down hydrangea branches.  The white flowers glow like lanterns against the dark soil and leaves.

 

 

I picked a sprig to draw from another clump elsewhere in the garden as I didn't want to spoil my display near the house and drew it in grey pen and watercolours.

 

 

Then it was time to get out the fabrics and start cutting.  I had found some non-woven fabrics at the local shop and I attached a layer of bondaweb to several of the colours so that I could build up a background on a piece of yellow cotton.  Then I stitched around the dark leaves as a simple under layer for the flowers.

 

 

Then it was just a case of gathering together some green and white fabrics and yellow ribbons for the stems and stitching them onto the background.  I love the abstract fuzzy background, what do you think?  The picture is already in a frame and hanging in the bedroom!

 

 

 

Next I decided to tackle the tiny daffodils that have opened in a big clump in the herb garden.

First a sketch to get used to the shapes of the trumpets and angles of the petals.

 

 

 

Then another background using the non-woven fabrics to which I added a few solid and spotty leaves.

 

I had already coloured a length of lace with some yellow acrylic paints so I used it to shape the trumpets for the flowers.  I used some narrow green ribbon for the stems and added a pink bow and a few more leaves.

This is going to be mounted on pink card for my mother in law on Mothering Sunday in a few week's time.