Sketchbooks – Exploring Textiles

Sketch books course with Dionne Swift

I never seem to have enough time for my studies but felt that a dedicated timed course could help kick start my sketch book use.

The course was really enjoyable and has certainly given me some ideas on how I can develop my sketch book usage. I was fun and achievable to create a full up book in a fortnight – Lots of experimentation with materials and processes and I even managed to produce some interesting images!

Most useful was the introduction to the one hole punch to add and move pages in a spiral bound sketch book. Very very handy.

A little book of compositions

I was looking for some-thing and found another.

A box of books I made on an evening course ages ago. They are delightful and so much more interesting than shop bought ones. So it will be a thing that I do, when appropriate , to make my own books.

Inspired by an exhibition at the Devon Guild of Craftsmen (a favourite place to visit on my Dartmoor adventures) Sketchbooks – Life Illustrated. I am going to use this book to explore composition.

The exhibition by the way was liberating! Lots of artists allowed their sketchbooks to be on show, with white gloves to protect the pages, you could flick through and properly realise that shiney work on gallery walls started somewhere, and most sketch books are not works of art. Brilliant.

Scandinavia 2015 notebook

What an amazing summer I’ve had.

Campervan adventure via France and Germany to Denmark, Sweden, Norway and back. I managed to see several amazing exhibitions, drink in some amazing landscapes, and pick up some handy textile techniques.

If you click on the link you can see the video I have made of my notebook!

Not very professionally, and not very exciting but figured it may be useful to learn how to embed videos into my blog – had to start somewhere!

I have started to explore iPad drawing

This was done from the car window ( as a passenger !) on the M4. I was just trying to capture the sense of the world going by and ideas of texture and colour.

Playing with the cut tool in paper app by 53, a lovely immediate collage effect based on the Californian poppies in the garden, doodling – but I quite like the composition and energy.

The coast of Norway from the Bergen to Stavanger ferry, investigating the smudge tool.

Birch trees, Denmark.