Summer Sketchbook

I have really been into painting and sketching recently and I decided to make a scrapbook to document my holiday this summer.

Sketching by the pool

I spent a week with my friend Mel in Mountain View, San Francisco which was awesome! Rather than just relying on holiday photographs I took time out every day for sketching, painting and collaging my holiday experiences.  Art equipment I packed for the trip were sketching pencils, Windsor and Newton watercolours, Chromacolour watercolour pencils, a few black pro-markers, scissors, a glue-stick, acrylic paint markers and a range of brushes.

Sketching on Mel's sofa

It was the most relaxing and enjoyable time and I pretty much sketched / painted everywhere starting out in the airport lounge and on the flight over to the USA.  The most indulgent was next to the pool, on the sofa at Mel's house and finally on a train ride to my next holiday destination in Wales last week.

Things I included in my journal were maps, leaflets, tickets and receipts of my adventures alongside traditional sketches and watercolour studies plein air of food, city scenes and landscapes.  I chose an A5 Seawhite concertina sketchbook which comes with a rather cool hardboard case. It is not quite finished yet but here are a few little snippets for you to enjoy.

Painting on the train to Wales last week

The many cool California signs found around Mountain View

Sushi and Santana Row a beautiful palm tree lined shopping street

Mushroom and leek omelette home cooking, film night on the sofa and the lovely Steven's Creek Trail walk

Ice lolly pool inflatable and the amazing graffiti of Clarion Alley in the Mission, San Francisco

Mel standing in front of a Frank Stella painting at the SF MoMA

Dusk at Pier 39 and Pier 23 neon sign from Fisherman's Wharf, San Fransisco

The concertina sketchbook laid out next to the pool before my return to the UK

I am enjoying putting the finishing touches to my journal and hope to finish it before my return to work in September. I also want to include my mini break to Wales in the remaining pages of the book.

What have you been doing this summer to relax and unwind?

Block Printing Fun

They are selling these great little block printing resources from a shop called Tiger UK along with quite reasonable cutting tools as well.

The printing block set is £2 and the cutting tools are £5

The printing block set also comes with 4 pieces of tracing paper to help transfer your design

I experimented with both lino-ink and Indian-ink. The better, clearer result was using Indian ink applied using the ink pad.

I had great fun making the block and printing the images. Several of the prints have been made into cards that have been sent to friends and family. I have got some ideas about how I could use these blocks to print something onto some of my me-made garments.

Amazing art exhibitions

As I mentioned in my previous post I have not had a chance to blog about some of the fun things I have experienced over the past few months.

Let's start with the Isabella Blow exhibition at Somerset House at the end of March. It was a beautiful collection of her vast (and expensive) clothing and accessories. She was a muse and patron for both Philip Tracey and Alexander McQueen so the range of things to see was impressive. Unfortunately because the exhibition was in its final week it was extremely busy and I wasn't able to get any photos of the lovely garments or hats.

In the stairwell leading to the exhibition there was an amazing installation based on Philip Tracey's hats created by Boo Studio.

Flock of Flurry - Paper Chandelier by Boo Studio 2014

Way back in December I visited the London Transport Museum with a friend to see the Art on the Underground celebrating 150 years of the London Underground. Again, as seems to be the case I visited in the final week of the exhibition, but luckily due to an early afternoon from work it was quiet.

Here is a selection of my favourite posters.

In late November I took a trip to the Fashion and Textiles Museum to see the Glamour of Belleville Sassoon exhibition which was lovely. It was great to see such beautifully curated highlights from the 1960's to the present day including a seperate section showcasing the fashion designs and garments worn by Princess Diana and other famous royalty.

Here are a few highlights from the exhibition:

Hand-painted coat circa 1960

1970's beaded bias cut dress

Velvet and silk dupion ball gown 1980's

Hand-beaded lace dress 1960's

Design Museum inspires work for the Tate Modern

I have been very busy at work and doing crazy DIY on my house but luckily I have managed to squeeze in a little bit of arty fun too.

To keep creative I signed up to the Tate Modern six-week evening class based on the Richard Hamilton exhibition. The course covered techniques such as dry-point printing and collage which was right up my street!

The course started with a tour of the exhibition with the evening course tutor Ling, who explained the concepts and intention behind Hamilton's work. It turns out that Hamilton felt his work should be seen in groups or collections so they had a dialogue with one another and that as a viewer you could read them as a series that inter-connected. It was an interesting starting point for being creative!

Onto the art. We were given the theme of perspective (one of Hamilton's reoccuring themes) and were asked to define the meaning of the word in small groups. We had to do this with drawn images only. Our visual interpretation was then re-interpreted by a different group.... an interesting start to the class. Towards the end of the session Ling mentioned our homework (WHAT?) for the next session - which was to read two essays and to etch a dry-point plate based on the 'perspective of a space'.

The main room of the Hamilton exhibition at the Tate Modern

One of my favourite Dada-esque pieces from the Hamilton exhibtion at Tate Modern

The reading part of the homework was easy and interesting, but I was a bit stuck on what to etch onto my aluminium plate. That was until I visited the Design Museum's 'Hello, my name is Paul Smith exhibition...

The Paul Smith exhibition was full of fun bright, beautiful and inspiring things; take a look for yourself:

A recreation of the Paul Smith design studio at the 'Hello, my name is Paul Smith' exhibition at the Design Museum

The stairwell in the Design Museum

I used my photo of the stairwell to create the image for the drypoint print plate. Which I will post about seperately. The work I enjoyed the most was creating collage pieces with a restricted palette of colour and materials (red, white, yellow and green) based upon our printed image / print plate.

The final collages were then worked into with text and imagery from newspapers and magazines.

Caroline Joynson - Tate Triptych 2014

Patrick Caulfield at Tate Britain

I managed to sneak a whistle stop view of the Patrick Caulfield exhibition before it closes on the 1st September. I have always loved his work and it was great to see so many of his large paintings in one place together.

Holiday fun in Brum

I took a couple of days out to spend some time with my friend Hayley who happens to live in Mosley, Birmingham which is only a stones throw from the cute little Haberdashery shop Guthrie and Ghani (set-up by Lauren from The Great British Sewing Bee fame).

It is a spacious shop full of lovely fabric, yarns and other sewing stuff. I purchased a few things including two new patterns and a small amount of fabric and bias binding for two new Colette Sorbetto incarnations.... now I just need to finish my red pencil skirt.... AND my cerise Ginger skirt first....

• Do you find it hard finishing a project?
• Do you get distracted by the lure of a new sewing pattern / fabric / new item before finishing other things?

Mmmmmm, lovely fabric.......

Guthrie and Ghani haberdashery in Mosley, Birmingham

Two new patterns for the next round of projects.

We visited Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery and got really spooked out by these rather scary life-size wooden sculptures that had real human teeth.... 

The strange thing about the wooden figures was as you walked around the room their eyes followed you. Very, very weird!!

• What do you think?

‘Man and his Sheep‘, Ana Maria Pacheco, 1943

On Tuesday we spent a leisurely afternoon at Sarehole Mill a short walk from Hayley's house. It has some gorgeous gardens and Mill pond to enjoy and we learned a decent sprinkling of local history and educational facts! 

Sarehole Mill

Palace Art Fair 16th May

The Palace Art Fair is an annual event that showcases local artists, designers and crafts people. There are stalls and exhibitions of loads of very talented people - including Blaze and Mel from the Putney School of Art etching class had entered the Fulham Palace Art Fair and exhibited their work on a stall together - their work looked absolutely brilliant and I think they sold quite a few prints between them! Nice work there girls...

I met up with Louise (from etching) before the Private View and had a lovely cup of tea and chat and we wondered down to Fulham Palace to see the girls - some sections of this building date back to the 700's!!

We all had a lovely evening and I really enjoyed seeing Blaze and Mel's work look so professional in their section of the exhibition.

Whaam! Lichtenstein exhibition

I enjoyed a lovely Friday evening with a friend soaking up some Pop Art at Tate Modern and scoffing some tasty grub at Jamie Oliver's Union Jack's.

Sunglasses alert outside the gallery.

All the classics were on display and the best room exhibited Lichtenstein's iconic comic book inspired pieces - which can now be found on my settee!

Private View November 2012

The Private View was really great last night. We had quite a lot of visitors and the place was fairly busy for most of the evening. I was very happy with the framing of my skull doodle etch and the patterned zig-zag. I used the framers in Putney on Disraeli Road opposite the library.

Here are a few photos from the event.

My Skull doodle and Pattern zig-zag hanging in the exhibition.

Blaze Cyan's work

Marcella and her friend look at Melanie Bellis' work on the first staircase. 

Nibbles, chat and bubbles flowing freely.

Into the Wild art course with Canadian artist Liz Charlsey-Jory

I attended an Art Course at Dulwich Picture House based on the landscape work of the Canadian artist-adventurers. We spent two days drawing landscapes in Dulwich Park and I created these colourful oil pastel works reminiscent of the Group of Seven.

I worked on the four pieces through rain and shine - in fact the rain helped create some of the wonderful texture in the works. I used white spirit with oil pastel for the first time and experimented with spray techniques using the paint-brush dipped in white spirit and flicked it onto the paper.