Back from France

I've been quiet for a while because I've been on holiday. It's almost unheard of these days to take a day off so a whole week in France was a real treat. I hate to bore you with my holiday snaps but can't resist sharing a few with you.

We enjoyed a glass of wine on the deck of the ferry as Portsmouth harbour disappeared into the sunset.

It takes 12 and a half hours to sail overnight to St Malo but with a cosy cabin to look forward to no sooner have you gone to sleep than you are waking up in France. A short drive away, the old town of Dinan is very French! I didn't mean to photograph a man with a baguette as it's such a cliche but every other person seemed to be carrying one.

This is Vannes in Morbihan, Southern Brittany. I know it looks like something out of Hansel and Gretel but it's typical of the towns here.

We strolled down to the port and discovered it was hosting the world championship under 20 rugby tournament that week - I had noticed more than a fair share of big beefy young men around the town!

Of course I took a sketchbook, a few pencils and a watercolour palette. I was the one taking the pictures so you'll have to imagine me here under the parasol happily painting!

The cottage had a 5 acre garden full of inspiration but if you've been watching recent DMTV videos you'll know I've done a lot of work with Ivy. This is French Ivy growing on a rock face but you'd never know we weren't in England except for the basking lizards - we don't get those at home!

There was some time for culture. The eroded faces carved into this ancient fountain at St Nicodeme des Eaux intrigued me.

Now normally when I get home from a holiday it takes an age to get back into work mode. For some unknown reason I feel strangely reinvigorated this time. Today we taped a video and dealt with loads of email - a typical day for us. At the end of the working day I escaped to my workroom and finished my latest quilt - yippee! OK it's not quite finished - I still have to paint a few details and add the binding and sleeve but I shall enjoy that now the quilting is done.

With a few minutes to spare before dinner I stencilled some more ivy leaves across an open spread of my sketchbook using oil pastels. This page might get a wash of watercolour next.

It was early evening by now but there was still enough daylight left to plant up the marigolds. This is just one of many, many blue pots we have every year. We've had such a miserable spring that we are at least a month late with the summer planting.

And then, because a soul needs more sustenance than gardening and art I made bread. These will keep us going for the rest of the week. I call that a satisfying day! I don't suppose this level of productivity will continue - I'll probably be like a limp rag tomorrow but never mind - I'm happy to take it a day at a time.

Adding to the collections

OK I call them collections - you may disagree and consider it all just more clutter. Every weekend at the flea market I seem to find something that's hard to resist. This week it was elephants.

This is one of the pair I bought to add to Laura's elephant collection but he seems quite at home on my mantlepiece. She may have to admire them when she visits!

I also found another sea urchin. Not a bad trick this far from the sea!

And a tall skinny green bottle to add to the others. What were they used for I wonder?

And a couple more wonky, green glass inkwells.

They all sit in this display cabinet. One of two we bought at auction months ago. Sorry about all the reflections - the cabinets are on a wall of the conservatory and in full sun. That's the main reason I'm keeping this collection to glass wood and china - none of which should suffer from the light.

There is stuff other than shopping for treasures going on. Here's a detail of the latest quilt I'm working on. The gold leaf shapes have been painted onto the fabric after it's been quilted. I'll be showing you the finished quilt in a week or two, fingers crossed!

Thanks for visiting - I'll be back again soon -  Linda

Today's all about sketchbooks

I've been enjoying making time for my latest sketchbook work. I shouldn't really call it work because it is definitely more like play!

My room looks a total disaster but it is at least a creative chaos, unlike the rest of the house which is just everyday chaos.

This sketchbook is inspired by my garden and the latest studies are all of Ivy leaves.

I want the pages to be precious so the gold leaf had to come out! I've added a wash of red over the top to warm it up and knock the glitz back a bit.

I'm planning to go back to an old favourite when I've finished with the Ivy. Pretty as the Honesty is in flower..........

It's the papery seedheads I love - especially at this time of year when they show signs of what a tough winter we've had. They'll be a great subject for monoprinting I think!

I'd like to thank our Creative Sketchbook student Hannie for letting me show 3 of her sketchbook pages here today.

Great use of colour and lovely paint effects Hannie!

Pears are always a beautiful shape and this is a really vigorous drawing.

Thanks for dropping by - please come back soon!  Linda

Quilting, sketchbooks and found treasures

I don't think I showed you the latest little treasure I found in the flea market recently. I paid the princely sum of £3 for this lovely red needlecase. 

The paintwork is a bit sorry for itself but the contents are intact and show no sign of rust. I don't mind the signs of age and use - in fact I rather like to see it's had a useful life.

The needlecase was made in Redditch, needle capitol of the world last century. The top turns so that an arrow lines up with the size of needle required and it's then dispensed through that little hole you can see. Having exhibited a number of times at the Needle Museum in Redditch I feel a special affinity with  this particular treasure!

I may be testing some of those needles soon as the machine quilting on the second mad heron is finished now and I'm adding hand stitch around all the circles. This work is destined for Llanidloes in the summer along with quilts from all the members of Six and Friends. I see Hilary posted on the site today - if you take a look you'll see she's really on a roll!

We spent the whole of last week's gloriously sunny long weekend purging the garden of weeds. I could barely move after all the exertion but this afternoon was dismal and wet - a perfect excuse to hide away in my studio. I'm still working on garden inspired pages for our latest DMTV sketchbook videos and had fun collaging the scraps from recent monoprinted rejects. I plan to draw into this page to give the leaves a stem and maybe a bit more detail once the glue has chance to dry!

I recycled an old gouache and Indian ink iris too. It was lying around looking lonely and sorry for itself and will be much happier glued in a sketchbook with other flowers and foliage. I never throw anything away!

I also attached a photo in readiness for the pencil drawing which will sit opposite on a golden ground. There's quite a lot of gold throughout the book as I'm trying out a variety of metallic paints and inks for another rather precious book I want to alter.

I'm not the only one busy in my sketchbook. Janet is working through our Creative Sketchbook course and was kind enough to let me show you a couple of her pages. I know people enjoy seeing our students' work so many thanks Janet!

Hope you're having a pleasant weekend and that you're finding time to be creative too. Thanks for visiting - Linda

All things floral

I spent the weekend drawing, painting and printing in a small sketchbook. There's method in my spring madness - we're making a short series of videos for DMTV and I need lots of new work. Not that it's a hardship you understand - I love nothing better than idling the day away with pencil or paintbrush in hand, especially when it's lovely weather and I can work out in the garden.

My sketchbooks are usually a mish mash of different themes. I might start off thinking I'll work in a systematic and orderly fashion but that idea all goes to pot when I'm in a hurry and I tend to grab any sketchbook that has a blank page or two. This time I've resolved to keep a book just for flowers and foliage. It's a subject I think our members will like and I have plenty of plants to choose from. 'He Who Gardens' always leaves a corner of the lawn unmown (is that a word I wonder - spellcheck doesn't think so) at this time of year.

Here's the reason why. So pretty with every pastel colour you can imagine.

Every year there are more and more tiny plants with no effort on our part at all. OK, so a few dandelions sneak in there too but we can live with that! I haven't painted any of these yet but I am going to steal a couple of the prettiest flowers while he's not looking and press the petals between absorbent paper to preserve them. I often like to include dried flowers in my sketchbooks although they are quite fragile unless they are well protected with a layer of acrylic medium.

At the other end of the scale there are these huge beauties. They are at least a metre high and look ridiculously exotic at a time when we are still having night time frosts!

With so many lovely plants bursting into life I have no shortage of inspiration. I've sacrificed actual leaves to make this print.

The veg patch didn't escape my attention either! If you are a DMTV subscriber, you'll be able to see the first of the sketchbook videos in a couple of weeks' time and I hope some of you will join in with me to make your own flower filled sketchbook as a reminder of summer 2013!

And to finish - here's Amelie sporting a fetching top and matching bandana in Madras check. What you can't see in this picture are her purple harem pants. Whatever happened to romper suits? Seven months old and a fashionista already!

Thanks for dropping by - I'll be in touch again soon. Linda

More hours in the day please

Are you like me I wonder? As the days grow longer I get more energetic and want to fit so much more into every day.  As I write this the birds are singing, the sun is shining and it feels like all things are possible. It's 6 o'clock in the evening - only a few weeks ago, at the same time of day I'd already be curled up in my armchair in front of the TV feeling like the day was over. Now that the light is better for my old eyes I've resolved to do more drawing and painting. I did make a start on the Amaryllis as you can see but I've decided painting flowers that are mostly white is not easy!

Laura bought me some granulation fluid a while ago and I've been giving it a whirl but I'm not convinced it's doing anything different to plain old water. Maybe I'm not doing it right!

I've not been drawing much lately and it really shows. I tried a pencil study of a leaf - took quite a bit of time over it but it still looked rubbish. It's practise I need so tonight I've made sure all my pencils are sharpened and ready to go. Surprising how delaying tactics like sharpening pencils suddenly seems so attractive. Anything to put off the dreadful moment of actually making a start on a blank sketchbook page! People wouldn't believe it still makes me nervous even though I've been doing it forever. Once I get going it's fine it's just the starting that's the problem.

On the quilting front I've had Jamie at fingerprint print one of my gouache and Indian ink paintings onto cotton poplin. I need to keep this one a bit secret so I won't show the whole thing yet, just a sneaky detail.

I think you can see how faithfully the digital print process reproduces the texture of the watercolour paper. This is the printed fabric, not the original painting!!

Some of our Creative Sketchbook students have also been busy drawing and painting. Thanks go to Wendy for letting us show a couple of her pages here:

Love love love that pastel and resist technique!
 

And to Rosemary for these:

We all seem to have a floral theme going don't we? Such gorgeous foxgloves!

My word, these students keep us on our toes!!

Thank you for dropping by - I appreciate your company! Linda

Has spring finally sprung?

It's been a long hard winter and I'm not sure we're out of it yet but the wildlife is certainly active now. There are chirruping birds in every tree and hedge in the garden and they're a delight. It's not all so good though - these pesky critters have been chased off our garden pond more times than I care to mention.

It's rather bizarre to see some of them perched on the roof of the house just waiting to fly back down to the pond the minute we turn our backs. I know they look pretty with the sun gleaming on their irridescent feathers but they decimate the tadpoles and make a muddy mess if we let them stay. I prefer not to think what would happen if they set up home and laid eggs -  ducklings would just be too tempting for our Bengal cat.

A little while ago I showed a selection of work made by our online Creative Sketchbook students. I've had lots of emails asking to see more so here are a few pages from Anne.

And a few from Janice.

Gorgeous work ladies - thank you both for agreeing to show it here. It's funny - Laura and I are supposed to be the ones inspiring the students but it works both ways. Seeing such beautiful sketchbook pages prompts me to get my paintbrushes out right away! I even have a suitable candidate for a still life - here's a lovely white and lime green Amaryllis just begging to be painted before it fades.

If it turns out OK I'll let you see it soon. Fingers crossed!

Thanks for dropping by - Linda