A Year of Daily Drawing

My favourite  spreads  from  each month  of a year of daily drawing  starting in January  with the #30daysketchbookchallenge. Plants recorded  from the garden; textile experiments , pieces of cloth and cakes were regular  subjects  and I've used a variety of techniques from drawing with pen; watercolours; collage;  stitch and photos of larger drawings and paintings.  My drawing has definately improved over the year , that's not to say that  everything was a wonderful piece of art , far from it, but each day was a fresh start.  

 I used Seawhite Eco A6  sketchbooks which contain 150g recycled cartridge paper , thick enough to withstand a light watercolour wash. I've  bought 12 more  to do the same next year

The last drawing of 2019 , looking forward to a new year, new decade and a new challenge, startting with the prompts of #30daysketchbook20

1000th Blog Post : Studios; quilts; doors, ceramics, travel; plants; drawing, Kew; museums, City Lit; stitching

 My 1000th  blogpost had crept up on me unawares! While I haven't been blogging so much of late ,   using Instagram and Facebook more for sharing what I'm up to, I still find it a useful tool as a 'reflective journal' when I've been doing courses to  record my thoughts and investigations.

 I decided to look back  in an organised  random way ( if that makes sense ! )at what I was  doing on 100th, 200th etc   and actually the main themes  of  what interests me  ( plants, art , textiles, travel)  all come through  even in a relatively  small selection.

My first post in August   2007 was on moving from Ealing to Brentford   and showed the studio space I  was leaving behind so it seems appropriate  to show my current studio arrangements  for the 1000th.  I would never have anticipated the traumas of losing my job and moving  to a new town  and life but after nearly 4 years I'm more settled and  revelling in the opportunities it has given me. Enjoy!

 Post 1 :magsramsay.blogspot.com/2007/08/sewing-space-old-place

Post 100: magsramsay.blogspot.com/2008/07/100th-post-labyrinths-and-elements

Post 200 :magsramsay.blogspot.com/2010/01/tunisian-shop-advertising

 Post 300:magsramsay.blogspot.com/2010/11/ancient-shards-new-materials

 Post 400:magsramsay.blogspot.com/2011/10/deductive-monotypes

Post 500:magsramsay.blogspot.com/2013/02/cherubs-at-haberdashers

Post 600 : magsramsay.blogspot.com/2014/05/across-foot-of-mount-oxa

 Post 700: magsramsay.blogspot.com/2015/08/sketching-ceramics-at-V&A

Post 800:magsramsay.blogspot.com/2016/12/drawing-tuesday-keys-and-kew

Post 900:magsramsay.blogspot.com/2018/03/contemporary-collage-week-9-cubomania

 Post 1000:  I still haven't worked out a  decent  design wall space ( I currently use  to top landing - Ian's claim I'm taking over the whole house is not without foundation ... )  but I really like my studio space with its cutting  table raised on sand castle buckets and the combination  of wall and trolley storage.

 Most of all I love my 2 sewezi tables : 1 currently has my Bernina  sewing   machine set up on it and the other with a wooden insert in  by the window I use for hand stitching ( when I'm not sewing on the train ) , looking out over the green, 

Inspired by Georgia O'Keeffe at Tate Modern

 Part of  my reasoning  behind doing  an afternoon painting course  in London  was that I could either take advantage of cheaper  train fares ( which I did for the first week  , going to British Museum for lunch in the members room ) or I could fit in a visit to a gallery in the morning.   So last Friday I managed to fit in a visit to Tate Modern to catch the Georgia O'Keeffe  exhibition  before it closed. 

I've always  had a soft spot for her flower paintings partly because they weren't the accurate botanical illustrations I was surrounded by  but nevertheless showing their essence. Name drop alert : when they were filming 'The Private Life of Plants' in the lab I worked in  ( I set up some of the plants they used for time-lapse shots in episode 5 ), David Attenborough had an enormous book of her paintings which they were consulting to work out interesting close-up shots.  

But this exhibition  revealed so much more. I filled pages in my sketchbook with  quick drawings to  analyse what in particular interested me about certain paintings and drawings. There's nothing like seeing them in the flesh to see the subtlety of her marks,  particularly the quality of line.

Having got all my  old sketchbooks, paintings ( mainly watercolours)  and drawings out of storage, I've been looking at them  with a fresh eye. I've shared a few here , not because they're  great paintings  but because I realise they have some of the qualities I picked up on in the exhibition and  am working on some ideas to take further .  

G O'K   East River from the Shelton No 6

G O'K Oak Leaves Pink and Grey

In the inspirational classes  with Sandra Beccarelli  in Brentford, we looked  at Georgia O'Keeffe's leaf paintings   in interpreting Autumn colour  in watercolour ( definitely an exercise I will be repeating soon )

G O'K Blue II

G O'K  New York -Night Madison Avenue

I loved these  aerial view abstracts,  from both early and later years  but sharing some of the same characteristics of space, light and line. They remind me a bit of the Peter Lanyon's Glider Paintings ( hardly surprising in the top one which was inspired by flights  and the view from planes)

G O'K Drawing III

  When I went on painting courses  at FSC Nettlecombe  in the 1990's , I frequently drew and painted the remnants of trees in the grounds, liking how the  twisted  and broken branches   framed glimpses of the landscape beyond.   I don't  think I'd seen these tree pieces by Georgia O'Keeffe  before  but I particularly like how the  thickness of the lines vary, almost disappearing into the surroundings with strong, almost dominating use of negative space.

G O'K Autumn Trees- The Maple

G 0'K Clam and Mussel

G O'K Shell no 2

  When I was sketching mussels on the train going into London, I had no idea that  she had painted quite a  few shell compositions !  Again it's given me lots of ideas to scale up my sketches.

Tomorrow it's Paul Nash at Tate Britain!

A creative weekend and strange plant memories

 

At last, some creative time squeezed in this weekend!  Sue  and I had scheduled a 'play date' for Sunday afternoon to look at the results of  our rust dyeing  workshop with Alice Fox and to  do some sewing. So  Saturday was spent assembling bits to work on including some Journal Quilts ( more on that in another post)   and finally getting round to trimming down and facing the first challenge  for 'International Threads' group. I'm embarrassed to say that we're now   on our  fifth ( although I've completed others in between)
It has been almost finished for a long time.  A wholecloth piece of Japanese silk shibori  layered over an African damask ,  it's been a labour of love, hand stitched  using a variety  of loops and other stitches  trying out techniques from Helen Parrott's book. It's accompanied  me on several train journeys, the format of 40 x 80 cm being a good travel piece to work on.
It looks quite sinister and plant-like  reminding me of the carrion flower so I'm calling it 'Red Stapelia' .

At one time in the  small glasshouse at work  where we  had plants that had originally been grown in the lab, there was an enormous Stapelia that took up most of a bench, very  ' Little Shop Of Horrors' .  The smell was something else.... It even had a proper engraved  label which besides  the accession number and  family, genus, species details also bore the  plants name :' Cedric the Poo Plant'. Alas Cedric is no more, removed when the  glasshouse changed use many years ago