Flower cards

I learned that these simple flower cards, blank inside, were popular when they sold out at the recent studio sale.

As a small gift to myself on a difficult day, I went to the studio and sat with them, quietly painting and drawing nine new cards.

Watercolour pencils were sharpened! It is hard to think of a more satisfying moment than having a box of beautifully sharpened pencils.

And so it begins with scribbled shapes across the card. I tend to follow the same pattern for them as it makes it easier for folk to select.

And then I add water...

And then the outlines get drawn in loose way.

And then I package them up with a lovely envelope and they are done.

I texted a friend the images of the finished ones and she promptly bought seven cards! 

So I am back to the drawing board, but in the nicest way.

Work in progress

 I have been compelled to create this work based on the statue of The Emigrants in Helmsdale, Scotland.  I have been pondering what home means to us: what it would take to re-build a home; how hard it would be; what you would need; what you might try to replace; what you would seek to establish in a new country?

I had to work in amongst the blues and greys. The statue, the weather, and the water seemed to demand it and so I went along with it. Not a familiar place for me!

This is my work desk as I beavered away during the week. It has been stinking hot and steamy here, so despite my best efforts to stay cool, I had to have the air-conditioning on. And what a hoot that turned out to be as all my light as a feather Japanese papers went flying and drifting all over the place.  I had to keep checking my bins as so many fragments ended up in there... but I persisted!

The imagery coming together.

Some of the words I have been thinking about.

 

Beginning to now think about stitching. Does it add anything? Does it distract? 

Testing on a piece I realised after completing it, was 0.5cm shorter than the others.

Playing with colour

It has been a long time coming - letterpress sample book intervening - but I was back in the studio today simply playing.

I have been sending all sorts of cards out recently, but realised that there was a bit of an absence of simple old handmade happy birthday cards in my stash. So I thought I'd get some colour and a paintbrush and create a few.

I rummaged around and found a few envelopes and cut up some scraps of paper for cards and sat and played around for bit.

I chose the Caran D'Ache NeocolorII water soluble crayons as the colours are quite vibrant.

 I started by simply drawing a few circles.

And then added water for a few kind-of-almost-squares.

And some stripes.

I added a few Happy Birthdays here and there.

And the odd meandering dotty line. And more dots.

So here we go, a few more cards for the stash, ready to send when we have a birthday on.

As an aside my Dad was telling me a story about a 90 year old woman he visits, who at the beginning of each month, writes all the birthday cards for the month and has them in their envelopes with stamps on all set to go, and they get posted as needed.

I was so impressed by the forward thinking, I wondered if I should adopt the practice in the new year!  I am always a bit sad when I get caught out and can only text, email or call...I like to get a card there on time if I can.

And a further aside are these lovely hydrangeas that came inside yesterday morning.  The colours are just so gorgeous.

So at least I have played with little bit of something.  My mind has been going in all sorts directions nonetheless and the place is strewn with notes i have written down here and there about ideas I want to capture; new classes I want to teach...hopefully I will get some time to really get down and make some stuff soon.

Pottering about

I feel as if I needed time to re-acquaint myself with the studio space and making.  Having spent so long cleaning it up, then preparing it for teaching, then teaching, then tidying up I felt we hadn't spent much time together just hanging and playing and making.

So my goal was to simply do that - spend time pottering about and doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

Water colour pencil meanderings.

I had run out of thank you cards - a nice dilemma to have I guess! So some pencil ones, some with watercolour and words.

Some bunches of flowers.

And some leftover printing.

I feel I remembered myself a bit. I remembered what I love. I made some things. I made some mistakes. My heart and my hand connected again.

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Shades of grey

Fortunately I didn't have to work my way through fifty shades of grey; but I did spend quite a long time trying to work out how to get lovely gentle gradations of grey.

I started out with my graphite pencils and did a test swatch from 9H to 9B - quite the range from hard to soft!

Then I tested out the softest looking greys (which were in fact the hardest pencils of course) and found that I really didn't like the way they scratched into the BFK Rives printmaking paper.

I am no pencil afficiando so it really is all trial and error with me.

So I moved over to coloured pencils and tried to see if I had enough across all my sets to be able to use five to grade...

Kind of sort of would be the answer!

Clearly Cool Grey and French Grey are on completely different sides of the warm-cool spectrum and there was no way I could bring them into any sort of gradation harmony.

So then I tried a variety of other pencils including a Graphitint. Closer, just not sure of the sequence.

Nonetheless it was quite a nice time, just testing and colouring in small squares.

So then I began to colour in some letters, and this is as far as I have gotten.

I think I'll have to leave it there for a bit - suddenly a bunch of jobs have landed and I need to focus on them.  So the time just for me, playing and testing things is over for the time being, but it was grand whilst it was here.

Small steps

I begin by saying thank you to all those who have hung around with me on my blog for so long, and who have persisted in particular over the past months, where the blog has been in a fallow creative time.

Many of you know that my gorgeous mum died unexpectedly in December and I have been struggling to focus, and to settle since.  I have hardly dared to create.

In the creative space I have found myself attending a workshop; delivering a workshop; preparing for more; organising events; printing cards; buying more type; cleaning and sorting all my type; helping Barry with name tags and other projects, but I have barely let my head think about "What do I do, what do I make now?"

So I finished sorting my type on Friday. I now have 45 trays of lead type waiting for me to do something with them. It was all organised, sorted and put away, clearing beach top spaces that haven't seen the light of day since mid-December. And then on Saturday I collected five more trays of type and another press which kind of put paid to my senses of task completion; but that is yet another story.

Sunday was the day I said. I will go to the studio and try to do something, anything.  I will pick up paper and decide what to do. I will take the first small steps...

And so I did. There wasn't a lot of time in between commitments and appointments, but I made time. A good sign.

And I turned to the gentlest of things - the techniques I had learned with my friend Gemma back in February last year. And I decide to make some small journals, wiht watercolour covers.

 I dreamed up a peace symbol in my head, and was planning to use a variety of colours, when I thought no, go back to nature like Gemma did and choose your palette that way.

There were two tiny violets outside the studio door. Ta-da.

I played with my watercolour pencils to see what matched, and made a selection.

And got down to business - that most popular of adult pastimes these days - I coloured in.

All good so far.

I went and picked a red crucifix orchid flower from the book wall, and decided to keep going.

I used a dinner plate as a template and moved it to create an arch. Hi-tech stuff indeed.

And I made a couple of small books.

And then another one, using some left over printing trials.

They are such small steps, but I feel like I have re-acquainted myself with my studio, with the movements and feeling of making, and my head is almost ready to begin to dream bit bigger.

It is a busy week ahead with delivering work, openings, studio visits, panel presentations and more; but I hope I find somewhere in there a few more minute for making. Thanks for hanging in there.