Day 4 - lines and backgrounds

When preparing backgrounds yesterday I also selected pics of trees - plums grow on trees (and trees play a large part in my life). I chose a fibre tip pen for the first drawing.

Not my favourite drawing. I had picked a leaf from a copper beech tree on Monday so decided to draw this on another page using a second pic of the same tree. I turned my sketchbook round to draw this:

and then turned it round again for my second attempt at drawing the leaf, concentrating on different types of line:

Sketchbook Day 4 - a personal background

I hunted through the few magazines I had here, and found a jumper to illustrate how I felt last week when starting to draw.

Even though I had crumpled the pic, my fine line fibre tip pen slid across the surface - an interesting drawing experience after using pencils so much.

I attempted both Day 3 and Day 4 today. I've found other pics which I will add to my sketchbook before I continue drawing.

BTW I was watching BBC Four "The Art of Cornwall" yesterday and heard Peter Lanyon say, "you throw yourself off the cliff every time you start and you've got to fly, swim, duck or something and come out the other end." So reassuring ......
If you missed the programme it's really worth catching it on IPlayer.

Sketchbook Day 3

After a busy weekend I had to move the plum to a different room, and the light was casting shadow from a slightly different angle. I had placed my plum on a white sheet of A6 paper, and I rotated this to achieve a more complete shadow. So you need to look at this one from a different angle:

Here's the sketchbook page scanned on the straight:

The diagonal line, faintly drawn on LHS, indicates the angle of the page to the edge of my table.

Summer Sketchbook Challenge

I got off to a good start the first weekend, using herb tea and Yorkshire tea to colour the pages of my sketchbook. However, my first drawing day was last Thursday morning. I chose a plum from my bowl of fruit. Unfortunately my camera is not working at the moment, and rather than wait to sort out another camera, I decided to scan the pages of my sketchbook and upload what I have achieved so far.

My son spent some time with me, eating his breakfast at the same table, whilst I was drawing. He has a natural talent for drawing and is very good at explaining techniques. He doesn't understand why I don't have the same knowledge. (I was allowed to choose only one craft/art subject at school so I chose needlework and gave up art lessons at 14 yrs old :-(( ).

I explained to him that picking up a pencil and starting to draw in my sketchbook felt like standing on the edge of a cliff ready to make the first step off when abseiling (yes, I have done that!). He suggested 'working large' and making grid marks to guide my positioning on the page. He then gave me a lesson in which pencils to use when shading, hence this tonal sketch.

Free machine embroidery

A to F: Straight and automatic stitches - even tension.

G, H and I: straight whip stitch.
J, K, L: zigzag whip stitch

Wild Water designs

There are lots of drawing techniques to explore in this module. This is frottage in oil pastels. I then cut up several of my decorated papers for this design

Module Six - water

I've started work on Module 6 and these are some of my selected photos:

Wild Washburn

and a 'no rain today' sky: