Drawing with the Gift of Time

  Most of December was spent looking after  Ian  following surgery . He's back at work now  and  with surprisingly little in my diary for the next few weeks  I have the gift of time to  think  what I want to do this  year and get back into the habit of drawing. And at some point I will try and catch up with the backlog of blog posts....

 I can't get to 'Drawing Tuesday'  until next week but as Margaret has written  on her blog, we had a lovely session before Xmas at Janet K's -  as we weren't in a museum with the strict rules on 'dry' drawing materials, I took my watercolours and used them to capture Carol's childhood treasures.

I  wanted to  return to the discipline of daily art  - ' Wind Me In the Sea' started as that  in 2017 as a sort of daily stitching  and in 2013 I kept up working with colour catchers for several months.  I'll have several sewing projects  planned  in preparation for an exhibition in September   so  bought 12  A6  paperback sketchbooks  with the intention of  filling one a month.

Day 1: Something small 

So I started   recording my sewing kit  and then  a shell from my collection of small treasures  then discovered  #30daysketchbookchallenge19   and found that the first 2 prompts had co-incidentally  been 'something small' and 'Shells' and have  now signed up.   I'm enjoying what  other people are posting  on the groups Facebook page and the encouragement offered ( like getting into the habit is more important than necessarily producing a wonderful  drawing ) .  So here are my efforts so far. 

Day 2: Shells 

Day3 : A bag 

Day 4: cubes 

Day 5 : Five 

Day 6: A kitchen utensil

Day 7 : birds 

Day 8: Footwear

Day 9: Under The Sea

Daily Art Colour Catchers at Rydal



Besides working on my green door and journal quilts and sketching, I also continued my daily(ish) art colour catcher series based on my surroundings. I'd come prepared with bondaweb backed colour catchers in various colours that I could cut out and stick on as well as crayons and my snarl of perle threads I've been dipping into for stitching.
From the top:
Applique colour catchers inspired by textile sculpture
Rubbing in crayon of the tiles in my bedroom
Applique colour catchers of stones in Rydal Falls
Crayon rubbing of applique of stones
Stitched landscape outline
Crayon rubbing of stitching
Back of stitching
Another rubbing of stitching

Interested in pursuing the 'Chinese whisper' effect of making rubbings of stitch , stitching into thsose and then taking a rubbing etc etc

Daily Art Catch Up - stitch and frottage

My Daily Art didn't remain daily for long with being poorly -  I went 8 days without doing anything.
But  feeling rather better now ,I've caught up. I've been sitting in front of the TV with a snarled tangle of threads, pulling strands out and stitching simple patterns. Liking the  results of rubbing (frottage) the stitching with a jumbo crayon, I've become addicted to trying different thicknesses of thread and stitches.  Because of course you  obtain an impression of the back as well as the front of the stitching

 Cross Stitch

 Chain Stitch

This is my favourite  pair of stitchings/rubbings so far and it's got me thinking about combining the 2, building multiple layers 

 

Daily Art -the First Week

 

I've been thinking about a daily art project for a while, I did it for a month a few years ago  and have been inspired by the examples of   Kathy Loomis, Uta Lenk  and others on this site   and  partly spurred  on by recent drawing  classes where I could visibly see improvements due to regular practice.

I've decided to use a colour catcher a day in some way. Apart from recycling, they are versatile and lend themselves to  a variety of different techniques and  materials including stitch
I've also got an awful lot of them despite using them for various projects:I've drawn on them with neocolour crayons;  scribbled on them with biro a la Boetti; collaged with fabric scraps while on retreat responding to local landscape; used  inkjet printing and stitch  for 'Distressed Doors' sketchbook project and for Shinkansen based on photos taken at speed from a train.

 
 Rather than using them as part of of a larger project (like  Margaret Cooter  and her  'Journey to the Studio' ) , at this stage I think I  might fold  each in half and make a monthly stab-stitched book  but I'm not aiming to set rules just see how it goes. I've already had to  adapt  as after a few days of drawing tree rings, the lurgy settled on my chest  and with a temperature of over 38 C , retired to bed. I rallied a bit yesterday and caught up on the previous 3 days with a bit of frottage using crayons   (the results  look vaguely like cells!)
I've now got an ear infection so perhaps that might form the inspiration (it wouldn't be the first time...)