Rydal Hall Retreat - more sketching than stitching

My annual retreat at Rydal Hall with the NWCQ group  seemed to go faster than ever - this is our 5th time there. I  left the large piece  I'm working on at the moment at home with the intention of just responding to this environment I know so well now. I did very little stitching  apart from the postcard above and  some time each day on my daily stitching project  but went out painting every day  

 My bedroom was in a different part of the house than I've stayed before with views out the back towards the wood. There was a lot of fallen trees -  you could see how shallow the root system was on the one above,  no surprise given the rocky substrate it was growing on. There were bulbs around the trunk having to change their direction of growth !

Lots of logpiles around too although not quite so colourful as the ones last year. New sculptures to admire and older ones beginning to merge and disappear into their surroundings.

My studio space in the work room soon became covered in scraps of fabric and sketchbooks. !

I put together the start of a Journal Quilt based on the rushing water and stones ( seen  here with part of my daily stitching 'winding cloth' .)

The 'grot' overlooking Rydal Falls is a favourite if frustrating painting place - it's impossible to capture the colours and the patterns of water but I enjoy trying.  It's my first port of call every year  and at least it was shelter from the sleet.

Another day, another painting station was a bench in the 'quiet garden'  not quite as peaceful as you'd think with the fighter jets practising overhead !

I was especially lucky this time in that I had company  on sketching expeditions on 2 days . On Wednesday morning Millie, Pauline and I headed off to the art shop in Grasmere followed  by coffee before heading off up some back roads to do some painting. We found a narrow metal bench :too high for me, my legs were dangling ;Pauline had a stone for her feet but got in a tangle with the Velcro on her coat ;Millie became embedded in her tripod stool. Then the rain came and washed our paintings away. Time for another venue once we'd recovered from  laughing. I introduced them to my favourite bench at Rydal Water ( much more substantial  and the weather behaved itself a bit better).  

The  clouds lifted a bit, the wind dropped and we were treated to  spectacular mirror-like reflections

The next day it was Millie, Karen and I that headed up a path behind the house  following Rydal Beck upstream.

Still very damp, using a tree stump as a  table, it took ages for the paint to dry  but there's something magical about  painting in situ. Even when  the results are not that great, the process  and sense of place make for a memorable experience.

 As a group we had less planned than in previous years, we've got much more comfortable about a relaxed timetable ( fitting around meals and traybakes of course!).  Judy F. gave us a slide presentation showing highlights from the last 6 years . Lots of trying to work out who was who from back views on walks  and trying to remember what year we did   different activities ( blind stitching probably the most memorable)

Linda B.  set us   an interesting  design activity  on Tuesday in the hour before the bar opened.  We'd been told to bring an A3 piece of paper - painted, printed , crumpled, whatever. Linda then divided each sheet into 12 and then redistributed them to us , the challenge to use some of everything in a composition. .  

As the selection I had were so diverse, I made 2 pieces ( above)

It resulted in a wide range of responses  in scope and scale including some 3D structures. Linda asked who had  started off with a  concept and  who had responded to the papers themselves   - roughly 50:50 split . She's already written it up for CQ newsletter!

We headed back home from Friday lunchtime onwards, refreshed and reinvigorated with time spent in such a lovely location and good company .Already looking forward to same time , same place next year.

Nottingham Wedding ( with uninivited guest)

On Thursday , we travelled up to  Nottingham for the wedding of Ian's goddaughter Hester on Friday , a lovely occasion   though we could have done without 'Doris', several guests  were delayed or had to cancel

The ceremony was followed by tea and cake at the back of the church ( what a  great idea ) with the wedding cake  provided by best man/ bake off contestant Tom Gillford. So the  wedding 'cake '  cut at the reception was a tower of cheese ! The  fantastic origami swan table decorations  were made by Hester's brother Edward ( one came home with me )

 Cheese Wedding cake

Bride and Godfathers

 We got off relatively lightly with our travels on 'Doris Day'  with a delay of only 4 hours. It was  service as usual from Faversham into London but then there were no trains from St Pancras to Nottingham. Advised  to travel to Grantham from Kings Cross we  ground to a halt outside Stevanage for about 2 hours due to a warehouse roof on the tracks . Gr Waiting at Grantham station was the worst part - bitterly cold and windy but the  windswept sunset skies were spectacular.  

Before the wedding ceremony we spent a few hours at Nottingham  Castle, very well laid out and interesting museum with this giant pumpkin by Kate Malone amongst other contemporary ceramics .

I had a good look around the textile section while Ian was  chatting to the volunteer in  the regimental museum . Each to there own - besides the Torvill and Dean costumes from 'Balero' at Saravejo  and some medieval fragments, I loved this mummers shirt.  Then Ian found a friend in the castle gardens:

' a bit less scary than the wife'

Tomorrow I'm off up to Rydal Hall in Cumbria - hope 'Ewan' doesn't disrupt travel plans too much....

Tour of Canada House, Trafalgar Square

Last Friday,  several of the 'Drawing Tuesday'  group met for a tour of Canada House (home of the High Commission to  GB) .  We even met very briefly , the High Commissioner herself. It was refurbished a couple of years ago and someone  who'd been  on a previous tour said the artworks were  fantastic - they were right!  The 'chandalier' light descending through the staircase  was  wonderful .

 Each conference/meeting room is either named after a Prime Minister or a province/ territory.  We started off in British Columbia ( where Ian was born  although the rest of the Canadian  side of his family are from Manitoba )   with  carpet  based on  Haida artwork :  29  bespoke carpets  were commissioned  in total! 

 So many artworks on display ( including an Emily Carr painting)  and I particularly like how local wood were  used for the tables  etc). I had a look round the art gallery  before the tour , enjoying the mark-making and colour of  the exhibition  by Andrew Salgado .

We finished  off on the roof garden with stunning views of Nelson's column and beyond. I've a soft spot for views through balustrades ( like the ones at Rydal where I'm off on retreat next week )    and liked how it framed the current  4th plinth piece.

Choir practice tonight then off to Nottingham in the morning  for  the wedding of Ian's goddaughter.  I've packed for that  but have  only Sunday  to finish ( or rather start!)  my packing for Rydal. How come a relaxing retreat involves so much stress and decision making??!!  And now have to take into account Storm Doris.

Drawing Tuesday at the Brunei Gallery SOAS

 On Tuesday, the drawing group (10 of us!)  met in the comparative calm of the Brunei  Gallery of  SOAS  to sketch the current exhibition ' Embroidered tales and woven dreams'. 
UPDATE  - you can read what the rest of the group got up to in Margaret C's  blogpost


Being half term , London was packed with excited children !  It took a long time to settle , surrounded by such gorgeous textiles, but in the end attempted to capture the different textures of  the fabric, basketry, wood and shadows of these stools from Baluchistan.

  I didn't get the perspective right in the quick sketch so instead  spent my time on the details of the stool legs using various hardnesses of pencil  and 'reverse drawing' with erasers ( better in some areas than others ....) 

 I definitely need to return to study the exhibition in more detail and perhaps even get round to using the coloured pencils and pens I'd brought with me to record them

I left relatively  early to return to Faversham, meeting up  with Ian   for an early dinner at ASK  before heading to the Alexander Centre for recording of 'Gardeners Question Time' . The modest ticket price included a glass of wine and  if you wished you could write out a question for the panel.

 It was both great fun and informative. They were recording 2 episodes and for each chose 8-9 questions from those submitted including mine on suggestions for wildlife friendly garden when you only have thin turf over rubble and serious soil envy! It will be broadcast on 24  March.

Traces, Places

 January 2017

After a lot of cogitating,  ' Traces,Places' is the theme I've chosen for CQ Journal Challenge  2017 , hopefully broad enough to encompass  interpretations of  my surroundings in scraps and old quilts. I have big plans ! and  intend to use these as samplers   and try-outs for larger pieces , partly working towards  Cwilt Cymru's next exhibition ( the theme being 'traces')   but also  entries for  other  competitions and exhibitions as well as building up a series of work  based on the breakwaters and sea defenses at Birchington.  

Postcard textile  sketches

  It always takes me a while after I've been doing  an art course  and been bombarded with ideas and techniques to see what sticks, to see what I can take and use in my own work. There was  a lot of useful stuff covered in 'Advanced Painting'  particularly in strategies for starting; choice of colour   and 'steal like an artist ' looking at others work , pinching ideas and making it your own .

Paul Nash

John Piper

 One of the lessons was on using Photoshop or similar, not only at the start  but to look at your own work differently ( eg  reviewing tone, increasing saturation or contrast) and try different scenarios out.  As I've been thinking for a while of using the back of an old red and white log cabin ( I love the holey 'marks'!) ,I'd already been playing with images  using  the 'conte' filter .  The images above are manipulated artwork of Paul Nash and John Piper  while the image below is one of my photos of Birchington
.

And then manipulated  copies of my own work 'Bexhill Breakwaters'

 When CQ  Kent group came to visit ( there were 10 of us  packed in the lounge!) I gave a very quick demo of the acrylic  techniques I used ( summarised in a series of posts I did for 'And then we set it on fire... 'blog).  I'd forgotten  the delights of painting over old stitching samples ( below)  

So I'm currently  revising the methods I was using and working on some samples to  try painting on ( a lot of stitching from the back  of a gessoed section of quilt with Perle thread in the bobbin) . Watch this space!