MIDSUMMER SKETCHING

 

I love the summer when we can eat outside and especially enjoy our local speciality.

This sketch is in coloured pencils and pens.

A treat on a Sunday is oysters for lunch with a bottle of champagne, followed by some delicious cheese and salad.

Every shell is different and I always keep one or two to draw later.

Last Sunday was no different and I was inspired to get out my watercolours after visiting the annual festival of painters and chatting to Yann Lesacher, an artist who is walking the GR34 around Brittany and recording it in his sketchbooks.

This one is just drawn in a grey pen that looks like graphite and I decided to leave it unpainted.

 

The last one is my favourite, I've pushed the colours a bit but there really is purple and green in the shells. I'm thinking of a way to make textile depiction of an oyster shell....

 

I can't remember if I've posted this one before, it's in my nature sketchbook that gets occasional use when something outside inspires me.  I made it into textile art birthday card for a friend but I seem to have lost the scan.

 

We have a pair of magpies that live in and around our garden and I got quite excited when I saw them starting to build a nest in our silver birch tree.  Each day there were a few more twigs carefully woven into the structure and I was looking forward to watching the new family arriving and being brought up.  I went to England around this time for a fortnight and when I came back I soon realised the nest had been abandoned, it's possible the birds realised they hadn't made a good choice when the top of the tree was blown about in a storm!

 

 

We're all very concerned about the bees and when I saw one lying on the terrace I tried to give it a drink of sweetened water but sadly it didn't survive.  However I kept it to draw on a page where I had already drawn a tulip from my garden.

A BITS AND PIECES WEEK!

 

It's been a funny week, I couldn't quite get down to some needlepainting so I decided to sketch my bunch of tulips from Lidl instead and straight away I came up with an idea for depicting them in fabric.  I got out all the bits of fabric and made a pile ready to get on with later, but first I had to finish off a few other projects.

 

Here are 2 new A5 notebooks ready for the garden party in April.

 

 

And half a dozen sketchbooks filled with proper drawing paper in 3 sizes.

 

 

I found a fascinating fabric backed cork textile in the sewing shop recently and designed a sketchbook to cover it with which incorporated a beautiful wrapping paper I've been hoarding for years.  I made the end papers with the turquoise as well as putting some on the cover, I just love this colour combination, don't you?

 

Yesterday in the post a lovely parcel of silk fabrics arrived from Kirsty and Justine and I couldn't wait to get started on making a couple more sketchbooks.  I've already torn and folded 7 large sheets of drawing paper and cut out the covers.  I'll be hard at work stitching and glueing this afternoon while Bob enjoys the rugby.

 

I've been wanting to recover this little lampshade for years and I finally got around to it this week on a rainy Wednesday morning.

So as you can see I've been very busy doing lots of  bits and pieces and maybe next week I will catch up with the portraits and a bit of needlepainting!