Appreciating the Ordinary, Embracing the Wonky

Dear Helen,

As you know, I'm a sucker for a good online, go-at-your-own-pace workshop.  And recently, I jumped into another one, called "Draw your Awesome Life" taught by Joanne Sharpe.  I've taken classes from Joanne before, and I like her enthusiasm and her free-wheeling style.  She emphasizes being yourself and drawing or lettering in your very own style, versus trying to be perfect and realistic and all.

Even though I've been sketching and painting pretty regularly, this class beckoned to me for a bunch of reasons.  In art, I'm drawn to the idea of finding beauty in the ordinary.  So the idea of using the bits of every day life and seeing the "awesome" in them is right up my alley.  Also, there's a sense of gratitude in all  of this -- recognizing the wonderfulness of the simplest bits of every day living, and appreciating it and even celebrating it in art. This feels like an important reminder for me, especially in this phase where I'm feeling so, well, transitional.

Plus, the other goal was to just get myself to loosen up.  I feel like my sketches have gotten tighter and fussier (and more boring) and I need something to get away from that.  I think this fast and loose and fun approach is just the thing to shake me out of that.

So yesterday, I spent a bit of time -- and a very little bit, actually -- doing the "draw one leaf five ways" assignment.  Very freeing.

I have been reminded how much I like contour drawing -- how it really is loose and freeing.  Wonky.  Remember how I said I'm trying to "embrace the wonky" in my sketches?  I keep forgetting that.  Contour drawing makes me remember.

I don't know where this will lead.  I think the loosening up is what I need right now, the permission to draw fast lines and splash the paint around.  Will this transfer into fiber art?  Who knows.  But it feels right, right now. 

Visiting, Painting, and Eating (edited version)

Good morning, Helen!
You will recognize this page in my sketchbook from your recent visit and our trip to SHED in Healdsburg. What a lovely visit that was -- thank you again for coming all of this way. You are an easy friend to entertain. We like so many of the same things that we do not have difficulty coming up with options to fill our time, do we?
In any event, I finished my page after you left and thought you'd like to see it. Will you add your sketch to this post?

Hi,Diane,
It has taken me a while but finally here is my page. You seem to have yours at a better size and you now, its so long since I blogged I have almost forgotten how to do it, so excuse the modest picture! I too really enjoyed our time together and we certainly need to do it again. Not least so you can explain again how I can stop my watercolours looking so inspid!

Love,
Helen.

Posted with Blogsy

Making hard work of play

Dear Diane,

I will start this letter by asking two questions: First, do you think creativity is seasonal? By which I mean do you think it has its own rythms and cycles but also do you find yourself affected by the Seasons, summer,winter etc? I ask because my sewing studio over recent days has been very hot. Its a loft extension and it retains heat brilliantly in the winter but also in the summer, although there are plenty of windows to open to cool it down. Still, if those have not been open during the day,and if, by the time I get home from work I am already wilted with the unaccustomed heat, going up there to do battle with a large quilt is not especially appealing. So the weather is affecting my creativity.

 

As a result, last weekend I headed for my wet studio which is downstairs and does not get direct sun in the afternoon. I decided it was time to push myself forward with my Brick Lane series. So I sat on my stool and looked at pots of paint and blank paper and fabric. The irony is that it was so hot that day that we got a thunderstorm and I was sitting avoiding dry arid heat whilst watching rain bounce and feeling the temperature drop. But it was lovely and cozy and I decided to stay.

Which leads me to my second question: why is starting so hard? Away from the studio, going about daily life I have lots of ideas. But conceptual ones: 'my quilt will be about' kind of ideas. Not 'my quilt will look like this' ideas. I still really struggle with the visual portrayal of the message I want to send. (Life would be a lot easier if I just wanted to make pretty images of flowers,but I do not). So there I sat looking at paper. I decided not to design but to focus on learning what the media does better and to play with the transparency of the screen inks seeing what happened if I overlayed them.

What happened was that for several pages I, very predictably, had squares of colour. Blah. Yet, it was relaxing. The patter of rain, a good audible book on the ipod, a hot cup of tea. And the permission in my head: you are not designing. You are seeing how overlapping inks work. How hard can that be? It was fun.

And then after a while I told myself. Ok, so this is not producing much but what else are you going to do? Go and watch TV or do the ironing. Keep going. Just one more page.

And then,suddenly my actvity totally changed gear and I made these two pages.

 

And then I got excited. I know the pages dont look much but they have beginning elements of lots of things in my head and I can see all kinds of influences in them. By this stage I really did have to stop so I placed this sketch book open at these pages on the chest of drawers in my dressing room and I have been looking at them all week, eager to work more on the ideas they throw up. I remember deciding at the time that It worked well for me to have Sketchbook Sunday and to dedicate time to design play in this way.

So its Sunday. I have some time before I go out - usually we do breakfast on a Sunday but today its afternoon tea to celebrate my birthday. And am I sketching or painting or collaging anything in a sketchbook? No. I am blogging. Which is on my To Do list but which is also a convenient Distraction Technique. Even though I do have ideas about what to do. So, why is starting so hard? And in particular, starting to design, to find a language to say what I want to say? Do you have this issue or is it a function of my goal drive personality again?

I think maybe the two questions are related, that there is a natural cycle of creativity and that there is a hard period between the scattering of the ideas in my mind and their realisation. Just as there is a cold winter with frosted ground between the scattering of seed and the sprouting of crops. Of course, that cold time is (literally and figuratively) a good time to get upstairs and work on the more mechanical tasks of making an already designed quilt. What I need to work on though is getting that into a smoothly working cycle where both stages happen when they should and I do not resist either. Any suggestions?

While you think about that I am going to go to Chester and try and break through the urban sketching barrier. ( Same barrier, different context). As you know I just came back from Dubrovnik . I went with all intentions of sketching all sorts and filling pages and pages. I did just two sketches of the city itself despite all the times I looked at things and thought: that would be good to draw. Hopeless. I don't even like them! Although I really enjoyed doing them,which is more the point,don't you think?

What I am extraordinarily good at is excuses:

Too hot. Book the wrong size for the topic. I need to make the most of rest time. I can sketch at homebut I can't swim in this amazing pool there. Husband is distracting me.I should come back alone so I am not spoiling his holiday making him wait here. I need to learn more about watercolor theory first....blah,blah,blah.

Could you please just come over and physically make me do the work please? I will share my afternoon tea with you as thanks.

Helen

 

Posted with Blogsy

Taking Tea

As you know, I just returned home from a two-week road trip around the Pacific Northwest.  One of my stops was in Victoria, British Columbia, and while there I enjoyed not just one, but two lovely afternoon tea experiences.  As this blog is titled Tea and Talk for Two, I thought it fitting to tell you about the first of them.  And you can see I did a page spread in my Road Trip Journal about it.

To set the scene: earlier that day, I had come from Port Townsend, Washington where I'd been visiting friends for several days.  I enjoyed the ferry ride across the Strait of Juan de Fuca (between Port Angeles, Washington and Victoria, BC) but I was too early to check into my hotel.  So I parked my luggage and car there, and headed out to find food.  I was hungry.  I walked for a bit when it dawned on me that I was in Victoria and there were places to get afternoon tea!  Asking in a few shops, I was directed to the Venus Sophia Tearoom which was a few blocks away.

There it was.  It was quiet and not crowded at all, a pleasant and homey atmosphere, not intimidating or formal in the least.

I selected my tea (earl grey, my tea of choice with afternoon tea goodies) and when they brought me the beautiful tea cup, I thought I would have a go at painting it.

 I have to confess that if the shop had been full of people, I might have felt too self-conscious to actually paint.  I might have pulled out the sketchbook, but I would have felt a bit too conspicuous with my paint palette out.  But because it was quiet and there wasn't anyone around to watch (the only person near me was a woman who was engrossed in a book), I went ahead.

At that point, I decided to do the whole three-tiered plate of tea goodies.  And it was a struggle, I tell you -- I wanted to eat but I knew I needed to see them in order to draw them.  So I had to get a good start on the sketch before I could taste anything!

My urban sketch kit experiment ( and a bit of El Anatsui)

Dear Diane,

Let me start with the El Anatsui. I am typing this on a train departing London after a very brief stay overnight. But I refuse to be in London without taking time to appreciate that I am passing through one of the best cities in the world. So after my arrival at seven-thirty pm ( on a first class train carriage shared only with the Bishop of Liverpool!) I set off on an urban sketching experiment and I thought that would have to suffice as my art experience for this trip. More on that in a second. But then, indulging in my favoured hotel pastime of watching TV from the bath, I stumbled on a TV programme at ten pm about the Royal Academy summer show that mentioned that the great, the wonderful, the fantabuloso El Anatsui had a piece, not inside the show but outside covering the whole wall of the entrance.

WaaaH! Thats really close. I would have got out of the bath there and then but the Royal Academy closes its courtyard with gates so no point. And they don't open them until after my training course, which was near Westminster Abbey, started. And I'd booked a train straight home. What to do? Come down for another weekend? Tempting but expensive. No. I took the cheap option. I ran.

I ran with a heavy handbag( of which again more later) and a suitcase on wheels in work shoes, right through St.James Park, past Clarence House and St. James Palace up past the elegant shops of Pall Mall and Burlington Arcade and arrived, hot, sweaty,wheezing and with blistered feet at the courtyard before forking out for a cab to the station. Worth it? Oh yeah. Look!

All the others works of his I have seen have been indoors but this one was moving with the wind. Have you ever seen his work in person? I know one of the San Fransisco museums/ galleries have one in their collection.

His stuff is A-mazing. And such an inspiration to keep on creating because of you look back at his life time work, you will see that he started out carving on trays. OK stuff but far from amazing. Then he started sculpting and his pots and wood worked with a chain saw were interesting but not amazing. And then he started to work with disgarded items such as graters and Peak milk can lids and he started for me to get really interesting and exciting. And then one day he found bottletops and - wham! Instant amazingness. Well, actually no. He worked with those for years before he showed them and then... Yes, instant amazingness in his seventies after a lifetime of art making :) So there is time for me yet don't you think?!

Anyway, as part of my preparing to wake up amazing on my sevetieth birthday, I worked last week in putting together some kind of sketch kit and decided to test it out on this trip, even if briefly. I have not yet bought a specific bag like you because at first I was happy to carry everything in my handbag, but then the stuff sort of increased and I decided it needed to be coralled but in some kind of pouch that would still fit in my handbag as I didn't want to be carrying two bags. So I looked on line and found this fold out cognac calf leather bag

Grgeous, n'est ce pas? But also £175. So I dont't own that and never will. Instead I dug out this bag which was actually one of the two dirt cheap bags I bought for holding the money from the Twelve by Twelve book sales at Festival of Quilts. Which makes it appropriate because of course you have used it too! My reading glasses are there for scale. Sorry about the quality of all these photos taken with Iphone on the train.

Inside it has:

Front pocket: small natual sponge, replacement leads for my mecahnical pencil, pencil sharpner I dodnt need because the pencil is mechanical but you never know what I might use in the future, eraser, small pair of scissors and 14ml tube of white gouache.

Front zip pocket. A selection of pens and mechanical pencils. I mostly am using the Pitt Artist Pen at the moment but I want to try out some others. In particular I have a Lamy fountain pen I bought for sketching but I cant get the Noodlers waterproof ink for it until I come and visit you.

First main pocket: two of these Lakeland food containers with water ( one for dirty brushes one to keep clean) two wristbands which I wear to wipe the brushes on ( Thanks to Ed from www.mostlydrawing.com for that tip), some kitchen roll and two waterbrushes just in case.

Second main pocket, wallet of sepia artists pens, wallet if sanguine artist pens and a wallet of Pro Arte Travel brushes ( round,filbert and flat all No10).

So thats the bag. Successful in that it holds everything and this whole bag goes in my capacious handbag. It also held my phone, hotel key card and cash and credit card when I went out sketching last night so I could just take the one bag and the strap allows it to hang across my body. Not successful in that you may note it is missing two key things:

 

The watercolour pallette! In fact there is a little hidden pouch between the two main compartments so I was able to carry it like this. Not ideal! However, inside the pallete there is room for a synthetic brush but also my two new sable travel Escoda brushes which are fabulous. A 4 and a 6 round. It looks like the big one will prevent the pallette shutting but it shuts just fine. Also, you will see that after you SKYPED me I did manage to bend down the little metal prongs to keep the pans in place. Sort of. They still sliping and I have the odd escaping colour but its much better, thanks. So usually the bag and the pallette go in a handbag seperately. There is room in the bag for a smaller travel pallette though.

Which leaves the other missing sketch item, the skethcbook: after much debate I ordered this one from www.greatart.co.uk where it is just described as watercolour sketchbook with no brand, although I think it is in fact Canson. I love it. Its A4. The paper is great, ( it has some tooth but takes pen easily) the cover is elegant, the whole thing feels sturdy and capacious and it has actually encouraged me to paint journal pages like this one.

And this one.

However, it is not good for travel, it is just too thick. ( it has 60 sheets of 230gsm watercolour paper) so it travelled not in my sketchbag and not in my handbag but in my suitcase for goodness sake. And in my two try out sketch locations ( cafe table and sitting on a street kerbstone) it was very hard to use the left hand page because the weight was so unevenly distributed. And the landscape orientation plus its weight means supporting it across my forearm is unwieldy. And as for whipping it out to sketch people on the Tube? Forget it. But I really like having an A4 landscape sheet to work on. And I did manage this sketch ( and another couple as yet to have colour added before I show them).

So now I have a dilemma. Do I

(A) get the smaller version of this book (lovely book but less space and might still have the uneven weight distribution issues)

(B) go for an A5 portrait to get the A4 spread even though I dislike that format. Somehow its too accademic a format and makes my creative brain switch off

(C) go for an A4 spiral so I get the space to draw but can bend it back to avoid the weight distribution issues - but then it still won't fit in my bag!

(D) unwed myself from the A4 space and try a different size. I might be aided in this by the fact that the guys at Stilman and Birn tell me that Jacksons Art are to stock their books in the UK from the middle of the month... But such ugly covers!! I need you to try out that square Hand•book watercolour book you bought and tell me what you think.

(E) all of the above/ none of the above.

(G) stop trying the impossible and simply pack all my kit in a suitcase everyday and only use the right hand page of the book.

Help! Tell me exactly what you and every sketcher you know are using please :)

Helen

PS I just got home to find a packet of Stilman and Birn paper samples.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Battling the sketching

Dear Diane,
I loved to see your sketching kit. I imagine you out there in the Californian sun, with your plein air hat on, all serene, painting with your kit sorted in perfect ergonomic alignment. Like a surgeon,
" Number six brush!"
Your hand goes out and there it is. I imagine it to be peaceful and restful. Even the 'urban' in your sketching looks semi- bucolic with the greenery all around.
Me? Ha. Less urban sketching and urban warfare. Battling against my lack of perfect kit and the psychological warfare that goes on in my head.
First, my watercolours. (And yes, there is a U in colour. Don't even try to tell me otherwise or I shall shoot you with my spray bottle. Or I would had I not left it at home, not having a perfectly organised sketching bag yet. ) I listened to your advice. Student paints will be trouble. Invest in artist quality ones. So I ordered this set of Windsor and Newton Artist quality half pans.

It was not cheap. So I was a little foxed to find that if you unwrap the 24 half pans there is a ton of space left at the end of each line. So I budged them all up, added a white and an empty pan from an old Cotman student grade set and folded some paper up and stuffed it at the end of the row where there was still a gap but not enought of a gap for a half pan. Why would they make a 24 pan box that holds two rows of thirteen and a half half-pans?
I got over that annoyance soon enought and made a paint chart. Watercolours in a pan don't always look like they come out on paper so a reference guide as to what was where in my box seemed like a plan.

Would have worked a treat except, look what happens when you actually take your sketchers box out to sketch and open it up! What drongo designed this thing? I am not pleased. The saving grace is that the paint in the box costs a lot more if bought individually than in this piece of *$$%.
Ahem. Sorry about that. Any recommendation for an empty pallette that will hold half pans in nice and snug?
So anyway. The rest of the kit is a motley assortment of pens and water brushes in a pencil case and a Filofax. Currently an A5 Amazona. This is filled with proper Fabriano Artistico watercolour paper as recommendedby Ed from Mostly Drawing and I have so say that I like it. It takes watercolours without difficulty but still feels like paper not card. And the genius of the Filofax as sketchbook is (a) no wated time self binding books. Punch and go. Yeah! (b) No need to always carry a dedicated sketchbook. Slip a few pages of this paper into the A5s I use most often including my work ones so I always have paper. Then the kit can roll about the bottom of my handbag.
So, that is adequate, although I can see how it could be improved upon.
I am still struggling to use my kit though, mostly because I am inexpert and therefore hate the results. This weekend I went on two sketching opportunities. The first was to Cheetham Hill in Manchester where there is no semi-buccolic greenery. I actually went because wanted to take some more covert photos of people in the community for use in quilt work. Covert is not easy with a camera, especially when your skin and dress already make you stick out a mile. I was also mindful that the Asian communities are suffering increased attacks following the Woolwich murders and that they may be a bit twitchy about people photographing at the moment. So I first treated myself to a shop in the wonderful supermarkets which are remarkably cheap and stocked with exotic foods. I love to be in these shops. I thought a bag of guava jelly, arabic flat breads, paneer and spices might give me some legitimacy. Then, I sat in the sun on a low wall and looked across this road and attempted to sketch the shop. Then, whenever a saw a woman who caught my eye I would take some snaps, thinking that I could justify them as references for the sketching if anyone asked.

I had not long started when a young man came past pulling a large wire trolley full of fruit and veg. He stopped,
"Are you drawing it?"
"Trying to. I've only just started learning to sketch."
He looked across at the shop. " Oh, you picked it for the colours and stuff? Show me when I come back."
By the time he came back I had produced an excorable mess. I am not showing you. He looked at it,
"It's a good start. In a couple of months you'll be really good."
Bless him!
But isn't it funny how you seem to instinctively draw buildings and I much prefer people. Todays outting was to BocBoc where the staff tolerate me messing up their tables.

This guy was enjoying his eggs on toast.

You know how we have been talking privately about finding an artistic voice? Well, I feel that my people all look like I drew them and I can see myself improving so I am not unhappy with them even though I'd like to get better still. But my buildings and travel sketches look like they were drawn by a camel with a pen in its mouth. They make me very unhappy.

So. I have decided to treat this sketching lark as if it were a compulsory college course. It is something I should learn and I accept, like Latin, it may benefit me in indirect ways later even if I don't make it my life's passion. I am open to being suprised and hooked by it and am willing to work at it and not give up so I can give myself a passing grade. Rather than messing about in ignorance I am going to educate myself. I will persevere until the end of the year and then I will review whether I will continue or not.

I have ordered some books on basic techniques and have made a list of more advanced ones to progress through. I narrowed those down by only choosing the ones where the examples were in a style of watercolour that made me excited. (i.e not your average insipid country landscape). I did look at online courses but rejected them on cost/ unsuitable starting date/ really irritating voice and accent of instructor and the fact that watching a video makes me impatient and I tend to drift off and do something else. I prefer written instructions. Much quicker. In the process though I found many free online tutorials to work through and some short youtube clips. I am compiling a collection of journal page images to emulate. I have set out my objectives and goals so I am clear what it is I am trying to attain. And of course I wrote it all down on an assortment of nice paper in my wine zip Holborn Filofax which is just lovely to touch and makes me happy to use and which therefore offsets that useless paint box!

And, I am adopting the attitude that there are artists who use watercolours in a way that gets me interested and inspired and that if they can do it then it can't be so hard that I cannot do it, if only I decide to learn how. Then, when I feel I know what I am doing and what I use most I will address my kit again.

The books should arrive at the weekend. In the meantime, I am off to scrape orange and yellow screen inks on to fabric for a wholecloth quilt background. That I know how to do!

Love,

Helen

Posted with Blogsy

Welcome to my Travel Sketch Kit

I do not have to explain to you how important it is to have the right supplies for being able to do what you want to do.  And now that I'm trying to sketch and paint out in the world, I needed to find the right travel kit.  And I think I have it!  I know you want the details.

First, the bag.  I've used various containers over the last few months, often one of my African baskets, But while those worked adequately for some situations (say, hanging out at Starbuck's), it wasn't a good option for sketchcrawl sort of walks.  (Well, the one I did.)  So, I did extensive internet research, and came upon this bag by Tom Bihn, a travel bag company in Seattle.  This is the large Cafe Bag, a style of messenger bag that suited my needs perfectly.  (I agonized between the medium and the large for some time, then figured that there was only a few inches' difference and I'd rather have a bit too much space than too little.) It comes in all sorts of colors.  Mine is actually somewhat darker than the way it shows up in this picture.

Stunning green interior, isn't it?  So, you see the big zip pocket on this side, and the main compartment opens on top.

 

On the back side, there's another pocket -- stylishly slanted. 

 Oops, I forgot to take a picture showing the inside side pockets, but here's a picture from the Tom Bihn website that shows the handy side pockets.  There are also some tether straps that hook to rings inside -- one I use for my car keys, another for a little zipper pouch in which I put money and driver's license and a credit card.  I have a third pouch which I might use for colored pencils when I want to bring them along.

Here's what I carry inside, at present:

 Water bottle

Plastic deli container for water

Spray bottle with water

Watercolor palette (Schmincke metal with 12 half pans of color)

Tube of white gouache (as yet unused)

Pencil/Pen/Brush case 

Here's the palette open, by the way.  It's a very handy little size.

Oh, and I carry my sketchbook, which at present is one of these -- a Canson spiral-bound journal with watercolor paper.  It's about the size of my Ipad. 

Plus there's room to tuck in the personal Filofax that I use as my wallet if I want to bring the whole thing. I am totally in love with the little pencil case. 

I found it at Jetpens.com, and it's called a Lihit Lab Teffa Pen Case.  I decided I wanted one container to put my pens, pencils and brushes in.  The fabric roll I made has just proven to be awkward when I'm sitting on a park bench somewhere.  So I figured that something that zipped and had a flap or two to hold items would work.  Those

Here's how it looks when you first open it, and here are the pens and pencils.

I'm finding my essentials are:

Two Preppy Platinum fountain pens (fine nib), one with black ink and one with brown (these pens are really inexpensive, about $4 each, but they're great.  I'm planning adding two more to this kit, for green and gray inks)

3 waterproof pens of varying point sizes

2 mechanical pencils, one of which is a new favorite sketching tool- a Faber Castell "clutch" pencil

On the other side of that flap, there's this, with some mesh pockets and more room for tall items:

Here's what I've got on this side:

 

Erasers (one regular, one kneaded)

A bit of sponge for texturing purposes

Rubber bands (to hold pages down in wind)

2 water brushes

a white opaque ink pen

a few sticks for scraping

3 travel watercolor brushes (size 8, 6, and 3) 

This set up holds everything I need, it's easy to use outdoors and holds things securely, AND there is room for more.  

Have bag, will travel.  And sketch.

 

Wet studio tour

The bad news is that Dennis says he is contemplating cancelling your standing invitation on the basis that you are a bad influence on me. It was all those photos of pallettes that did it. I suddenly wanted me one too :) and some good watercolour paper to boot. At the moment I am using a pencil case set of Aquatone which I tend to use by lifting the colour off with a wet waterbrush rather than 'colouring in with them' and wetting the paper. I like the ease of this and the portabilty but the downside is that they don't come in a pallette and so I tend not to carry one. That in turn means I tend not to mix colours and if I want to dilute them I end up doing it on the back of my hand. Not recommended practice I am sure!
Well, I say I am using them... Very occasionally! I know that you will say that it need not take very long but there are too many creative things I want to do all at once which individually do not take very long but together take more time than I have. But I am trying. Last week, rather than trying to beat the rush hour home I waited it out in Cafe Nero. My plan had been to do some urban sketching of buildings but of course five minutes before I left work the heavens opened. And anyway,my instinct - rather suprisingly- has been to go for people. And people sit relatively still in cafes. So this was the result.

I think it was probably better before I added the colour:

And you have seen my Tayto crisp packet.
But in reponse to me showing you that you asked was I now seeing the point of drawing ordinary things. Well, yes and no :) I get flashes of understanding then they go. I remember when we were in Kaikoura New Zealand it was tipping it down with rain with wind and, as the only thing to do there is go on the sea, all the activities were cancelled and we holed up in our flat reading. At one point the rain stopped and as I got up I saw, from the balcony a whole mountain range a short distance away that simply had not been visible through the greyness. I grabbed the camera, took a few shots, the clouds closed in again and that was all we saw of Kaikoura. Its a bit like that!
So as of the moment you asked the question, the answer was, well I have some vague recollection of why it was of vast importance that I learn to paint snack foods, but I seem to have forgotten :) I think the answer might be as simple as: its important to allow time in life to do ultimately pointless things because they renew your resources to do the .. whats the word?Pointful?.... things. But them we come back to posisble activities competing for time.
Just do one picture a day! Just a small sketch page. Thats the advice I have read so often. And it sounds tempting. Just a half hour. A quarter hour even. Trouble is, I read a lot of well meaning advice and so I know that I am also supposed to be reading, journalling, running, doing yoga, meditating, organising my cupboards, eating with my spouse ( and mindfully cleaning up afterwards),keeping in touch with friends and community and blogging. For just half an hour a day. On top of a full time job. And I'like to actually do some textile art now and again please. And maybe have a bath. ( Admittedly I cam multi task there and I do read or even meditate in the bath. But watersoluble media and baths do not seem like a plan to me! Unless, can you marble in bathwater maybe?)
So, I cannot see sketching being something I habitually do every day or even most days. But, that does not mean it cannot be done regularly. I am contemplating, now it is summer waiting out the traffic maybe once a fortnight. I do have motivation to learn:

• I trust your view that it will benefit me
• I would like to be competent enough with the media to make nice travel journals when I am off work and have time to sketch. I particularly want to sketch with you when we visit
• I like the process of learning new things and having a 'project'
• I want to own a box of colour. Thats cool!

So I have added that to my new Studies Filofax.. But thats a post for another day! For now I have to go and wrap this breakdown printed fabric in plastic to cure. I have to say this took priority over a sketch today:) I'll let you know how it turned out.

Love,
Helen.
PS You can now see the result of the breakdown printing over at My Down the Well Blog.

Posted with Blogsy