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

Contemporary Collage Week 2: Desecrating Dinghy Ownership

I had a wonderful time on Monday in Contemporary Collage class  ' desecrating'  the copy of  'Dinghy Ownership' I bought last week.  After  we were shown a variety of examples of artists  and altered books  I took a sharp intake of breath before starting - it feels rather naughty (or should that be nautical!) deliberately cutting out diagrams, ripping out pages, and painting and drawing on the text.

I spent the morning cutting out the diagrams with a scalpel ( I was complimented on my precision - but then I have been  using one for over 30 years dissecting plants )

Then after  lunch, some painting and colouring in.

After cutting out a few hull diagrams , I made a template and cut out some more  then added ink around the edges . I like the overlapping shapes  and what is revealed of underlying pages

On this page the cutouts  show  the  chapter on water and tides (I highlighted these words) 

I started  using the cutout shapes as stencils for  colouring in  the page beneath  with ink . 

The downside to working within  a book is only being able to work on a  spread at a time. Here I painted with acrylic all over except where a couple of  shapes had been cut out but the pages  stuck together while drying. Pulling them apart   left some ripped   white marks which I quite like!

2 sets of diagrams showing flows of currents: on one I extended the areas of black ; on the other I replicated the shape I'd cut out on the opposite page

Painting the stubs of the ripped out pages with ink is when I discovered the effects of ink  spreading to other pages along the spine. This led to  dripping ink deliberately all along the edges of the book when closed. Very satisfying! 

I painted both sides of the ripped out pages using a variety of techniques including acrylic both wet and dry brush; neolcolour crayons; pastels and wax candle resists with inks  

I can't decide whether to put them back into the book ( above) or use them for something else  ( I was thinking again of the structure of  3d weather chart from Contemporary Drawing Sketchbook course)

Some pages I painted lightly with white gesso to partly obscure the text and these I think I will reinsert in the book - I like the contrast of the white with the cream of the paper.  

And the what to do with the excised diagrams and shapes - put them back in the book, use them for another project or stick them in my 'scrap book'? 

I had to leave early  to catch my train so didn't see much of what others had done but there was some amazingly diverse  work going on ( many were using books with coloured illustrations and photos). I half wish I'd been a bit more adventurous   but I'm increasingly finding that  I get more out of using a limited palette and range of techniques but pushing how far I can go within those boundaries  

Measure Twice, Cut Once

I'm really annoyed  with myself for ignoring the golden rule of 'measure twice, cut once' while  trimming  down my 'Gray Scale' challenge piece for International Threads. Instead of being 40 x 80 cm it is 38 x 80 and that missing  2m on the RH side would have made all the difference.

When I was on the Human Marks workshop with Dorothy Caldwell in Puglia, I took a photo of my index finger stained and ingrained with Indian ink after a morning of making fingerprint marks.
I manipulated the photo in Photoshop, dividing it into 6 overlapping sections, and printed it out on a commercial batik (with marks that reminded me of my fingerprints) treated with bubblejet set.
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