Little sketches in cracks of time

We had a lot of rain in Maine and as my mum had injured her back there was just that little bit more to do in the garden...so this year so I drew less and had less 'headspace' in general for imagery. I carried my altered sketch books to Maine, so was determined to use them when I could. Hopefully I will use these notes later.

We went off the island to do chores. My mother and I collected new vessels from Goodwill.  Back home when it rained, we made bouquets from whatever we could find in the garden. The hellebore was the star of the counter.

One of the things I did in my 'spare time' was to renovate my travelling pastel 'kit'. The pastels have been in saggy cardboard boxes that were falling apart for the past few years - all held together with elastic bands. This year the elastic bands broke in my hands and my backpack was a big grey mess. At the workshop I took with Felicity House, I discovered the power of using rice to keep the pastels from turning grey so I searched for some new clear screw-top holders and it is like magic! It was so hard to say goodbye to this new system that on the way to the airport I stopped to buy another set and have replicated it here.

Back home I'm just coming out of catch-up mode. In the 20 mins when I should have been heading to the house to get on with dinner prep, I paused and drew the stuff at the other end of my studio. One day I went to draw with the IBBAS artists at Old Hall in Southwold. Yesterday Christopher Lucas came by and sat for me.  When I have a chance I will return to the egg tempera portrait below. Today I called into the Handmade shop.  The work by our trail looked fabulous!

Fig comes back tomorrow and It's Suffolk Open Studios soon so it will be a struggle to find even little cracks of time to sketch in...

Turns out sketching on holiday in Orkney is possible

Down From Old Man of Hoy 7.7.17

Dwarfie Stane 3.7.17

In preparation for our trip to Orkney with our friends the Hawkins, I hurriedly created a new altered sketchbook the afternoon before we travelled. The words on the spine are Histories Book One and it was the title that helped me to choose the book. Of ocurse you can imagine the pattern and the colour appealed to me. I think I may give it a different name eventually.  I have painted over the title for later. Pages are only 13 x 18cm and I glued and gessoed first and then tinted with acrylic and schminke pastel ground, taping around the edges with removable tape. that way I was ready to begin each day.

Near Tomb of the Eagle 4.7.17

Nousty Sand, Rousay 6.7.17

Orkney Museum Garden, Kirkwall 5.7.17

Sketching while others in the group aren't is a little bit challenging in that I am not very good at asserting myself or rocking the boat, and I hate to miss anything the group does… so I only drew when it fit in with the rythmn of the day, while we were eating our sandwiches, waiting for a boat or a car, early in the morning, when someone else wanted to do something different so we were waiting. As a result I didn't so much find my spot as find something in the spot that was interesting. Also there was time pressure, so some of these sketches were made in ten minutes, others half an hour and I spent about an hour on one. My goal was to say something about the place.

Overbigging Orkney, 2.7.17

Path Midhowe Beach 6.7.17

Rackwick Beach 3.7.17

I took my pastels and a few pieces of charcoal in my two vintage tins. I limited my palette. What I did differently was I used the charcoal to think tonally before I began using colour.  I learned that from Melissa Scott-Miller, NEAC by watching how she worked in her plein air painting during the workshop she taught. 

Waulkmill Bay, Beachcombing 8.7.17

noticing how figurative and abstract intersect

Pastel on paper 10.5 X 7.5"

Fused plastic 6.75 x 6.75"

acrylic on cardboard with fused plastic stitching  6X8"

An addition to Maine Time

Fog time

thick light 

presses down

Boat engines rumble

We leave footprints

across the lawn 

Recycled plastic landscape collage

I haven't been sending out much mail art lately.  I need to get some work together for a little upcoming show and what's intersting me are the little things I make (thinking I'll send them out).  

This morning I decided to do a colour study using a bit of leftover plastic as a starting point. I inteded to whip these off and send them out.  I decided I would choose three colours in the plastic and mix them to make different values and hues and then sew the plastic to the surface. The background painting began as a middle value from mixing two of the dominant colours in the plastic. As I continued to paint, they seem to have been inspired by Diebenkorn and my fused plastic quilts. 

The bad news is that I have been forbidden from sending these out as well.