Felicity's Philosophies and Other Curiosities

Birds of prey

2012-01-24T11:27:00.004+01:00

I was going call this post 'Old World Vultures' as I really like how that sounds, but to be honest, I'm not sure what the difference is between Old and New World Vultures. I think the vulture at the top is from North or South America (probably 'Old World') and the bird below is an African Fish Eagle (probably 'New'). I'm too much of a bird brain myself to work it out!

Drawing that turkey before Christmas is what set me off. I was watching some fabulous programmes about birds in flight and one followed the Condor. (And really followed, with camera atttached on it's back!) Well, I always assumed Condors were eagles, beautiful and majestic, but seeing one up close, they looked very ugly, like turkeys on testosterone! So, naturally, I had to do some digging around on the differences between eagles and vultures...That's what I love about drawing, it opens your eyes to all sorts of things you think you know and have seen but actually you don't see at all until you draw them!

Drawn with HB and B pencils in my 6x8" Winsor & Newton journal (post showing similar here).

Sketching like a loon

2012-01-06T12:18:00.000+01:00

Ah, if only! I can sketch an actual loon though! This lovely creature caught my eye on TV and after a bit of Googling, I think it's a Red-Throated Loon. It has really striking red eyes too. There will definitely be a few more TV sketches to come, I'd forgotten how much I enjoy it and it fills pages quickly.

I'm starting to enjoy filling these two sketchbooks now. The guilt of having too many half finished sketchbooks is ebbing away page by page. Above, on the right, a little dog drawn from an image in a free calendar that was put in the postbox, and left, a drawing of my messy bed. Drawing before you even get out of bed is a great way to start the day!

Doodles

2012-01-05T14:15:00.000+01:00

From my 'doodle sketchbook' a couple of months ago. I'm trying to come up with a leaf design to make a little quilt, or at least maybe a fabric card, just so I can play with beads and threads. It takes me an age to come up with something I'm happy with because of the million and one combinations of colours, fabrics, designs, layouts etc. It usually results in a meltdown and nothing at all being produced! In the process, I was Googling leaf designs for inspiration and realised that the ones I draw in my doodle sketchbook are more interesting!

The pages of the sketchbook are a hodge podge of things usually, and not pretty enough to share, but I've found that they are very interesting to look back on. I include things like whatever is in front of me, something on the TV at the time or a view out the window. One of the pages contains a sketch of a tree with Mont Salève in the background. Now I look at it and I can see how much that tree has grown in height over the summer compared to the line of the mountain! A couple of weeks ago we had a quite a severe storm and one of the trees I drew in another sketchbook now has broken branches as much of it is dead or dying. I wonder if it will now be cut down and disappear from our view?

The new year is naturally a time of taking stock over the previous year and looking forward to the one ahead. My inspiration was very low over 2011 but looking back I see little reminders that it actually wasn't all bad. Even though the doodle sketchbook isn't pretty, it can contain some little gems that are revealed given a bit of time. I think a small and manageable resolution should include filling this book a little faster!

Christmas is coming...

2011-12-15T13:17:00.001+01:00

..and I have as much enthusiasm as this turkey! Actually, I don't dislike Christmas but I find the fake jollity, rampant and reckless consumerism and the 'let's pretend we care for' - family, frenemies, old people, starving children, insert relevant words here - only emphasises how daft the human race is. I'd much rather we were all more tolerant and caring all year round without prompting!

These are just two little drawings from one of the two sketchbooks I'm trying to fill up. Drawing has nearly ground to a halt this year so I decided to draw something that symbolised that.

At the end of August, I did something completely out of character - I joined a gym! In fact, when I dug out my old trainers, I couldn't even remember when I bought them. I do remember that it was from a shop on King's Rd. and I'd never heard of New Balance before so probably ages ago. Anyway, this year I decided that it would be a good idea to think about my health and actually do something. Not that I need to, thankfully, but it's partly a horror of approaching a big 0 birthday, and partly worry that drawing and quilting are not very active activities! Better to invest now and not have be advised by a doctor after a health scare!

I hope I don't offend any readers here, but the seed of this was sown a few years ago while I was in Kuwait. I was totally obsessed with quilting at the time and I travelled to England to go to a quilt show, staying overnight in a nearby hotel. I had a room on the first floor facing the front not far from the entrance. I went into my room, made a cup of tea and looked out the window as coach loads of quilters arrived to check in. What I saw really gave me a jolt - coach loads with a very high percentage of very overweight and not very agile women! OK, so quilting might be a wonderful activity to take up if you suffer from ill-health or you're retired and creative, but I really don't think that explains it.

Question of Sport is a quiz show that's been running forever on the BBC. I've been watching since the 70's and used to pride myself on always getting the 'mystery guest' right. (You would see a video of the person doing some silly activity but the face was partially obscured.) I used to know all the names back then, but these days I may not guess the names but I have a 99.9% success rate guessing what sport they do! I find it fascinating that each sport has a very particular body shape. In teams sports, there can be specific body shapes depending on what position they play. With boxing and swimming, even the skin shows clues.

So, I looked out of the window and realised that quilting has a specific body shape too and it was scary! I started noticed when I was reading quilter's blogs how many of them had health and mobility problems. Why wasn't it the same for artists who paint and draw? I think the answer might be in the way that quilting is so addictive. Drawing is about observation, looking up and back down at the paper and the need to take frequent breaks to step away to see the subject anew. With quilting the blissful monotony of piecing tiny strips of fabric or free motion quilting a bed quilt can take up huge chunks of time. Drawing may be done on location or standing at an easel. Quilting is always sitting hunched over a machine. To be honest, I'm not sure, but I am convinced there is a stereotypical body shape and I don't want it!

It took quite a while for that seed to take root and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to stick it out, but I wish I had joined that gym years ago! It's mildly addictive - being naturally lazy, I do have days when I have to force myself there - but I have a couple of quilt projects I want to finish and more to start so hopefully now I can get on and quilt without the guilt!

Strawberry delight

2011-12-06T15:33:00.000+01:00

It's cold and overcast here, no pretending it's late autumn anymore. After a couple of stormy nights recently, there are barely any leaves left on the trees never mind any colour. So it was a lovely surprise when I popped out to the garden this afternoon to see our strawberry plants looking so vibrant and colourful! It may be chilly outside but that warmed the cockles of my heart!

The beauty is in the detail

2011-10-23T13:15:00.001+02:00

I picked up some very beautiful leaves yesterday while I was out walking with the intention of drawing and painting them. I think this Virginia Creeper leaf is one of the loveliest leaves I have ever seen.

A Sycamore leaf. For reasons that totally mystify me 'real' artists are not supposed to enjoy detail. It seems they are supposed to gaze off into the distance and squint until everything is a blur. Good job I have no aspirations to be one of those then, or I might have missed these!

Back from Blighty

2011-10-22T18:16:00.001+02:00

It always amazes me that people can sit on a plane and never look out the window. Coming back from a quick trip to London, the moon was nearly full, the sun was setting and the view was awe inspiring. I wonder what people who lived only a hundred years ago would have made of this sight? We take so much for granted now that catching a plane is as convenient as catching a bus.

If only this photo could capture the amazing light and scenery as we came on over Lake Geneva with the snow capped mountains turning pink in the distance. I got in the taxi and the Chilean driver told me he flies back for Christmas every year. How lucky we are!

Rainy Sunday afternoon

2011-09-04T14:58:00.000+02:00

Slow blogging

2011-09-01T16:30:00.001+02:00

I came across this today, a Manifesto by Todd Sieling, for a movement called Slow Blogging. It's wonderful to read something that describes exactly what I've been thinking and feeling about the internet. It was written in 2006 and featured in The New York Times in 2008 so I've been slow in finding out about it!

Especially significant to me are what he describes as 'the daily outrages and ecstasies ... switching between banality, crushing heartbreak and end-of-the-world psychotic glee in the mere space between headlines'. It seems to me as if half the people on the internet are in a state of psychotic glee and the other half consumed with hate. Occasionally I feel inspired by an image or a post but most of the time I wonder what on earth the internet is doing to human beings (perhaps, rather, what we are allowing it to do to us) and is nobody concerned about where it's heading? Seemingly not.

Postcard

2011-07-19T10:43:00.001+02:00

My postcard for this month went to Robyn, of Have Dogs Will Travel, living in lovely, sunny Tuscany. Inspiration struck as soon as saw these beautiful translucent berries but I'd been struggling to find anything in the weeks before that. Summer, it seems, is not as colourful as spring once the riot of colour and flowers is over.

I took a photo of the back of the card and the envelope before I ruined it with my messy handwriting!

The time is right, I think, to take a little break from blogging now, but thanks as always for visiting!

Stepping out

2011-07-18T22:14:00.001+02:00

You'd have to be going somewhere pretty special to wear these, wouldn't you? Another amazing shoe that caught my eye in the window of Christian Louboutin. It's impossible to do justice to all the colours and how this shoe sparkles in real life, but at least it didn't take as long as the last drawing!

Killer heels

2011-07-16T19:58:00.000+02:00

A couple of weeks ago I had a look in the window of the Christian Louboutin shop in town and I was totally bowled over with his designs! The window designs are fabulous and each shoe looks like a little work of art, carefully displayed. Going in there, I can imagine feeling like Willy Wonka entering the chocolate factory! Sadly, I don't have the confidence to pull these off, but hey, I can draw them and dream!

A few days afterwards I saw a photo of Debbie Harry in the exact same pair. Very much her, I thought, very 'rock chick'. But when I Googled them to find the name - they are called 'Lady Clou' - I saw a load of other singers too, in descending order from Lady Gaga and Kylie Minogue, sporting them! I remember someone telling me they didn't like to shop in Marks & Spencers because they didn't want to seen in the same clothes as every other woman in the street. Well, now every female celebrity has to been seen wearing Louboutins, I'm not sure how that differs! (Not that I would pass off the chance to strut my stuff in these, you understand!)

The shoe was not nearly as much fun to draw as to look at though, as I've written on my other blog. I'm still nervous about tackling certain subjects in watercolour but I think this might have been a lot easier and faster if I had. The Polychromos pencil I used for most of this, Burnt Carmine, was a nightmare - very easily smudged and it stained the paper. I put this in my Winsor & Newton sketchbook and I expect it will have smudged right off the next time I look at it!

Signs

2011-05-30T07:55:00.000+02:00

Early birds

2011-05-25T09:21:00.000+02:00

The Redstarts again, captured on a little compact camera at the weekend. It's not easy to get decent shots with the zoom but this one came out pretty well. There are actually two chicks and it looks like the parents look after one each.

While the chick sits patiently (on our garden chair!) it's easy to get photos but the parents flit in and out so quickly. I was pleased to get this shot of the male, it shows how dark the colouring is on his head..

Another sketchbook to fill...

2011-05-24T20:22:00.000+02:00

Just to re-cap, I'm trying to fill up a sketchbook that has had only one drawing in it for a couple of years. I'm calling it my 'random sketches' sketchbook. I don't want to get bogged down trying to make it look good but fill it with anything and everything that takes my fancy. The length of time this might take me weighs on my mind though, so imagine my horror when I was going through my shelves looking to see what else I might have and found that I had actually bought two of these sketchbooks!

Ziggy is the last drawing I put in it and it was way more detailed than I intended. So it gave me an idea for the second sketchbook - I'm going to put doodles in it! The strange thing is, when I start doodling, I want to draw. So I have one page of doodles, one page of leafy designs, and now these drawings! I have one page which I started to doodle on then I've added little things over the days. I love this idea of having a book where it can contain anything, where even a shopping list might go. I've found it really liberating so far. A daily doodle is like a little daily exercise it really does keep the drawing muscles from seizing up!

These sparrows were drawn from some photos I took. The drawing of the peony seed heads was done this weekend in the garden. I love their shape, they remind me of jester's hats!

Black Redstart

2011-05-20T18:40:00.000+02:00

I was delighted to see a family of Black Redstarts yesterday. (I'm not good with bird names, I know that because the male is quite distinctive with it's black head and red tail so I was able to find it in my bird book!) I wasn't really expecting to see them again but today the female left the chick on the patio outside the kitchen while she went off to catch insects for it. He sat patiently for 45 mins as she went back and forth!

Ziggy and the zoo

2011-05-13T23:41:00.001+02:00

Still filling my Green & Stone sketchbook at a snail's pace. This is Ziggy, the cat I had before I got married.

Sheep drawn from a magazine.

A goat drawn from a photo I took at the little farm in the Jardin Botanique.

Filthy lucre

2011-05-06T09:18:00.000+02:00

I've been money laundering this week. Alex went on a school trip to Senegal recently and brought back a couple of very dirty, very tatty Senegalese banknotes. When I Googled the currency I read that it had been changed not so long ago as people were so concerned about how dirty it was and how it might be spreading disease. Well, if this is what the new notes look like I can't imagine how disgusting the old ones were!

I know from experience (!) that money washes well in the washing machine so I soaked the notes for a few hours in washing powder. This one still looks grey but not nearly as bad as it did before! It was hanging together with sellotape so I just used the good half to start this drawing. The design on the note and repeated on the coins is really interesting but I couldn't find out anything about it - the traditional symbols of Senegal are supposed to be lions and baobab trees - so I don't know what this is.

In my 'random sketches' Green & Stone sketchbook using Lyra Rembrandt pencils and a splatter of watercolour for the background.

A few little sketches

2011-05-03T21:38:00.000+02:00

A few very small sketches from the 'random sketchbook' I'm trying to fill. I should stop thinking about how long this is going to take me because at the rate I normally draw I may not fill it in my lifetime! Then, when I look around my room and see all the other more-than-half-empty sketchbooks on my shelves, it's almost tempting to give up! Staying positive though, I think the only way to fill it up is to keep the sketches small and not worry about filling the whole page or making them worthy. However, I did spend some time on the details of these brooches, below, because they belong to my mother and I really like the designs. It was only when I started drawing them and really looking at them that I noticed how minute those details were.

Mum doesn't remember anything about them so I don't think she ever bought or wore them, I think they were probably passed on to her. That's not unusual as she has a wardrobe full of things that friends and family passed around each other over the years!

I was reminded I had these brooches when I bought this necklace -

it's a cheap little thing but I loved the design. I'm always on the lookout for a nice leaf design but rarely see anything I like.

This is a little knitted cosy I saw on a bottle of fruit juice as part of a promotion and had to buy! I guess it's an egg cosy but I can't imagine why you'd want to keep an egg warm unless you like them hard boiled.

Something I've noticed and don't like about this Green & Stone sketchbook is that it has a right and a wrong (or a rough and a smooth) side and, of course, with a bound book half the pages are rough. It's OK for coloured pencil but not great for detailed pencil drawings so sketches look grainy like this one - Alex's old iPod.

Alex is the least materialistic person I know so when his old iPod broke (and it's a hand-me-down from Paul!) he was forced to replace it (he can't go anywhere without his music!) but he didn't want a new iPod Touch, he just wanted a replacement.

Finally a sketch of a soapdish. I was mulling over the Every Day in May challenge as the list of subjects to draw looks like fun. Draw a bar of soap is the first one. But I know I won't get a drawing a day done so I might just dip in and out as it will help me fill up the book.

This is the soap dish from the cloakroom (isn't that a great word?!) downstairs. It has a small sink and a small space beside it so this is the only soap dish that fits there. I don't think it was designed to be a soap dish but it's perfect for the job and made by Stephen Pearce -I've drawn one of his bowls here.

In the garden

2011-04-20T15:30:00.001+02:00

I took the camera out into the garden this morning to capture all that is going on. It seems to be a riot of colour with this wonderful warm sunny weather we're having. This is the wisteria by the front gate.

The clemetis has loads of buds just about to burst open.

Peonies the size of soup bowls. The shiny, metallic green beetles love these and they seem to get intoxicated in the pollen. They're all over the wisteria too but they fly around haphazardly so you have to watch out when going in and out of the gate!

In the back garden the pansies are out. We have a few of these - the colour is so intense.

My favourite, this one is so delicate but only one little plant survived the winter.

A newcomer this year - it reminds me of one of my favourite watercolours, Schmincke's Translucent Orange!

The tulips are all out.

A close-up of the orange ones. Who designed these things?!

Another new one - we bought two large Polygala bushes to put in big pots on the patio. This is a close-up of the small pea-like flowers. It's such an amazing design for something so tiny.

Another little favourite. I can't remember what it's called but it's a ground cover plant and it's tiny flowers are deep red and then change to a very light pink, almost white. I love it when they are dark red but it's still so pretty when it changes too.

The flowers on the chives are really interesting in close-up.

The Aquilegia have gone mad! Such an amazing shape and the leaves too. The leaves look amazing when they start changing colour in the autumn.

Aquilegia without it's petals.

Finally, a lilac - wonderful little cup-like petals!

Comfy platforms

2011-04-15T13:39:00.000+02:00

Yes, there is such a thing! I went out this week to look for some comfy sandals - something to replace my old flat sandals with - and came home with these instead! They are probably the highest thing I have but they are so incredibly comfortable. They will go nicely with my white flares. Yep, I'm totally embracing the 70's fashion comeback!

This is another drawing done before getting out of bed - I think it's my take on Julia Cameron's morning pages!

A few sketches...

2011-04-14T20:34:00.001+02:00

from my 'random sketches' sketchbook. I picked two faces from a magazine for this one and quite like how the page turned out. I was really tired yesterday and didn't sketch at all so I brought a magazine to bed and drew this this morning before getting up!

This is the reason why my good intentions came to a halt the other day - I got yet another migraine. So I put this sketch in too, of the blister pack. Migraines don't just affect me for the two or three days I get them but it takes a few days afterwards too to start feeling normal again and always interrupts the flow of creativity.

A quick sketch of some sweet peas. I had thought of doing just a pencil sketch and only having the colour samples to indicate the colour but I couldn't resist colouring them too.

My obsession with red and orange leaves has come back with a vengeance! A quick sketch in my small watercolour Moleskine. More of these to come!

New idea for an old sketchbook

2011-04-01T21:11:00.000+02:00

I've been aware for some time now that my sketchbooks are getting a bit out of hand - I have loads of sketchbooks for different categories, like TV sketching or tram sketches, and now I can't find anything! They are nearly all unfinished but when I found this one, above, with only one sketch in it from 2009, it gave me an idea.

Since all these pages are empty, and probably would be for years (it's an inch thick, so has lots of pages!) why not see if I can fill them up with any random thing that inspires me? I'm going to allow myself any medium, any subject, any technique I want but most importantly, they need not be posted to my blogs and be of interest only to me (i.e., not what I think will please). It sounds simplistic in writing, but it's a little more than that, it's a place to be me.

The drawing that put me off this sketchbook originally was this one, an abortive attempt to draw a building. I'd even put it a few pages in in a vain attempt to not ruin the new book! Anyway, it felt like an appropriate place to put these three colourful leaves, above. They're a failed attempt at a postcard for the Postcard From my Walk exchange - as I do like them, I just didn't like the border I put around them so I cut them out of the page.

The first sketch - I had a couple of Jamie Oliver cookbooks open on the table as I'd been looking for a recipe. (I made 'Crispy and sticky chicken thighs with squashed new potatoes and tomatoes' - it's a fave!)
I was watching a Radiohead concert on TV and drew a mackerel from the book.

Then I thought it would be fun to repeat it and make a pattern. The book is too small to do it and the compositon not right, but it's an idea I've filed away to do again.

A portrait taken from another of his books. It's a combination of the look on his face and the fact that I think he is a visionary that inspired this. Plus, the background colour added a nice contrast to the colours in his skin! I didn't plan either of these, I just let them happen so who knows what will be on the next page!

Spring has sprung!

2011-03-27T09:19:00.001+02:00

The early bird catches the worm, but the early bee looked a little sad buzzing around last year's fuchias! We left some hanging baskets out over the winter and they looked like they'd been frozen in time. Spring has arrived with a bang this year - I was amazed to see such big bumble bees so early - and the flowers are out, the birds are singing, the sun is warm and even the bats are out at dusk!

It's hard to get motivated to paint when it's cold and grey outside, but now there is colour and warmth again, I can't wait to get going. I'm feeling a bit rusty with the watercolours though so I'm doing little studies to get back up to speed. This poor ladybird was kidnapped from the garden for these sketches although he didn't seem to mind too much. Interesting that on closer examination, ladybirds are not 'pillar box' red but quite a 'browny' red.

A study of some female Monkey Puzzle seeds I did a couple of weeks ago and forgot to post! (Gone are the days, thank goodness, when I first started this blog and had to post anything as soon as I'd finished!) I'm fond of Monkey Puzzle trees and there is one in a little park near here. It's the first time I've seen the seeds and I discovered that there are male and female trees with different shaped cones so our local tree is a female!

London

2011-03-27T09:00:00.000+02:00

Two pairs of shoes brought back from a trip to London. I love platforms - and I'm short! - so I'm thrilled they're back in fashion. With the beige sandals, I nearly bought them in an electric blue and I think they would have looked better for the drawing!

Plane tree, Gaillard

2011-03-26T13:40:00.000+01:00

Another plane tree, this time across the border in France. I occassionally pop accross the border to shop at a supermarket near us, but the choice is just as limited and the novelty wore off fairly quickly! On the last trip, I pulled over and drew this plane tree from the car. Gaillard means castle, and the tower is just visible behind the tree.

Plane tree, Carouge

2011-03-03T21:49:00.001+01:00

Another little sketch in my Green & Stone sketchbook. I quite like how this turned out even though it was a bit of an accident - I meant to get more of the tree in!

Jardin Botanique

2011-02-06T18:16:00.000+01:00

I went along to the Jardin Botanique during the week, trying to keep up the sketching momentum. It was sunny but very cold so perhaps not ideal for sitting or standing around without gloves!

Fortunately there are some lovely big greenhouses where I could sketch and keep warm. I loved the colours of these leaves. I made notes of some of them to look up later and I didn't see any photos of this Hardenbergia comptoniana with leaves this colour - maybe because they are not in their natural environment?

I was very taken with these tiny, perfectly formed leaves and that lovely spray of colour. They were like miniature palm leaves! I couldn't find the label for them but I'll probably go back here regularly so I'll have another look.

There is a little farm there where they keep deer, chickens, geese and other animals. I'm fond of chickens so I made a beeline for them. They were all basking in the sun, sitting in a row along a wall. Easy to sketch I thought, until I reached into my bag for my sketchbook and they all came running, expecting to be fed!

I really enjoyed doing these sketches and then putting a quick bit of colour on them. I don't know why, but I also enjoy putting watercolour on thin paper that buckles easily. This is my little Green & Stone sketchbook again and I was surprised how well it took them, not buckling at all. I really can't find fault with this sketchbook. I think I've mentioned before it has a lovely old fashioned feel about it with its cloth cover. It has a little popper to keep it closed and it has a little pencil holder at the top which I've now put a short pencil in. So it's easy to grab it and not have to rummage around for a pencil. There is a photo here on the website.

Sketching in Choulex

2011-01-29T11:42:00.001+01:00

Choulex is a short drive away and my favourite place to walk at the moment. It has a little nature reserve so even in the winter there are at least some water birds and birds of prey to look for. We were out walking there this week when Mark took a day off and we managed to pick the best day of the week for the weather. It's been very dull and misty so the colours are all very muted but Wednesday gave us a little glimpse of sunshine. I don't like sketching trees usually but I love their bare branches and shapes in the wnter.

Around Geneva, when the leaves come off, you can see how very many trees have mistletoe growing on them. On some, there's so much mistletoe it looks as if the trees are still green! I loved how the mistletoe looked like Christmas baubles on this one.

As well as the wildlife, I love walking in Choulex for the magnificent panoramas. It's surrounded by mountains and it's absolutely amazing on clear sunny days. I haven't drawn those yet but I did draw the church in the middle distance with the bare vineyards in front of it.

An action shot! I've joined an international postcard exchange with the wonderful artists on the Sketchercise group, organised by Katherine Tyrrell of Making a Mark and Ronell van Wyk of African Tapestry. So I needed a photo of me sketching for an intro on the new group blog, Postcards from my Walk. I want to do more outdoor sketching this year so the postcard exchange has come about at the perfect time. No excuses now!

HB and B pencil in a little Green & Stone 'Travel Sketch Book'.

Little Big Cat

2010-12-27T17:44:00.000+01:00

Sadly, Little Big Cat had to be put down today as his health deteriorated dramatically over the last few days. He was my favourite of Mum's three cats, now looked after by my brother Steve. Little Big Cat defected over the garden wall from the next door neighbours with what we thought was his sister but we discovered later they were brothers! He was the bigger of the two and so was called Big Cat, but his smaller brother grew fat and so we called him 'little' Big Cat, and his brother Big Little Cat. I do wish Mum had given them proper names from the start - he always looked as if he should have been called Felix! He was a sweet, gentle little soul. We'll all miss him.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-26T17:36:00.003+01:00

A belated Merry Christmas! Thank you, as always, for visiting!

I'm a bit late with my Christmas wishes this year as I had a migraine on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day - just typical for me! It was what I call a 'walking' migraine so I was up and about and enjoyed the day anyway.

Unfortunately, I didn't get time to do a Christmas related drawing so I'm posting some little Christmas quilts I made a few years ago but have never posted. This one, above, is made from mini Log Cabin blocks and was a lot of fun to do. It probably says something about me that I especially enjoyed doing the plain blocks in the background!

This one is another mini quilt. It's a tweeked copy of a larger one I did at a workshop when I had just learned to quilt. The quilt teacher gave us a large pattern which would have covered a wall, so I cut that down to half and she wasn't impressed that I fiddled with her pattern! This is an even smaller version I did after that and the one I enjoyed most. It was simply shapes cut out and stuck on, then satin stitched around the edges - very easy.

A Christmas tree skirt which is supposed to have a slit into the centre so it can be draped around the base of a tree. I just preferred it like this so it is often used as a table cloth as the square fits one of our tables exactly.

One of the blocks. This is copied from a pattern in an American quilt magazine as I loved the colour scheme and tried to match it as much as I could (probably the only time I've wanted to do that). The stitching in the centre was done using a thick thread in the bobbin, marking and stitching the underside.

Unusually for me, I've made some definite resolutions for next year. This year, I've done quite a bit of 'spring cleaning' so to speak, and I feel ready to start the new year with a clean slate. I won't jinx them by writing about them - no grand schemes or big plans or anything like that, but small things I hope will make a difference and result in more art or creative things being done. 'Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans' as they say, so we'll see how it goes. Being realistic is one of my goals so I'm prepared for that too!

Gold digger

2010-12-10T19:46:00.000+01:00

The dangly earrings in my last drawing were all things I'd bought fairly recently. Up until about 2 or 3 years ago I rarely, if ever, bought jewelry for myself, unless it was a watch (like this one in a self portrait) from Marks & Spencer! I'm afraid if I was a gold digger, I'd make a pretty incompetent one! Like my clothes, I tend to have favourites that I wear to death and all of those in this drawing are 'golden oldies'. Top left is my wedding ring, bought in Norwich, made of intertwined white and yellow gold. It's odd, now I think if it, that I've been drawing things around me since I started blogging, but it never occurred to me to draw something I've worn nearly every day for over 20 years. Top right is another intertwined design, and co-incidentally called a Russian wedding ring. That was bought in Dubai in '96 and replaced a thin ring of the same design I'd worn for donkeys years before that. That old ring was taken to the souk, along with some old tat, and I bought a couple of nice things in exchange that I could get more use out of.

The earring on the right was one of the things I bought at the time. It's been worn to death and still is but the earring on the left is my all time favourite. The squiggle and dot design is something that comes out in my doodles so I was delighted to find this in the souk. It would still be worn today if it wasn't for the fact that the other one is missing. I lost it in Coral Bay, Western Australia, so I know where it is, not that that helps!

Unfortunately the little leaf earring is now without it's mate too. I lost it a couple of months ago but how, I don't know, because one day they were on the dressing table and a couple of days later there was only one. I'm the one that Paul and Alex go to when they can't find something. It's a bit of a joke that they can be looking for something for ages then ask me and I'll find it in an instant. I've turned the bedroom upside down, even turned the hoover bag inside out but I still haven't found it. Anyway, that is a pair that was bought in a jewelry shop on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. It was Paul's first holiday - he was 9 weeks old and I was carrying him in a baby sling so we got talking to lots of people on that trip. I remember talking to someone on the train and as we pulled into the station he said he hoped he wasn't staying at the 'Hotel de Cockroach' and we laughed. Turned out that that was where we were heading!

It's interesting to draw something you wear everyday and don't think about. I'm sure, if I hadn't lost the leaf earring, it wouldn't have occurred to me to draw these things. This week is the 30th anniversary of John Lennon's death so, as it happens, it's also the perfect time to 'rattle my jewelry' in remembrance!

Looking back, moving forward

2010-11-25T11:26:00.000+01:00

The first drawing I made specifically for the blog was of two presser feet for the Everyday Matters challenge called 'draw a collection'. That modest drawing had quite a big impact on me because up until then I did little or no sketching, I'd never completed a drawing in a day, and it opened a whole new world of drawing possibilities, namely almost everything around me! So I felt like going back to doing something similar as if was so much fun and it's been a while since I recorded some of those things that are personal to me.

It's funny for me to look back at some of the posts I wrote in the first year of blogging. I declared one of my pet hates to be black clothes, and especially people who dress head to toe in black. Five years on and most of my wardrobe and all of my shoes and bags are black! I didn't write about earrings, but if I had, I would have mentioned how much I disliked dangly earrings too!

As I said back then, I hate looking back, but looking back and seeing how much you've changed is fun. No point regretting the flares and platforms or worse, looking back and imagining everything was better then. I can't bear to listen to people who hark on about the past, airbrushing their own history, but it's good, once in a while, to look back and realise how much you've changed and how far you've come.

I drew this while I was stuck at home waiting for a delivery of firewood. It finally arrived just before 5pm, just as it was getting dark. Some things never change, do they?

HB and 3B pencil, Winsor & Newton cartridge paper

Gone with the wind...

2010-11-15T17:50:00.000+01:00

Since the blog is quiet at the moment, I thought I'd post something colourful from a while back. I came across this fabric postcard when I was going through my old posts looking for quilts for a new page (see tabs at the top of the page, under the header). What I find amazing is that I have absolutely no memory of doing this! I made it as a little gift for someone leaving the quilt group and I can't even remember who that was either! To say I have a poor memory is something of an understatement.

I've taken some time off from things I feel I 'should' be doing but I'm picking up where I left off with the large quilt I'm piecing now although eventually I want to play with making some more postcards. I really like this format and the challenge of coming up with little designs that work within the 6x4" format, playing with stitching and trying to work some beads into them.

At the same time, I came across another post about my Wobbly Bits quilt and yet again, I'd completely forgotten the process. Thank goodness blogging has it's uses. It was only when I went through my sewing machine manual that I remembered how I did the stitching (with a combination of mirror image, pattern end and other little clever tricks). For the postcard in the photo, I simply did the stitching with foot to the floor, one hand guiding the fabric and the other controlling the stitch width. I know I waffle on a bit on the blog, but if only I'd waffled a bit more about the postcards I might find out what materials I used because all that info is gone too!

Bits and bobbins

2010-11-03T17:58:00.002+01:00

It's a bit of a challenge - painting and quilting at the same time - but I'm hanging in there! So many artists beat themselves up for not focusing on one thing, for lacking staying power, but I have the opposite of this problem. I have to give up everything else to focus on one thing even though I'd really like to be doing lots of creative things.

I forced myself away from the sewing machine when I completed the top for a little lap quilt to finish something I started a few weeks ago. It's an edible squash, called a Turk's Turban, but I didn't quite finish it before I flew off to England. (A few words about the materials used etc. on my other blog, if you are interested.) Every autumn the supermarkets here have lots of lovely decorations like these, some edible, some not, for sale. I never used to like autumn but it's definitely grown on me since I've been here! I wasn't going to make a connection between this squash and the quilting but actually autumn does seem to trigger the desire to start sewing.

I've been busy cutting and sewing the blocks for this quilt, above, (still undecided about whether to make one or two) and had lots of squares left over so I put together a simple little 'lap quilt', below, which should be keep me cosy watching TV in the winter! Well, eventually, because I still have to put it together and quilt it, which is my least favourite part of the process! I've deliberately kept it small so it won't be a chore and finishing it will hopefully give me a boost when I need to quilt the next one.

The colours actually look terrible and dull in these photos and I can't get the true colours to show on any of the camera settings. But anyway, they are lovely warm autumnals- really! The background of the larger one is a soft, warm biscuit colour. I've laid out the blocks on the floor before putting them together just so I can see how it looks and see that the colours are fairly evenly distributed. It's been so long since I've done a large quilt I've gone about it quite slowly (cutting things as I go rather than doing what is called speed piecing) so that it all comes back to me and I don't make too many mistakes trying to go faster!

Finally, I've added two new pages to this blog. You will see the tabs for them at the top of the page, under the header. So far they are just images (portraits and quilts) but I will start adding a few details underneath each later.

Quilting bug

2010-10-26T20:05:00.001+02:00

The watercolours are on temporary hold at the moment. I had hoped to keep them up and do some quilting too but my room is covered in tiny fabric squares and triangles, my clothes are covered in threads and there are uncut fabrics and books all over the floor. I start off with good intentions but somehow it's just not possible to make a quilt - even a mini one - without it looking like a fabric bomb has gone off in the house!

I've decided I might be able to get two single quilts out of the fabric I'm using (a habit we adopted from our time living in Norway, where they sensibly use two singles instead of fighting over a double duvet!) and I want to get most of the cutting and piecing out of the way. Using Paul's room to set up my watercolours didn't work out as it's north facing and absolutely freezing in there now!

Even before this quilting bug got a hold, I'd been keeping an eye out for a couple of years for this book by Philippa Naylor. It always seemed to be unavailable but it suddenly showed up on Amazon with only 3 left in stock so I grabbed it while I could.

There are a couple of reviews complaining about the fact that it's not a 'how to' book, but it's everything I hoped it would be. Personally, I hate curved piecing so I won't be needing any techniques, but I was fascinated to hear about Philippa's life in Saudi Arabia and how she came to design and make her beautiful quilts. The book reveals even more than I hoped - being a curious sort! - and has lovely clear photos of her quilts, including my favourite -

which bizarrely is the only one of hers not to win a prize. Even though it doesn't show exactly how she pieces her quilts, it gives quite a lot of information about their construction so one can work it out. But I seriously doubt she has anything to worry about from anyone trying to copy her work - her quilts take months and months to make. From dyeing the fabric to quilting and beading, these are real labours of love and all have her signature style. For me it's a gem, not because I want to do what she does, but because it's one of those books that inspires and energises you to get on with your own work. Yes, well, just a soon as I've finished all this cutting, that is! I want to do some smaller things and get my beads out...and I need to do some free motion stitching again...So many ideas, so little time!

White cliffs of Dover

2010-10-18T17:18:00.000+02:00

Seen from the air on the way back home. Luton may not be terribly exotic, but you do get wonderful views over Paris and London on the way from Geneva. Sadly, a bit too misty for decent photos on the day but it was lovely along the coast.

New fabrics

2010-10-16T08:00:00.011+02:00

The photo doesn't do justice to these luscious fabrics at all, but I found these things in a lovely little quilt shop only a few hundred metres away from where Paul is staying! He may find his Mum visiting more often than he had bargained for! I don't know what triggered it, but the quilting bug suddenly seems to be affecting me again. I more or less completely stopped since I began writing this blog except for making a small wall quilt last year. I'm enjoying the watercolours but perhaps I need more variety now. I tend to focus exclusively on one creative activity for long periods at a time and I do feel that is the best way to improve, but maybe it's time to change that habit in order to keep the creative juices flowing?

The only trouble I have with quilting is that I get 'ideas overload' after a while. I find playing with fabric, beads and threads so inspiring that I get so many I don't know what to do first. I've now decided on the colour scheme and the pattern for the fabrics on the left. They're Modas, a collection of autumnal colours called Summer's End and I plan to do a single bed quilt, a scrap 'Jewel Box' with them. The fabrics on the right are batiks, my favourite, and my mind goes into overdrive with those! The two packs are called Bali Pops, 40 strips of batik fabrics 2 1/2" wide which will be perfect for the mini paper pieced quilts I love doing. But, with all those fabrics and colours, the possibilities are endless! I'll have to start keeping a notebook of ideas and filter them out otherwise, like spinning plates, they will all come crashing down and I'll end up doing nothing! I already have two other colour schemes worked out for two bed quilts as they are older (but gorgeous!) fabrics I'd like to use up. As every quilter knows though, no matter how big your fabric stash, when you get out your fabrics to make a quilt, there is always at least one colour that you don't have that you absolutely must have to make that next quilt!

Planes, trains and Milton Keynes

2010-10-15T15:00:00.000+02:00

Back to Blighty again, but this time I flew to Luton and back from Gatwick. The only time I've been to Luton was in 1982 but I can't say I remember it. This time though, I planned to get on a train to Milton Keynes and change from there. I was absolutely amazed to find that there is no train service between Luton airport and Milton Keynes and I had to get a coach! (I have an aversion to them, perhaps from seeing too many upturned in ditches on the news!) I took a bit of a dislike to Milton Keynes too - a decaying concrete jungle drawn with a ruler with an obvious attempt to hide it all behind trees. Normally I'd say trees are a good thing, but when you're walking and there are so many you can't see if you are heading for a shopping street or a motorway, it's a bit ridiculous! Other than the fact that the journey was a bit of a trek, it was actually very enjoyable. Paul has settled in to university life very quickly and the weather was incredibly warm and mild for the time of year.

I even managed a sketch while I was on the plane! We were stuck on the tarmac waiting for a slot so I drew what I could see out of the window. I liked the lettering and the dark fuselage of this cargo plane. The shading was darkened and smoothed out later with a tortillon. Drawn in my little Green & Stone sketchbook.

Sycamore seeds

2010-09-21T13:03:00.001+02:00

Sometimes you look at something you've seen for years and it's as if you see it for the first time. That happened this week when I went to collect the post. The post boxes are opposite the house under a sycamore tree. I watch these trees every autumn and spring because there is three in a row and they change one after the other, not together. The one on the left, behind the post boxes, changes first and just recently the little helicopter seeds have been falling - the leaves are slowly changing but are not quite ready yet.

So how come this is the first time I've noticed they have such beautiful colours? I swear they weren't so colourful last year! Makes me wonder how much of my environment I actually take in!

I did three drawings this weekend that I want to paint and this is the smallest, a sort of practice piece to work up to something larger, which hopefully I won't ruin! Painting with watercolours is a bit like walking a tightrope, one mistake and that could be it. This wasn't quite so bad but I had a bit of trouble with the shadow - that's always the hardest area for some reason - and because I used Neutral tint with a little purple, it stained. I like Neutral tint for shadows but I think I'm going to have to give it up until I'm more experienced.

TV sketches - Mastermind

2010-09-17T19:11:00.001+02:00

Some interesting profiles on Mastermind got me reaching for the sketchbook again. It's been a while since I did any drawing from TV and it certainly felt like it. The portrait above came out much bigger than normal, nearly going off the top of the page and the two below are different sizes too. I had been putting two and three on the same pages but I seem to have forgotten how to do that!

This man reminded me that you shouldn't judge a book by the cover! (He sounded a lot less fierce than he looked.)

I do love drawing people with glasses. You can use the glasses as a reference to work out all the other proportions of the face. As usual, these are all done on cartridge paper and I've used a tortillon to smooth the shaded areas. B pencil.

A few snaps..

2010-09-10T19:02:00.000+02:00

taken this morning on a walk near Choulex (which I have blogged about before here). It's only a few minutes drive away but it feels like it's in the middle of nowhere, with beautiful panoramic views. Today there was hardly a soul to be seen except for a couple of horses and their riders, out for a gentle stroll. Although the air is noticeably cooler now, it still doesn't feel quite like autumn yet as the sun is still hot. I don't know what kind of berries these are, above, but the leaves were just as bright - very striking and unusual.

I thought this fir tree was 'chocolate box' pretty.

Mostly though, I was really struck by all the decay. Whole fields of corn and other crops left to rot. I wonder why? It seemed like a terrible waste to me.

The beautiful sunflowers were now all dying too. I guess they are grown only for their seeds? Most of those seemed to have been eaten already by the birds.

An old discarded sofa bed, very handy if you feel like camping out under the stars. It always makes me curious when I see old furniture that has been dumped in odd places. Who, why, when, how? Why did anyone go to the trouble of bringing this old thing all the way out here? The mind boggles!

Charity begins at home

2010-09-06T15:59:00.005+02:00

The drawing is of one of the ladies in Mum's old care home. Mum was moved to another one this week, closer to home, and not before time. I would have thought it was obvious that even the elderly need more than to be plonked in front of a TV, but apparently not. Even after a year there, I noticed, on a paper in her room, that they couldn't even get her name right. My brother visited a few homes to find a better one and hopefully she will be happier there. As always you have to make a fuss to change anything and I do hope that more and more people speak out about the terrible standards in some of these homes.

Couldn't give a fig..

2010-09-05T14:23:00.002+02:00

I changed my hair colour this week. I'm not overly obsessed with the way I look, I'm happy as long as I don't scare any horses or small children, but I felt a change was needed. I've only changed it once before, about 6 or 7 years ago when I was living in Kuwait and I felt the lighter, blonder hair was softer, more in keeping with my personality. These last few weeks though, I've been feeling angry that my 'softer' side has been taken advantage of. For some reason, the hair colour no longer felt right or approprate and it had to go. As I came home from the hairdressers via the supermarket, I was looking for something to paint to kick start the creativity again, when I saw the figs. Perfect - so many people think they are lovely and sweet but they do nothing for me. It represents how I feel about one long, unpleasant and ultimately pointless situation. I have the patience of Job - I think it's fair to say my art reflects that - but a line was crossed and we all have our limits.

It's not as if I don't have more important things to worry about either. Paul is leaving home soon, having managed to secure a place at university. It's really not a good time to be leaving school, to put it mildly. I'm very proud of him, he's more than ready to become independent - and that is, after all, the whole purpose of parenting!

I've also been over to London again, to visit my mother who is in a home. I'm acutely aware that each visit may be the last and being in another country makes me feel helpless to do anything useful. In truth, there is nothing I can do - not in my role as daughter anyway, but still plenty to do as a parent.

However, unlike me, the tomatoes are hanging in there. I finished off this little watercolour sketch yesterday too, started in the height of the summer and left when my inspiration dried up. Although it's clear summer is in it's last throes, there are still a few tomatoes left to enjoy. And looking on the bright side, now that I'm painting, I have all those beautiful autumn leaves to look forward to!

Hypericum

2010-07-22T23:05:00.001+02:00

Did I mention it was hot?! I noticed, after my last post, that I've been complaining about the heat in nearly every post. Well, today we got cool air and rain - and what a relief! It wasn't so long ago I would have loved that heat and non-stop sunshine but not any more. I guess I spent too many years in the Middle East and the novelty wore off! (Actually, it's probably old age but I prefer the other version...)

Anyway, last weekend, when it was still baking, I painted these lovely berries, sitting at the kitchen table. I don't buy a lot of cut flowers but just at the moment there are some really interesting things around. I bought an unusual bunch which included these and set about painting them. Trouble is, the heat gets to me as quickly as it does the flowers so I only got one little painting done before everything faded. I planned to do three or four little sketches of the different flowers but spent too much time trying to rescue this one. I really enjoyed the berries and their lovely little leaves, but the two larger leaves are a bit of a disaster! I knew I should have just left them unfinished in pencil to highlight the berries, but I thought I needed the practice. A lot of layers later, and they are just about presentable but I really should have planned ahead, done one thing or the other, not piled on wash after wash and completely over-worked them. Then I got a bit of staining blue paint on my finger which I transferred to the paper and had to do a blue background to cover it up!

Not that it's a big deal - this is another page in my little Moleskine that has now become a sort of plant diary. I like that a theme is developing but it's also where I'm trying out things and learning so I'm not too worried about the end results.

I don't normally worry about the names of things either but I was interested to find out more about where these are from, and having got the name, I realise we have some growing in the garden! I'm not sure we have the same variety but I shall be checking to see what the berries look like when it's finished flowering!

To pick up on something shiny

2010-07-21T18:39:00.001+02:00

It was my birthday a few weeks ago. Normally I do a post about the art books I ordered but this year it's been so incredibly hot, I haven't had the energy. I do want to highlight one of the treats that arrived in my letterbox though as these are extra special! These are two of Andrea Joseph's Molezines and the word that came to mind as I opened the envelope and saw these was 'exquisite'! They really are beautiful little works of art!

I was surprised to see that she has called her Moleskine No. 1 'refuge of the roads'. I know we share a love of Joni's music but that album (Hejira) is my all time favourite. I keep thinking one day it will bore me, one day it will sound dated, but it never does. It sounds just as beautiful as when I first discovered it (so long ago, I can't remember) and it's the one album I can put on and instantly feel 'in the zone'. Moleskine No 2. continues the travel theme but this time illustrated by the souvenirs brought home which I think is such a brilliant idea! Above are two of my favourite pages from each.

I have to say, not only were the two little zines beautiful, but also all the little cards that come with them. Each zine has a glossy card of explanation (and drawing), there is a lovely card with one of her illustrations, a business card with a perfectly drawn, crumpled five pound note and even the stamps on the envelopes have a little drawing. Such attention to detail! As I said, they are exquisite and even more lovely in the flesh than they look on the screen. But don't take my word for it - get on over to Andrea's Etsy shop and see for yourself!

In a blue, blue sky

2010-07-21T17:45:00.000+02:00

I drove past a field of sunflowers this morning and had to stop and take a photo. This summer has been a scorcher (when it eventually arrived!) so the farmer must have a bumper crop this year. I've never seen so many bees buzzing around each head - they were definitely 'having a field day'!

A snail's pace

2010-07-05T09:09:00.000+02:00

Two pages of drawings in as many days is surely a record for me! It was a busy day of sports so I broke off to watch the Moto GP and the Wimbledon final during this. A good day for the Spanish, I wonder if they will make it a hat-trick and win the World Cup too?

I collected some leaves on Saturday evening, thinking ahead to what I was going to put on the page and found out that maple leaves and Clematis leaves fade very quickly so they have to be picked and painted on the day. When I went out to get a Clematis leaf, I spotted this little snail and thought he would be fun to include. There is a snail out there on the wall that hasn't moved for days. Well, just my luck to pick a hyperactive one! He is very cute though, I'll have to paint some snails sometime.

It's incredibly hot here at the moment so I've relocated downstairs to the kitchen. Apart from being cooler, I think I needed a change of scenery, so to speak. If there is one thing sure to kill off a conversation, it's someone asking 'OK what shall we talk about?'. Having a room of your own to make art is a luxury, I know, but going in there, it seems to ask the same question. A little break may help me to appreciate having my own space again!

Painted on Saunders Waterford HP paper with Sennelier, Winsor & Newton and Schmincke watercolours.

Chinese Jasmine leaves

2010-07-03T17:06:00.000+02:00

It's much too hot for sitting and painting in the garden now, so bits of the garden are being brought in to paint instead! The Chinese Jasmine is one of my favourites, not for the flowers or fragrance but for the colour of the leaves. They are mostly green but the odd one turns bright orange/red and it's such a striking effect. There are quite a few on the turn now so I have plenty of material.

This was painted in a small watercolour Moleskine using mainly Schmincke's beautiful Translucent Orange mixed with varying amounts of red and May Green with hints of Indigo and washes of lemon yellow.

More tomatoes

2010-06-28T17:10:00.000+02:00

Drawing and painting in the garden is so relaxing I couldn't resist having another go with the tomatoes. These are a much larger variety and have been quite slow to ripen but that may have been because the weather hasn't been great recently. Last week summer arrived with a bang and they've been coming on a treat. And they will be a treat too, if they taste as nice as the last ones!

Sennelier watercolours in a small watercolour Moleskine.

Two bees, or not two bees?

2010-06-25T00:30:00.000+02:00

A large bee spotted outside the Mairie's office. There are some really inventive displays around Geneva which are changed out with the seasons. I particularly like the planting displays on the roundabouts - a life size tractor made out of plants and flowers was one I saw recently but I couldn't stop anywhere near to take the photo!

Spotted in our garden about two weeks ago was this strange looking thing. I thought at first it was a bee but when I Googled it, I discovered it is in fact a Hummingbird Moth. I thought too that it might have been the one and only time I'd see it but I saw it again yesterday and twice today. It likes these flowers especially. I just loved the colours and the way they blend from yellow to deep red, it never occured to me that it would attract such interesting insects.

It was only after looking at the photos that I could see the length of it's proboscis. It's curled in the top photo and here I could see why it appeared to be hovering so far away from the flowers. There are tons more buds on the plant so hopefully it will be a regular visitor in our garden.

Chirpy chirpy cheep cheep!

2010-06-10T15:07:00.002+02:00

I had something completely different in mind for this page when I began with the woodpecker, but I enjoyed it anyway and it turned out better than I expected. I'm learning to be a lot less terrified of things going wrong although I really need to be more aware of which colours are staining! The top three birds are from Australia and the little dove a very popular bird in Dubai where we used to live.

I used mainly Winsor & Newtons with some Senneliers. On Saunders Waterford HP paper which just handles beautifully.

Our first tomatoes

2010-06-07T21:07:00.000+02:00

Growing tomatoes was just one of those things we said we'd do but somehow never got around to. Amazing really, now we know how easy they are to grow. It's fun too, to go out and check the progress - how tall they are getting, how they are ripening and counting how many more there are since yesterday! It's ridiculous how much pleasure it is to grow your own food, I can see us trying a few more things next year.

We haven't had the best start to the summer, with May being the wettest on record, so as this weekend was so hot and sunny, we enjoyed relaxing and pottering in the garden. So just to make it even better, I thought I'd get out my little Moleskine and add another garden sketch to it. The heat made this a fairly quick sketch, which I liked, though at times it dried a little too fast. I added the background and lettering afterwards. (Terrible wonky lettering, I know, but it is a tiny sketch!)

Another thing I haven't got around to is finishing my page of birds. I've been distracted playing with the watercolours again - I hope it's not just me that this happens to! - but I also decided to sort them out and get rid of the colours I wasn't using. Since the last photos I posted, I've added some new Sennelier colours to my collection and I decided to get tubes instead of pans so that I can put the more useful ones together for taking out (in the small palette on the left). The two little pans in the middle are Rose Madder Lake, which is a lovely colour but overpowering, and Cadmium Yellow Orange. I left them to dry overnight then added a bit more to top up and put a deeper yellow on top of the orange by mistake! So I just put it there to use it up, and the Rose Madder I wanted it where it would remind me to be careful with it.

The larger palette contains all the colours that Billy Showell recommends in her books and DVD's and I get along well with them, they are well thought out and I'm getting to know how to mix greens and browns from them. I've added a couple of colours to them partly because I had space but also to include some favourites. Cobolt Green stands out in the bottom row but I love the colour mixes it makes, especially with Indigo. And at the bottom far right, is Permanent Carmine, which I took a dislike to a couple of years ago and put away, took out and played with again, and I really like it. It makes beautiful purples with Indigo so again, I've put it where it reminds me to be careful with it. Apart from that I added a Sap Green a Neutral Tint and a couple of browns. I'm sure I'm going to like this arrangement but one or two things are bound to be taken away and added over time.

Bird doodles

2010-05-28T13:06:00.001+02:00

I posted this little watercolour of a kingfisher over on my other blog, Sketches by Fiz. I feel the title of that blog is slightly misleading because I post my best work over there and everything, including sketches, over here! So, the cropped version was posted there but this, below, is a little section of the page I'm working on.

I started with the woodpecker and intended to do a page of little birds in a sketchy nature journal style. I liked the little woodpecker peeping up from the bottom of the page but somehow the kingfisher ended up looking much more realistic and finished - quite bizarre when it wasn't intended! I lost a bit of momentum after that but I thought I would scan it and post it now just in case I ruin the rest of the page!

Back to my roots!

2010-05-11T16:23:00.000+02:00

Well, in a manner of speaking because watercolours were the first thing I remember using when I was painting as a child. (I even posted some of those same paintings here!) Anyway, still inspired by Billy Showell's DVD, I followed it, using my own turnip, to paint this. I've written about the colours used over on my other blog if anyone is interested. My turnip looked a bit different to hers in shape and colour so I followed her colours and techniques up to a point and then did a little improvising to give it a more yellow glow.

Before that, I've been doing loads of doodling - playing with colours and how they mix, how much water to use etc. I feel that doodling helps a lot even though it might look silly. I was actually considering starting another blog (just for myself) to keep a track of all the things I'm learning as there is so much to take in - and so much to forget!

I took inspiration from Nina Johansson who often takes a page and does a little drawing every day for a week to complete it if time is short. I used a page in my large Moleskine watercolour sketchbook and just added to it. It's funny to see what develops - I've no idea where those little circles with the hole came from but they were lovely to do and to see how colours mixed. I discovered how less paint but more glazes can really intensify colours. I discovered a brush I'd forgotten buying, by Raphael, that I really like using (moving away from brushes I had previously thought I 'should' like) and I'm getting a feel for the colours in different brands and which ones I prefer.

Dinky Schminckes

2010-04-29T10:29:00.001+02:00

The bad news - for my blogs and keeping them updated - is that I haven't been doing any drawing, but the good news, for me, is that I have finally found the commitment I need to sit down and practice my watercolours again. I dabble with them now and again but not long enough to make a difference. However, after watching Billy Showell's excellent DVD's I do feel I'm beginning to make a little progress. I think that finding the right mindset is the key to learning, and after watching Billy's clear instructions, it didn't seem quite so scary, that some degree of control is possible! I kept imagining that there is a 'right' way to paint with watercolours, that everyone else is an expert and they will always be alien to me, but actually, I realise, no-one ever feels that confident with them! So with that in mind, I can get on with the business of doodling, practicing and playing!

I know photos of sketchkits are always fun so I thought I'd show mine in the meantime. Top, left to right, a set of Senneliers ( I put them in an empty Rembrandt palette), a set of Schminckes and a set of Winsor & Newtons. Below, I'm following Billy Showell's colours (W&N's) and I set out mine similar to hers to make following the DVD's easier and also so I get to remember the names and characteristics. (And if I forget, they are set out in her books!) This is important because I've spent most time using the W&N's but I'm constantly forgetting the names of the colours which is quite annoying and time consuming. I thought it would be a good idea to put the Schminckes away and get used to one set before moving on. But later, I was looking for a particular colour I like and got the Schminckes out again and realised how much I like them.

The Senneliers are a new addition and I've taken to them straight away. Billy Showell (again!) highlighted these in an Artist's and Illustrator's article so I gave them a go. They are so much nicer than I expected. The colours are so clear and fresh and they mix beautifully. So now, after a little practice, I'm beginning to find my preferences and at the moment, I'm just using those and the Schminckes with a few W&N colours I like.

I'm not keen on Moleskines for drawing but I very much like their watercolour pads. These little ones are great for doodles and cheap enough not to get precious about. I've been attempting to draw and paint in the garden so this one and the next size up are just perfect. I am, however, finding that even these small palettes are quite cumbersome. I wonder has anyone invented a tiny one, with lots of compartments for colours, with a place to keep water, put a brush down, hold a tissue, not slide off the lap, easy to hold along with the sketchbook and close without leaking? Is that too much to ask?!

Caran d'Ache

2010-04-14T08:26:00.001+02:00

I finally got around to walking up to the Caran d'Ache factory which is situated not too far from me. I didn't expect to see anything like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, but I did hope it might be a bit more interesting than this! That sign on the top of the building looks as if it might be missing a chunk too.

I find it strange that in the few years I've been living here I've only seen their lorries about 3 or 4 times. The factory is right on the border of France so I wondered if maybe most of them go out to France? You would think since the factory is based here, we'd have a fantastic range of products but we don't. I've seen better displays and ranges in London.

Anyway, it was interesting to see the actual factory all the products come from. There was another building to the left and a large car park full of cars but it's a surprisingly small operation for such a world famous brand. Visitors aren't welcome here unless in large groups, otherwise I might have been tempted to go in and ask if they wouldn't mind extending the colours on that Museum range of theirs!

A quick sketch

2010-04-09T14:37:00.000+02:00

A modest little sketch I did on the walk last weekend. Not much to look at, admittedly, but I'm always chuffed when I manage an outdoor sketch and pleased too that it's done on the first page of my new little Green & Stone sketchbook. In keeping with it's old fashioned feel, I'm going to allow myself to do some good old fashioned simple sketches in it.

Is anyone else having trouble with the new Blogger template? It seems to take forever to get the text to align left and drawing and text swap places when I switch between compose and edit!

Great Friday!

2010-04-02T16:17:00.000+02:00

What is it about Good Friday? It just seemed to be one of those perfect days today and as Mark and I were out walking I remembered another wonderful Good Friday I blogged about here, in 2006. Must be a happy alignment of sun and planets or something!

We drove out to a beautiful area called Choulex, only 10 minutess away from us, but with lovely panoramic views of the Alps and what looked like a preservation area for birds. Lots of little moor hens, ducks, herons and croaking frogs and we spotted this -

a kestral in a nesting box, not too high up in the tree and fairly relaxed about being next to a footpath. There was a gathering of photographers at one of the large ponds all looking expectantly towards the south - I wondered if one of them had spotted something exciting today or did they come out regularly in the Spring to see the newcomers flying in? There were some serious lenses out there!

It's wonderful that the trees will soon be in leaf, but I much prefer them without, especially if I'm attempting to draw them!

Some old abandoned farm machinery.

Another great shape.

A lot of the trees around Geneva are covered in Mistletoe which looks great in the winter, when the leaves are gone.

And finally, a great resting place, but I think perhaps the view is wasted on the occupants!

Back from Blighty

2010-04-01T23:01:00.000+02:00

I was in London again this week. As usual it was a mad rush trying to do everything in too few days. Well, it was a mad rush once we got there - we had a 6 hour wait at Geneva airport and EasyJet were still having problems when we returned. I thought I might have had to forgo the usual visit to Green & Stone, but I just managed to scrape one in on the last morning before heading for the airport.

A few days before we went, I discovered a Billy Showell DVD on my shelf that I'd forgotten all about called Watercolour Fruit & Vegetable Portraits. I'm always saying I should practice more with watercolours and I do get a book out once in a while and give them a go. It never really comes to anything and I give up again, depressed. But looking at the DVD and seeing the brush, water and paint in action, I was inspired. Out came the paints again but still I'm struggling, with the paper mainly. So I decided to order brushes (and another DVD!) off Billy Showell's website and see if I can find some paper I like. The only paper that has come close was in a pad made by Green & Stone with Fabriano Artistico paper (140lb HP) but they are no longer being made. So with some advice from a very helpful assistant there, I came away with two papers to try - the two large watercolour sketchbooks on the right in the photo. One has the Fabriano Artistico paper but feels slightly rougher than the original Green & Stone version, and the second (with the black cover) is an RKB Fat Pad with Saunders Waterford HP paper. Well, stone the crows, I think I may have found a paper I like! This is really lovely paper. Not too smooth like Arches HP satine, but with just the right amount of texture. It doesn't absorb too quickly and the colours still look vibrant when they've dried.

The brushes too are great. I've been trying all sorts of brushes, including 'miniature' brushes, trying to get some sort of control. These have such a fine point and a good shape for holding water, that I feel I have more control than I did with the smaller brushes.

Also in the photo, top left, is a paper I tried last week - Minerva made by L'Atelier du Papier. It felt right but I noticed colours didn't look so bright and they also looked rough and grainy when dried, compared to another (a Bockingford) that I tried at the same time. I know finding the right tools for watercolour is a lengthy process of trial and error and I'm probably less patient because I didn't have too much problem with drawing - I settled on cartridge paper very early on and have always been happy with it. Watercolour is a whole other ball game but I do think, with this combination of brush and paper, I've taken one little step forward, at long last!

The small sketchbook, middle right, is a lovely little Green & Stone 'travel' sketchbook bought on impulse. It has a lovely old fashioned feel about it, with it's cloth cover and pencil holder. It also has a press stud to keep it closed. I think Winsor & Newton's travel journals would be just perfect if they didn't have those buttons and string. Very pretty, but not practical. I like the slight yellow tinge to the paper too, as if to emphasise it's old fashioned look. Only problem is, on the plane home, when I could have drawn something, I didn't want to ruin it! I wonder what these companies make of their customers - if the product doesn't suit us, we complain, but if it's perfect, we're too afraid to use it!

Sketches

2010-03-21T16:12:00.001+01:00

Some old sketches from Celebrity Mastermind. This is astrologer Russell Grant but I didn't recognise him at first. He looked so fierce and grumpy, not at all like the jolly joker he is (or seems to be).

I'm really posting them to make up for this very basic sketch I did this week! It's been far too long since I made an effort to sketch outside so I went out one day and resolved to bring back something, no matter how small. So I did a really quick sketch of the sign above the local shopping centre where I go to the supermarket. Yes, that same supermarket I mentioned that plays all the long-forgotten hits of the 80's. And funnily enough, where I was standing was by an open door to a gym and they were playing You Make Me Feel Like Dancing by Leo Sayer! Who says Geneva is stuck in a time warp...?

Raymond Blanc

2010-03-18T18:44:00.001+01:00

At long last, a new drawing! I've been doing other creative things whilst waiting for the drawing urge to return, including trying new recipes. One of the best TV programmes on at the moment is Raymond Blanc's Kitchen Secrets. Even Paul and Alex (Happy Birthday Alex!) were impressed when he was making a chocolate cup and saucer - both were just passing and stopped to watch the whole show! I made his 'Apple Tart Maman Blanc' and it was wonderful, and very easy, especially the pastry. Funny to think of the days when, to make good pastry, you were told to have cold hands, sieve the flour, the butter had to be cold, you had to handle it lightly and as little as possible, etc. Now you can whizz it up in a processor and you can even freeze it and grate it into a tin and it still works. I'm all for shortcuts if the result is just as good.

Hopefully, this drawing is just as good as if I fussed over it because actually, compared to how I used to draw, this is probably classed as unfinished. There are a few things I'm not happy with but it got to the point where I thought it was just 'good enough' to post so I stopped in order to get on with something else. The point of it was simply to get drawing again anyway, and also to get back to drawing on white paper as I'm getting a little lazy - it's so much easier on the brown paper!

By the way, I hope you like the new template. Sketches by Fiz has, again, a slightly darker one but I didn't want a drastic difference here, but something softer. Hopefully, it's also easier than the stark white on the eyes too.

Knit Twit

2010-03-03T10:04:00.000+01:00

I have a new toy. Not that I'm much of a gadget person but after a long, late, rush hour bus journey last October in London, the seed was planted. Paul was listening to music on his headphones and was calm throughout, whereas I - and the rest of the top deck -was stressed and cross! A young woman at the front of the bus had 'impressed' us all with the tales of her wonderful social life for the whole 45 minutes and was still going when we got off. The irritation and anger all around her was palpable but she was either enjoying it or oblivious.

Paul has been telling me for a while how great having headphones are on public transport, and after another day having my eardrums assualted by the 'musicians' (I use the term loosely) on the tram, he took me into town to look for an MP3 player. Apple is the only brand to get, he said, so off we went. Well, I had no idea that an iPod Touch is almost the same as an iPhone. All those great apps and whathaveyou, and no phoneline charges. Brilliant idea. OK, I admit I'm really impressed, there must be something to this Applemania after all!

So Paul is the one who told me that having a Twitter account might be fun. I had decided I'd never have one of those but actually I'm finding it saves me time! Just following a few people and taking a few minutes to check the updates makes you feel connected with the world, then you can get on with your life. Following blogs takes a lot longer so I'm always trying to manage my time with those. Managing my time online is something I've been working on for the last few months (if not years!) and I feel I've finally got a handle on it now. I find it ironic that Twitter should make things easier when most people complain about it. I guess it's how you manage it.

Knitting is sort of related because in my effort to wean myself off the computor, I've been thinking about things I'd like to do if I didn't have a blog to update. It's easy to get caught up in a cycle of updating, quick drawing, updating, without taking some time out to assess where it's all going. Am I doing it for myself or the blog? Is it still fun? (Yes, it is, and this won't become a knitting blog but it's good to do other things now and again to keep things fresh!)

I don't know where the idea of knitting came from, but when I was last in London, I had a look for some old knitting books I had in the 80's - I knew Mum would still have them! I used to knit during tea breaks when I was working and there were some lovely yarns and patterns around at the time. I wondered if those books still looked as good as I had remembered and yes, they do! A bit dated, but lovely nonetheless. So much is made of the 80's being tacky but actually there was a lot of lovely colours around then and it wasn't all bad taste.

Some of the pages. I think the model in the middle is actually a very young Lisa Butcher. How clean and groomed they all look though, compared to models today!

I love the soft colours of the jumpers on the right and that one on the left - I can almost hear Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Then Jericho, Aztec Camera etc., in the background! Happy days!

I managed to find a lovely little yarn store here and bought two colourways - I'm thinking of making a couple of scarves. Eventually. First though, I might just attempt this little guy here to get up to speed again. There are some funky tea cozy patterns out there I'd like to try too! Even though I love knitting, it was always about the pleasure of just doing it rather than having a finished product!

Mastermind sketches

2010-01-27T22:59:00.004+01:00

Some wonderful faces came up this week. The face of the man at the top here looked as if it was straight out of the 1500's - I thought Holbein would have loved to capture it!

I liked it so much I did a profile too (top). They're not exact likenesses but I quite liked the drawings anyway. The other two faces were fun and just as interesting. I think I'm addicted to this show!

Deputy Dawg

2010-01-24T14:48:00.005+01:00

With Jesse wrapped up and flying off to Idaho before I could change my mind (!), I was still in the mood for drawing dogs. Then I remembered I still had an unfinished Yorkie lying around here somewhere so I fished it out and threw colour at it with abandon! I wasn't too happy with it before so I felt there was nothing to lose anyway. It still wasn't quite working until this morning. I was looking at a fantastic drawing on Tommy Kane's blog this week and marvelling at his vibrant colours and thinking about how interesting his crosshatched backgrounds are. My drawing was looking flat so I added various spots of colour in my background (which doesn't show too well in the scan) and it looked a lot better. It's still nowhere near as brave as I want to be, but I think it's a step in the right direction anyway!

Jesse

2010-01-21T16:43:00.003+01:00

This is a drawing of Jesse, now winging it's way to Idaho! Jesse was Sheila's dog (of Idaho Beauty's Creative Journey), now sadly missed and fondly remembered. She was a joy to draw but nerve wracking too. In fact, it wasn't until I Googled black labs that I realised how unique Jesse looked and how I had to get her exactly right! Forty pages of images later I could find nothing like her! I'm much more comfortable drawing people as I can see how close the likeness is, but I think, after drawing Jesse, that getting animals right might actually be more difficult. I'm sure that most of us see a 'cat' or a 'dog' but the owner sees the life, the personality, the uniqueness so much clearer. I had a Blue Burmese, some years ago, and I very rarely see a photo that looks just like her.

Sheila and I met online some years ago at AQL, a group for quilters. I wonder are we the only two quilters to be equally passionate about MotoGP?!

New books

2010-01-06T18:36:00.004+01:00

Every Christmas I like to treat myself to a nice book or three but this year, what with having the 'flu, I didn't have the energy or inclination to do the research (i.e. browse Amazon!). But Katherine Tyrrell, of Making a Mark Reviews highlighted two books that I thought looked very good - Imaginative Realism by James Gurney, and Taking a Line For a Walk by Christopher Lambert. The first has so much information packed into each page it's going to take me a while to go through it but it's an excellent book and useful for all artists and not only those who need to paint what doesn't exist.

The second is a little gem - like having someones sketchbook in your hand.

Lambert walked from Le Havre to Rome and used a page a day to write and illustrate the journey. The handwriting is quite small but not too difficult to read and at the edge of each page is a handy little panel with some of the text of the page and highlighting the date and location in bold. Apart from that unobtrusive little panel it looks just as his sketchbook must have done. I love that his sketches are quite simple - no elaborate shading or detail and coloured simply in coloured pencil (no impossibly beautiful and time consuming watercolours making us mere mortals feel inadequate!) - but I'm also delighted that he hasn't attempted anything fancy with the text (as it was never originally intended to be seen by others). This is, I think, real journaling, not a self conscious attempt to create something pretty or precious.

Paint Amazing Watercolors from photographs by Henry W. Dixon looked like the very basic step by step that I think might help me get out of my rut with watercolours.

As I was looking at Amazon a name caught my eye and I realised I had one of Gwen Diehn's books already - The Decorated Page - which has some lovely ideas for decorating pages. I bought this one - The Decorated Journal - as it seemed to go one step further and I wasn't wrong. It's a beautiful book with loads of inspiring ideas and practical tips.

I have a lot of books with styles unlike my own and ideas for things I'll never do, but if they inspire and get the creative juices going and get me fired up and drawing in my own sketchbooks, then they are worth having. I'm not sure I'll ever totally be happy with a paintbrush, but I want to get into journaling for myself so I predict both Lambert and Diehn's books are going to well thumbed and poured over again and again!

Celebrity Mastermind

2010-01-05T10:29:00.005+01:00

Alastair Stewart and Saira Khan (no, I'd never heard of her either) on Celebrity Mastermind. Mastermind is one of my favourite programmes for the profiles and close-ups! I'll put a series of work in progress drawings of this on my other blog, Sketches by Fiz, later.

I haven't been drawing very much because the light has been so bad (when I'm using colour I prefer natural light) but since we've had so much snow the light is just perfect! If only the nights weren't so long! Now, I have to go out, I may be some time...

And a Happy New Year!

2009-12-31T16:50:00.004+01:00

Christmas ends here for me - the decorations will come down tomorrow morning and the tree will be crackling in the fireplace in the evening. Needless to say, these chocolates hadn't a hope of making it to New Year's Day anyway! I did plenty of indulging, now it's time to get back into (some sort of) shape!

I must say, I really enjoyed this Christmas. Probably because I'd just had the 'flu and was feeling really good just to be back to normal and healthy again. Christmas is a time to indulge in all things tacky but I went for some tasteful decorations this year and Poinsettias were my main feature. I bought one large one that has some wonderful shades of deep, deep red and green but I haven't managed to take any photos that do it justice. I started a new habit this year of putting flowers and leaves in the back of my sketchbooks and pressing them. Anything that caught my eye, I'd put in and forget about so that they'd make a nice surprise when I re-discover them. I found some maple leaves I'd put in there months ago and was delighted that they'd kept a lot of their colour so I'm trying the same with the Poinsettias.

Every year, at this time, I look forward to reading the plans and resolutions that art bloggers make. I'm not normally one for making resolutions myself, but as this year was most notable for a lack of inspiration I'm resolving to allow myself more freedom - to make mistakes, to enjoy, and not worry if what I draw is 'good enough'.

I took this photo in my garden this afternoon, of the buds on a Magnolia, and in a way it represents my resolution. We're told that spring begins around March or April but there is evidence, if we open our eyes, of spring in winter and of autumn in summer. There aren't really four distinct seasons, just one continuous cycle. It reminds me of the danger of letting what you hear override what you see or feel. This year my cutting back on blogging reinforced why I blog, and while so many art bloggers are turning to Facebook and Twitter to get noticed, I realised that that wasn't my motivation. I realised too, when I was looking for the old Christmas drawings, that I'd been blogging more than 4 years, not, as I vaguely thought, about 3! So I guess I'm one of those 'in it for the long term', and if I'm not looking for fame, fortune and high rankings I may as well relax and enjoy drawing for myself! 2009 turned out much better than it promised at the start and 2010, I know, is going to give me at least a couple of big challenges so I think I can allow myself to relax as far as my art is concerned!

Happy New Year all!

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-24T11:50:00.000+01:00

In the interests of reducing my carbon footprint - all the rage at the moment! - I'm recycling an old Christmas drawing. No electricity was wasted on this as I didn't -

crank up the radiators
boil any kettles for tea
burn any bulbs or lamps
listen to any of my CD's
procrastinate on the computer

No trees were cut down to make paper or pencils and I wasn't sitting on my derrière getting fat and unfit, thus becoming a burden to the healthcare system and society in general.

Phew, maybe I should give up altogether and save the planet! Actually, the boring reality is I was struck down with 'flu so even though the spirit was willing, my body was having none of it! In fact, I hope to do more drawing than this year, now I'm done with the navel gazing. It was a bit of a quiet year on the blog and even more reason for me to be grateful that anyone still reads! So thank you very much for visiting and I hope you have a very Merry Christmas and a very happy, healthy and creative New Year!

Wallander

2009-11-28T17:41:00.006+01:00

This is the second time I've drawn from the TV series Wallander, but this time it's from the original Swedish series. Kenneth Brannagh's portrayal of Wallander was so good I didn't think I was going to enjoy this one so much but it's the one show I don't want to miss each week. It must be because the characters are so well written. The Swedish version has a lot more humour in it and Wallander is very much part of a team, his character doesn't dominate at the expense of the others. Also, Mark speaks fluent Norwegian, and I know a little, so we have fun listening to the language - especially all the swear words! Here I have drawn 'Stefan', top, a character who is quite intense and aggressive but often in inappropriate situations which makes it funny, Wallander, centre, and his daughter 'Linda' below, who has an on-off relationship with Stefan.

Sadly, not many series were made and I learned recently that the actress who plays Linda, Johanna Sällström, is now dead, having committed suicide a couple of years ago. I don't know anything about her except that she was in her 30's, obviously very attractive, and had received awards and recognition for her acting. She left behind a young daughter. She seemed to have everything going for her and it did make me wonder what strange creatures we are, that our perception of our lives can override the reality of it. There was something quite melancholic about her and I tried to capture that in the drawing.

I've started yet another sketchbook with these three drawings - I'm now putting the TV sketches in a rectangular Winsor & Newton journal (similar to these) so I can spread out a bit and work slightly bigger. I have sketchbooks all over the place so I'm now losing track of where everything is! Oh, and I should say, these were intended to be quick sketches to get warmed up for a larger drawing I'm going to do, but I got a bit carried away with the shading! They were a lot of fun to do, so I guess that extended break from drawing had the desired effect!

Drat!

2009-11-25T13:25:00.002+01:00

And double drat! I pressed one of these keys and lost almost all my blog links! I've no idea how that happened. And because I couldn't decide which links go here or on my other blog, I opted to put them all here so I can't copy across either. And because I'm so scatty, some I subscribe to on Bloglines and some I check for updates here ( it's quicker and I like the little colour pictures!). And, to make matters worse, they were all the lovely bloggers who have been kind enough to link me! So please bear with me, I'll try and put them all back, but it's going to take a bit of time...

Oh well, as I'm here I should just say that I've been taking a break from the drawing. I've done this before, when the time spent on the PC starts getting too much, but this time I think a much longer break was necessary. It seems as if I'm swimming against the tide because most artists are branching out into Facebook and Twitter and here I am struggling with one or two posts a week on a blog! The last portrait I did was a disaster but I scrapped it and started again, only for the next attempt to fail. That's never happened before so I took that as a sign to stop and recharge. Time too, to let a realisation sink in - just as I allowed myself to feel comfortable with calling myself an artist, I came to the conclusion that the word doesn't amount to a whole hill of beans! Sad to think that the art world I so wanted to be a part of for so many years doesn't actually exist and it seems so obvious in hindsight. On the positive side, it does allow me throw out some ballast and concentrate on other more important things.

To start with, though, that will be restoring my blog links! Hopefully, after that, a somewhat normal blog service will be resumed!

Geneva this week

2009-11-14T13:03:00.005+01:00

My brother popped over this week which gave me a great excuse to act like a tourist and do things I don't normally do. I read an online article a few months ago detailing the more unusual things to see and do in European cities and I clicked Geneva in anticipation - maybe it's not so boring after all, maybe it's just that I haven't explored it enough -but no, the same old places! So we did the boat trips, the chocolatiers, the Old Town etc. I still manage to get lost in the Old Town, which isn't a bad thing because there is always something new and interesting to discover. Probably the one thing you have to do in Geneva is climb to the top of Cathédrale St-Pierre to see the views across the city and the lake (above).

You can take little boat trips across the lake using the same ticket for the buses and trams so instead of walking along the jetty where the Jet d'Eau is (it was too cold to get near that spray!) we took the boat to see the view from the opposite bank. As we stood admiring the view, shivering in our winter woolies, I was amazed to see this couple pass us -

Yikes, some people are hardy, aren't they? They looked like they were enjoying themselves too!

I see these little gulls all the time but it was only when we stopped to look at the views that I noticed how cute they are!

Capsule of a Sunday morning

2009-11-02T08:31:00.004+01:00

Ikea bed Ikea pillow Migro sheets bright yellow cup tap water Liz Earle Orange Flower Hand Wash Tweezerman tweezers Liz Earle Cleanse and Polish Hot Cloth cleanser Eve Lom face cloth Elvive Full Restore Replenishing Shampoo Liz Earle Energising Body Wash Wilkinson Sword M&S face cloth 100% cotton towel bought in Kuwait Liz Earle Botanical Body Cream No.7 Protect and Perfect Beauty Serum N0.7 Protect and Perfect Day Cream Schwarzkopt Taft Volume Power Styling Mousse Elizabeth Arden Green Tea deodorant Sloggi undies M&S bra M&S grey joggers M&S grey cashmere jumper Per Una Faux Fur Boot Slippers Braun hairdryer Baby Coque eggs bought in France Coop Perla tomatoes Doppelrahm de la Gruyere Denby plate Victorinox knife Jura Sel Jamie Oliver peppercorns Rosalp Gezalzene butter ID Design leather sofa M&S cushions M&S throw Chanel reading glasses JVC remote JVC flatscreen TV Andrew Marr Show Joan Bakewell papers Sting's beard Kleenex tissue Dell Inspiron BBC Online Telegraph Times Online Stephen Fry leaving/back on Twitter Jeremy Clarkson on rainforests AA Gill on Emma Sky News Adam Boulton Jon Bon Jovi's expressions Steve Redgraves's book Bosch dishwasher Denby plates and cups Tefal saucepan Braun kettle Lipton Yellow Label Tea Coop Drink 2.5% milk Miele tumbledryer from Norway Miele washing machine Le Chat washing powder bought in France called Persil here Coop washing up liquid Hawking wok M&S thermal vest M&S thermal socks M&S red fleece A Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi The Ideal Guide to Acting Sounding and Shrugging Like the French by Charles Timoney...

I borrowed this idea from a page in The Art of Looking Sideways by Alan Fletcher. It was called Capsule of a Spent Day and written by Marina Warner. Basically it's a description of her day by listing all the brands she uses (and a couple of extra thoughts here and there). I found it really fascinating although she is a working woman and describes her day from the moment she wakes up to the moment she gets back into bed - I've described only a very lazy Sunday morning! (It would be twice as long, methinks, if I'd put some make-up on!) She put in a random scattering of commas and I left them out completely as I quite liked having to decipher her list.

Back from Blighty

2009-11-01T13:15:00.008+01:00

I should have known better than to promise photos from London. As usual it was a mad rush from start to finish. Paul and I went out for the first few days to do some shopping and then on Sunday he flew back for the start of school and Mark flew out and I joined him to stay at the Millennium Hotel on Sloane St.

The first time it occurred to me to take out my camera was when this dessert arrived - but I should have take the shot before I smudged the sauce, not after!

The view from the bedroom window wasn't what you'd describe as beautiful, but it was fascinating. We could see all the way from Harrods and the V&A on the left to the skyline of the city and St.Paul's to the right. ( The tower in the photo above is the Hilton Hotel on Park Lane.) Right opposite us, in what must be very expensive apartments, we had a nightly show by one of the residents who was fond of walking around in front of the window in his birthday suit, but I was more interested in trying to spot if Louis Vuitton actually had any customers (none that I saw), or if the traffic jams ever eased on Sloane St (only late at night/early in the morning).

The last day, when I took this photo, was a bit grey and damp, but the whole week was amazingly mild, certainly much milder than Geneva.

The best thing about the hotel was it's location. Between Fendi and Gucci at the top end of the street opposite Harvey Nichols and a short distance from Harrods. Not that I bought anything from these shops - I found almost everything I was looking for in Marks and Sparks in Marble Arch! But it was lovely to 'step out' in the evenings for a stroll and take in the sights and the atmosphere around Knightsbridge.

Mark thought the hotel was disappointing - and I admit it wasn't as 'swanky' as I'd imagined for somewhere in that location - but I liked it better for that. I didn't feel at all out of place - no-one on the door looking you up and down! -the atmosphere was very relaxed and welcoming and it was certainly handy for dropping bags off and starting again! I had to be careful not to be lulled into a false sense of security though with the lovely weather, because really I was out to buy some serious winter woolies as I think we're in for a very cold winter here this year.

It was a mad rush during the week because of course I was there to see Mum too, but getting to and from the nursing home took up the best part of the day. Still, she was looking well and Paul was happy to explore places on his own that he hadn't been to before and I had the weekend to relax and do my own thing so there was no stress. But I have to say, from a nursing home to a Knightsbridge hotel, this trip was a bit surreal.

London calling

2009-10-20T17:39:00.004+02:00

Our new car was delivered today - a silver Nissan Qashqai - which is unfortunate timing for me because I'm off to London tomorrow.

Perhaps I'm just odd but when I was living in London I used to notice Swiss number plates and think how nice it would be to have one. Not just Swiss number plates either, but specifically those from Geneva with the letters GE. I've no idea why that was, but it does seem strange now looking at them on our own car!

Paul (being a real petrolhead!) thinks a Qashqai is nothing to blog about, but I'm very happy with it, and especially after three years of having to lug heavy bags home from the supermarket almost every day! I can give my two wheeled shopping 'chariot' a well needed rest now! I had a Hyundai Santa Fe before and, again, it was nothing to blog about but it was a lovely car to drive especially for a short person like me, it was a lovely 'fit'. So when we set out to do some test driving a couple of weeks ago (we were very lucky to get the model we wanted, normally there is a waiting list of months) I didn't think I'd find something as nice. The Hyundai dealer is the other side of the lake so that was a bit impractical for servicing. We were on the way to a Seat dealer when we remembered the Nissan dealer is only up the road so we popped in. I didn't expect to be so impressed but it's a lovely thing to drive and it has more extras than I thought was possible to stuff in a car. Deal done! Just in time for winter too because it's absolutely freezing here in Geneva this week!

I hope to have an interesting photo or two to post of London as I'll be meeting up with a man at the weekend and staying in a rather swanky hotel 'a short walk from Harrods'...

Do not adjust your mind...

2009-10-15T08:58:00.006+02:00

there is a fault in reality.

That's a quote from a very interesting book I'm reading - or rather dipping into now and again as it's absolutely enormous and packed with ideas and info! - called The Art of Looking Sideways by Alan Fletcher.

The quote came to mind when I read an article in this morning's Telegraph about Damien Hirst's latest exhibition. Well, it's a relief to hear that more people are noticing (check out this lot) that the emperor is indeed wearing no clothes, but on the other hand, it beggars belief that it took so long! Some of us didn't adjust our minds to this skewed reality in the first place.

There are numerous little quotes and snippets from the book that I could post in relation to this but here's one I liked -

Robert Persig: ' We build up whole cultural patterns based on past "facts" which are extremely selective. When a new fact comes in that does not fit the pattern, we don't throw out the pattern. We throw out the fact'.

Based on that, I think it will take a while yet for the so-called experts to admit they were fooled. Actually, that's too much to hope for. No, they'll save face by simply jumping on another money making bandwagon and declare that period so passé. Or they would. It's just that - awkwardly - there is no sign of the next bandwagon on the horizon and in the meantime they've been playing the charade for so long it's hard to keep it up! Things could get interesting...

Mad about lemurs

2009-09-30T14:56:00.005+02:00

A fairly quick drawing of a Brown Lemur. During my creative slump, someone said to me that I should think about what I like and draw those things that make me happy. Well, lemurs are pretty high up the list. I've always had a 'thing' about Madagascar since I first came across it in an atlas and knew I had to go there.

This is one of my favourite photos - me with a Black lemur on Nosy Komba, a tiny island of the northwest coast of Madagascar (Nosy, pronounced 'nossy', means island). Black lemurs are my favourites and this one is male, the females are brown with white tufts around their ears. So it was a really special moment (I still remember how soft and grippy those little fingers felt!) and to top it all, the person taking the photo was my future husband, but I had no idea at the time! Lemurs are supposed to be our distant cousins and I think I can definitely see a family resemblance with the nose! I must be related to my other favourite animals too - chocolate brown Burmese cats and Dachshunds!

It unusual for me to do a 'fairly quick' drawing of anything with fur, but with this one I managed to create most of it with suggestion and shading but I've added details here and there and around the edges to give it an illusion (I hope) of having more detail than it actually has. On the back, I worked in some shading with a chocolate brown (can you tell I love brown?) and found that a waxy black Luminance pencil brushed over on its side gives it an illusion of having a really thick fuzzy coat.

A lick and a promise

2009-09-17T08:37:00.007+02:00

Amazing what a lick of paint can do. This is the house now

and this is it before, from a post dated June 2006, when we first moved in.

There's not much we can do about that concrete balcony but it does at least look better for being cleaned (and having some plants, including my Forest Flame!). Strangely, there is a lot of concrete used in many houses and buildings in Geneva.

The kitchen could probably do with being replaced but apart from that we've got very little left on our 'to do' list. The whole of the interior was painted cream, replacing dark and depressing mustards and clashing yellows and pinks, the baths were replaced with showers, the grass (which was full of dog poo and probably a health hazard!) quickly replaced by a patio along with the stained steps outside the back door, and all the bulky, boring, dark green firs replaced with more variety and colour. It feels so much lighter and fresher, inside and out. Next week we'll be getting a new porch fitted at the front (keep the winter draughts away, hopefully) and delivery of a new dining table and chairs. It took no less than 3 years to find something we liked and in fact for the last year we'd more or less given up. There are so few furniture shops here we wondered where on earth people find anything for their homes. It's either contemporary/minimalist/expensive or very old fashioned/expensive. We found some suitable bar stools for a new counter in the kitchen in IKEA (on the other side of the lake) and we've been gravitating towards the kitchen since then! That inspired us to go on the hunt again and see if we could finally get the dining room sorted too. Come to think of it, this year there are only 1 or 2 rooms that haven't been changed in some way so it really feels great to get it all sorted.

Along with my new desk, I've added 3 more bookshelves (IKEA is great for those!) so now I have all my quilting and art books together. Still no room for the quilting magazines languishing in the bomb shelter though. Soon there should be no excuses for not drawing and in fact I should have posted a new drawing by now except it all went 'Pete Tong' and had to be scrapped! The last few portraits were of faces I found interesting but it's the faces of people I connect with in some way that I find the most difficult - Paul and Alex being the most difficult of all - and this one is definitely one for the list now. I'll try again and maybe it will be up in a couple of days. Oh well, you win some you lose some!

A cool drink?

2009-09-09T13:39:00.004+02:00

I was a little surprised to see this in my local supermarket. My idea of a drugs overdose would be a strong cup of coffee, so I haven't a clue whether cannabis is illegal or not here! It did make me wonder though, what is a 'fantastic natural feeling' supposed to be?

Bits and bobs

2009-09-06T11:58:00.007+02:00

I should be posting more often or I wouldn't have to create a jumble of a post like this one, but the summer holidays always catch me out - when I think I'll get loads of drawing done, I end up doing even less. This (above) is what I saw when I woke up yesterday morning and looked out the window. It looked to me like a Christmas tree with it's baubles floating away! The temperatures in Geneva were really high this summer but last week there was a sudden change and loads of rain. This week we have showers but it's much more pleasant now as there is still warmth in the sun but the air is fresher. There is no doubt though, summer is over and winter is on it's way.

Sometimes I think my posts are really boring for people to read but I try to remember that I'm writing for myself too! For instance, this is an old drawing but I went to the opticians this week and tried to remember when I last went. Ah, that old drawing - I drew it exactly two years ago so my blog helps me remember things I would normally forget! Glasses may be a thing of the past now; I went to the place for laser eye surgery centre in Geneva this week which just happens to be within walking distance of our house. It took two years to pluck up the courage to make the appointment and I'm glad I did. I found out that my eyes are not that bad - a borderline case for surgery -so I'm going to go for contact lenses instead. I was really impressed with the ophthalmologist, I learned much more about my eyes and my prescription in that free consultation than I have from trying to quiz all the opticians I'd seen previously. (He could have 'sold' me the surgery but instead very clearly explained why borderline cases, especially with long sightedness, are more difficult to treat correctly.) The last pair of glasses I got for reading, above right, I'm sure are not quite right as they've been giving me eye strain. Hence, the decision to (literally) cut out the need for them completely and be done with the hassle. It was a huge relief to know it wasn't necessary. I tried out some contacts and walked around for half an hour with them in and they felt great. With glasses I feel like I'm looking at life from behind a window and I have tendency to bump into things!

And speaking of bumping into things, here is something Mark disturbed when he was gardening - a Death's-Head Hawkmoth! He had his head in the hedge (with his hat on!) sorting out a broken irrigation hose and felt something on his ear. It walked up under the rim and when he took it off he was surprised to see this huge thing. (Not as surprised as I would have been, that's for sure!)

I had heard of these things but I had no idea of just how big they are! He was hissing and spewing a white liquid, obviously very miffed he'd been disturbed but he didn't fly off (thank goodness, or I would have legged it!) so Mark brought him over for his photo shoot and then popped him back in the hedge.

I'm not struggling with inspiration, as before, but we've been busy sorting the house out. We've finally got rid of the last of the awful colours the previous owners left us with as we've had the painters in. They painted the laundry room and bomb shelter in the previously dark and dingy basement, which I didn't want to tackle ( I painted all the interior walls but those, a couple of years ago) but the main reason they were here was to paint the exterior. After the shower debacle, I was dreading any more workmen in the house, but they did it all so quickly and efficiently, it was virtually painless! The dusty, nasty, pale pink has gone and the house is now a bright and clean cream. It feels like we've just moved in to a new house so it's inspired us to do a few things inside that we've been putting off. Regular readers might remember me writing off 2009 in February, but things have changed considerably since then. It sounds strange, but having the house done has sort of put a line underneath that. Those worries are behind us, and house now feels like 'ours' finally. So, no new drawings. But contrary to advice about how you must sketch every day or the world will implode, it hasn't and I'm not worrying about it, just happy to enjoy how things are ticking along at the moment!

Sinéad O'Connor

2009-08-23T12:07:00.009+02:00

This 'lack of inspiration' malarkey was starting to get on my nerves so I decided I needed to snap out of it and get drawing again. I saw Sinéad's face and just thought that's it - no other reason really. I don't like or dislike her, but she is very beautiful even without make-up and a shaved head - I wish I could get away with it! I've listed the pencils used on my other blog, but basically I stuck with the Derwents and again the paper is by Paperchase. I think I'm getting a bit lazy but it really is so much quicker to draw on brown paper. The scans are always disappointing but in reality the colours look quite vivid against it and even though the technique is quite 'rough and ready' compared to the way I work on white paper, the same subtlety is possible in a fraction of the time.

I'm throwing this one in as it's not worth a post on it's own and I forgot to post it. I really ought to remember how much fun it is to sketch from TV. Even though they are not brilliant I really love doing these. I liked the woman's face at the top as it was so flat and she had a funny expression, and the girl below as she had, er, rather a large nose. She looks almost like a cartoon so I just played that up with some colours. I've now got myself a pencil wrap and it's made drawing from the TV a lot easier. I just unfold it in front of me rather than hauling a big tin of pencils from my room.

Inspiration

2009-08-15T17:00:00.003+02:00

Alex bought a new computer, just as Paul did a couple of years ago, to put together himself over the summer holidays. That meant he needed a larger desk and Alex decided he rather liked mine...Long story short, I've been without a desk and chair - and my laptop! - for a few weeks while he got sorted. Inspiration had dried up so that wasn't a big deal. However, I thought I might as well replace my desk with a longer one, get rid of the little 'overflow' desk I had (bit of an eyesore) and this led to (what I thought would be) a 'bit' of re-arranging in my room. Well, one thing lead to another and I've practically re-arranged the whole house! The bomb shelter has never looked so tidy! The extra length of the desk allows me to keep the sewing machine on it without having to clear everything else off. Funnily enough, it was putting the machine on it that got the creative juices going again but I'm not going to analyse that too much. Here's how it looks -

and here is how the old desk looked (below) when I took a photo of it in Kuwait. No space for sewing and drawing - it was one or the other.

These are the fabrics on my desk at the moment.

I've been mulling over 'inspiration' and why it ebbs and flows and although I think it's a natural process and best not forced or worried about, I do think colour may be the key for me to unblocking it. At the same time as I was looking at the painter's colour swatches (of the last post) I had put another bookcase in my room (unearthed in another part of the house I had tidied!) and that meant I had space to put my jars of beads out where I could see them. I love looking at those beads so even if I never use them, I feel I've got value for money out of them!

When I'm thinking of making a quilt, I pull a whole load of fabrics onto the floor and throw them around to see how they look in different groupings. It triggers the brain to go through a visualisation process sorting through combinations of colours and patterns. I have two colourways that I keep going back to - the warm, intense autumnals, with colours like purple, green, gold, russet and chocolate brown - and the bright, clear colours in the fabrics above - usually purple, pink, orange, red, blue, green- a combination of warm and cool. With fabrics the process is pretty simple: the prints and colours are the triggers. Occasionally a pattern will inspire me to find the fabrics and colours I prefer to the one shown. In Kuwait, a few years ago, I bought a scrapbook for images that inspire me and I came across it again when I was sorting out my bookshelves. The strange thing is, even though it's supposed to be for inspiration, I realised it hasn't directly inspired me to do anything at all! Does that mean it has failed? I'm not sure but I thought I'd make more of an effort to fill it because I think it will reveal interesting patterns. This is one of my favourite pages and there are those autumnal colours again -

I love spirals and again, those warm colours but this time more subdued.

I realised with this spread, below, I have a tendency to go for warm combinations but with cool accents.

They say artists see the world from different viewpoints like vast panoramic landscapes, middle distance or close up and I'm definitely the latter.

Gorgeous beads, gorgeous colour combinations. The wires could be lines with a pen.

I try to keep similar things together. The page on the right, below, has small illustrations that look like watercolour. The style is quite precise, very confident. Most of these are from Good Housekeeping magazine and the illustrations around Maureen Lipman's column were done, I think, by Michael Frith who now works for The Sunday Times. I have a couple of his portraits cut out and kept in my scrapbook too, he's one of my favourite artists. More portraits here. (The likenesses are perfect but the style is loose which, I think, is a really wonderful combination.)

One of the features of Flickr that I find really fascinating is the ability to save images to a favourites page. (Here is one of my pages.) I tend not to look at those that have thousands of favourite images (they may not be very discerning) but in general a look at these pages is a clear indication of someone's style. Adding an image they really like, every now and then, a pattern emerges maybe without them being aware of it. From my pages I see another combination I love and that is black and white in combination with bright, strong colours. From that, I suspect, some time in the future I will eventually get to working with pen and ink and hopefully watercolour. Humour too is apparent in my Flickr pages and my scrapbook but not so much in my own work. So even though the scrapbook hasn't directly inspired me to create anything, recognising patterns and our own individual 'creative building blocks' might be enough to get started again. I know from experience too that just doing some little thing, anything at all, is enough to get the ball rolling. And, of course, on the positive side, you could forget about it altogether and get on with all the jobs you've been putting off for months and clear and tidy the decks ready for when inspiration strikes in it's own sweet time!

What's your favourite colour?

2009-08-14T18:00:00.004+02:00

I was quite taken with these colour swatches a painter left us with this week. They all splay out like a fan on one pivotal point but you can also pick out a select few and play with colour combinations. I wonder if he wants it back...?

Funny, the trivial things we remember. I always found the question 'what's your favourite colour?' very odd. Back in the 70's it was often asked of pop stars and I remember Merrill Osmond saying blue, Roger Taylor saying silver, and Freddie Mercury saying black! Of course, it was meaningless drivel, filling column inches for the ravenous teenyboppers back then, but I kept thinking about the question. How is it possible to choose one over any other? If I choose that deep apricot colour, does that mean I really prefer it to that lovely warm, banana yellow? But then again, what about that gorgeous greeny turquoise, could I choose that over a pinky purple? Sounds so simple, but no, for me it's right up there with 'what is the meaning of life?' and ' but is it art'!

Places of worship

2009-08-04T16:11:00.003+02:00

As a result of starting a blog I now try to take photos of the things and places that I would most likely have overlooked before. Everyone goes shopping but when do we ever take photos of things like supermarkets? I wish I had in the 70's. I remember my local Tescos having frozen flies in the ice cream cabinets, a real dive - that's a far cry from the carefully cultivated image it has today! I've been going to Oxford Street, above, since the 60's but I don't think I've got any photos of it. You see quite of few of these little rickshaws now but, you can also see, they are great at holding up the traffic!

There is nothing you can't get in Oxford Street but it is a bit of a nightmare, pounding the pavements with millions of others, and now there is an alternative - Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd's Bush. I discovered it when I went back in the spring and the scale of it is amazing! I didn't think anything would have as much as Oxford Street but it does and - a big plus - you stay dry in those typical British summer downpours!

Here's the view that greets you as you come out of the tube station and turn left to walk towards the entrance. The scale of it blew me away the first time I went there but strangely it seemed to shrink with every visit!

Books? Oh no, I don't need any more...

2009-08-03T14:48:00.006+02:00

It's all a bit of a blur now but I think I might have said some words to that effect to Mark just before I went to London... How did I manage to gather so many? I really did try to avoid buying any new art books too.

It was all going pretty well until I met Katherine Tyrell (of Making a Mark) in Islington for the SAA Art Event. I met Sarah Wimperis too of The Red Shoes - check out Katherine's review here. I was a little disappointed with the range of supplies they had but I still found some useful things there. There were some plastic viewfinders that I thought would be pretty handy for looking at composition and perspective when I'm drawing in public because I tend to be so nervous, all thought of these things tends to be forgotten. In all I picked up four - a Perspective Finder, a Picture Finder, a Tonal Value Finder and a Scale Finder. Strange really, as I have a real aversion to dividing up tones into a certain number and I refuse to change a photo to black and white to help see values. I've only once felt that would be useful, with this cup I drew. I still haven't worked out if the teal or the brick red is the darkest but I feel it's up to the artist to interpret it, whether it's accurate or not is beside the point. It's curiousity really about watercolours and how Charles Reid works out value - maybe it will help or maybe I'll feel that is irrelevent to me too.

As Katherine mentioned, I bought the Charles Reid book and DVD for the price of one which was a real bargain. The one thing I was looking for was a DVD by Billy Showell, who does lovely detailed botanical drawings, and I was surprised that they were all sold out by the second day. I bought her book, Watercolour Fruit and Vegetable Portraits, and the DVD arrived today - someone took my name and address and despite not living in the UK, I paid less than full price (£14.99 instead of £17.99) and I wasn't even charged postage.

The landscape book is Landscapes Problems and Solutions by Trudy Friend and looks to have lots of practical advice - I have real trouble finding techniques to represent trees and landscapes! The Decorated Page by Gwen Diehn and Collins Artist's Little Book of Inspiration by Hazel Soan were found in Green & Stone. Both are the sort of ideas books that I feel give you a general sense of inspiration rather than hit you with anything specific. I like looking at decorated journals but I often feel that the illustrations are poor but the effect of the text makes up for it - overall it looks gorgeous but don't look too closely or analyse too much. It's something that interests me though - I've been keeping a food diary since March (since that migraine inducing 'aspartame episode!') which is expanding and I can see me expanding it further to include drawings.

Overall though, I've had a terrible lack of inspiration for quite a while now. I've noticed other bloggers mention this too so maybe it's something in the air or maybe after two to three years the novelty of blogging naturally wears off. Like them, I've felt that the need to keep the blog updated drives me to create art a little too frequently and something is lost as a result. Eventually you feel overwhelmed, not only by the need to create but to keep up with what everyone else is doing. I feel the worst is now over but I still haven't felt the spark of inspiration. I've done a lot of analysing this year about what it is that has driven me in the past and whether it is actually relevant now. Constantly reading about other artists striving for this or that and constantly needing validation can make you feel maybe you need it too. It was exhibiting last year and being quite underwhelmed by it that was the catalyst for me. A well meaning remark about my work a little while ago also made me wonder if there isn't actually an expectation for artists to chase fantasies and to be -dare I say it?- desperate. Is it time to step off the hamster wheel and simply enjoy?

I'm often told I'm too critical of my own work but the truth is I love what I do. No artist, even beginners, would continue if they didn't love something in their own work or believe, deep down, there is a huge well of potential even when no-one else can see it. But I'll never be complacent, and I'll always try to view it objectively otherwise I'll stagnate. I can love a drawing and pick holes in it at the same time! However, something I learned about myself in recent years is that I don't get any satisfaction from things that I find too easy. A drawing must take some effort, there must be a point when I feel very uncomfortable, when perhaps I might even feel I've completely lost my ability and I should give up! Maybe I'd started coasting? That might explain why the dreaded watercolours have come out again - I just cannot get to grips with watercolours! So I'm not quite sure how all this will work out - I need to take another direction but not in the dramatic way I did with colour pencils, completely replacing my graphite drawings. I want to be able to 'expand my repertoire' but putting pressure on myself to regularly update the blog doesn't give me the necessary breathing space to do that - not to mention that I don't fancy posting some really crappy paintings while I'm trying out things! So maybe it's best to just 'see how it goes', enjoy the summer and hopefully it will resolve itself!

There's no place like home...

2009-08-02T10:45:00.004+02:00

I couldn't help thinking, when I was in the care home, that if life is a journey, then this might possibly be the final destination. Things like cancer, stokes, heart attacks might be the stations along the way where we might have to get off but if we live long enough, is this it? Is this where we we all end up, if we can no longer look after ourselves?

Who was it that said life is what happens when we are busy making other plans? We seem to live our lives like ants, busy being busy, not seeing, or maybe trying not to see the bigger picture. Stepping into the care home was like stepping into a secret, hidden world. Why was that? Is it that we don't want to acknowledge our mortality, don't want to deal with issues that make us uncomfortable so we wrap it up and hide it away? Is that why public places, public buildings, public transport only accommodate healthy, able bodies? Keep the elderly and disabled in their places? We stare at people who are disfigured, frown at mothers who dare take their babies and prams on the bus, curse the old person in the wheelchair keeping us waiting at the zebra crossing. How dare they invade 'our' space!

As I mentioned before, I have an issue with artists' anatomy books featuring only slim, athletic types. I have an issue too with male artists who claim to paint the beauty of the human form and somehow only see that in young, white, slim females. (To fend off the usual accusations I'm white, not overweight, and have held that opinion since my teens. And a thought occurred to me that cosmetic surgeons probably have more knowledge about how bodies look as they age than most artists.) The media too, focuses on such a tiny proportion of the human population, that it's no wonder we have no idea how diverse we are really are, and how warped this view is. We are supposed to come in all shapes and sizes, all colours and attitudes. The magazines cast off their ageing models, the newsrooms let the middle aged female presenters go, and Hollywood actresses repeatedly go under the knife to stay in employment (playing, for example, the impossibly glamorous mother of a man who looks only ten years younger!) so we never get to see females as they really are, the natural progression. We see more years as taking away value instead of adding it. (And to say women age and men only get more 'distinguished' is just another delusion.)

My grandmother was a very gentle, softly spoken woman who, I remember, always seemed to be smartly dressed in a woollen suit and blouse - even during one of our last visits when she was sitting next to a blazing fire in July. During one of those visits, a 'friend' of hers, (for want of a better word, but everyone knew everyone in Ireland in those days) a jolly, loud overbearing woman, came in and started talking down to her. Clearly she thought she was deaf and slow. I must have been about 11 or 12, but it taught me a lesson in never judging a book by it's cover. My grandmother gently smiled, answered respectfully and showed no sign of irritation, but when she left she said something very witty (I wish I could remember it!) and made us all laugh. So she was elderly, so she didn't compete to be as loud or as 'clever', but it was the big bumbling woman who looked small.

An assessor came into the room and asked my mother, "Do you like it here?" My mother smiled and said "oh, yes, I love it". My brother and I looked at each other. Well, how would anyone answer that question, when you are lying in bed in a care home? Irony isn't listed in the handbook for the elderly. They are supposed to be sweet, funny, childish, deaf, and completely off the planet. My mother is being well looked after, thankfully, but I did wonder if any of those nurses saw themselves lying in those beds or slumped in those chairs, and could imagine how they would feel about someone half their age were talking to them as if they were 5 years old and deaf?

I remember reading a question about animals on farms and why, when one of their group is slaughtered in front of them, don't they realise their own reality and try and escape? It seems to me, that we humans are no different. We know we could wake up one day, have an accident and spend the rest of our lives in a wheelchair. We see how others suffer, we see how we can end up, but for some unexplainable reason we really believe unfortunate things only happen to other people. Therefore, we don't have to worry about it or make allowances for it, and we really rather not have to see these people and so make sure they are kept safely out of sight.

A few weeks ago, I was in Globus, an up-market department store here in Geneva, and I noticed a woman customer look me up and down, focus on my shoes and give me an extremely disdainful look. It was a pair of sandals I've had for many years and had seen better days but I'm fond of them and loathe to get rid of them. But really, is my worth as a human being tied to what I wear? We, in the west, are offended by all sorts of ridiculous things like having your roots showing, or your cuffs being the wrong length. It's beyond obscene. For millions of people every day is a fight for survival and on the same planet there are people with more money than they or their grandchildren will be able to squander, getting offended by the sight of someone with last seasons Prada handbag.

As more women are starting to look like Barbie dolls and even men are succumbing to the pressure to go under the knife in order to conform to an impossible ideal, I wonder when it's all going to end? Is a phase that will eventually go full circle and we'll all look back in horror? What were were all thinking, all trying to look like those plastic celebrities?! Probably not. But ageing is normal and inevitable, why do we fear it so much? We are all ageing at the same rate, but if we only value youth and beauty, then, presumably, we will all lose our value eventually.