From Sketchbook to something bigger

Looking at part (of the still life) I

Looking at part (of the still life) II

View of Patrick's side of the bureau and the view from above the bureau

My altered sketchbook only has four pages left. As I've worked through it, it has increasingly dominated my life. Deciding to draw in it every day has amplified the feeling that I might have run out of ideas.  So I am in a heightened state of alert.  I've noticed things I might not have noticed and that's great. What I've remembered is that there are beautiful still life possibilities everywhere and all I need is a hand full of pastels and my sketchbook and my day is sorted. I'm drawing on both sides of the page, so these drawings will remain bound in the sketchbook.  

What's interesting is that I am always drawing anyway, but deciding to make the drawings in one place has changed the structure of my whole day. With that in mind, it's time to get on with some of my ideas, so yesterday I primed six canvases and today I constructed a big still life in my studio and prepared three big drawing surfaces to use to respond to the still life. Seeing the Hockney made we want to try using a series of canvases to interpret a scene, and since my scenes seem to be still lifes right now, I'm beginning with that.

Fishing for Biscuits with Cups and Clutter

Cups and Clutter

Fishing for Biscuits, fused plastic collage with stitching and paint (21 x 21cm)

Tomorow I go down to London to pick up my unsold drawing from the Pastel Society show. Although it would have been even better if it had sold, I am looking forward to meeting Keith (who I met at the opening of the exhibition) and seeing the Watercolour Competition Exhibition at Bankside where a few of my firends have work.  Today we celebrated International women's day with Suffolk Refugee Support at Burlington Halls, in Ipswich. It was fabulous to see the women in their finery and to sample some of their cuisine but it was most of the day and I didn't have much time to work.

I was able to finish last week's Dining on Plastic, though.  It was predominately made of vegetable wrappers - mostly different kinds of lettuce.  Earlier in the week, I polished off a packet of water biscuits and the shimmery royal blue comes from that. Andrex toilet paper blue is a staple and I didn't find any roadside plastic!

Yesterday I drew in my sketchbook as the light was fading.  I found a box of old pastels, so old I can't remember where they come from… were they Patrick's?   New colours are always inspiring and chasing the light makes you concentrate hard!

A smattering of inspiration

Although I caught the dreaded Tanzanian cold, I dragged myself to the studio and tried to put something down everyday.  I haven't really got much else done in the past week.  I did go to London to draw at the Pastel Society's event at the Mall, see the Hockney and the Nash and have people over for dinner and then visit two local exhibitions http://www.northhousegallery.co.uk/art-exhibition/artist/martin-fidler-and-melvyn-king/red-crag-project/  and  http://www.thesentinelgallery.co.uk, but in terms of beginning new work, that didn't happen. I'm feeling much better this evening, so am hopeful that tomorrow will be a painting day.

It's interesting to see how I use my two page spreads to respond or at least test something different on each side.  It's similar to the way I work, shifting from drawing to plastic to printmaking and painting. But I can't fail to notice that I've been jumping all over the place getting something down. Still it's a sketchbook and these ideas might come in useful sometime...

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Marilyn in ten minutes

pastel on paper 13 x 14cm

altered book page spread  11 x 7cm pastel drawings

pastel on altered book page 21 x 14 cm

charcoal on paper 28 x 13 cm

pastel on paper 14 x 16 cm

For the first half of our drawing session, Sue asked Marilyn for five ten minute poses, although one lasted an extra five minutes.  The final pose was half an hour. I brought some images with me to inspire my palette and then began igonoring them, looking hard to see what the drawing needed that corresponded to what I was looking at.

I didn't put my pastels away at the end of each drawing so there is more consistency of colour than usual between them.  I prepared my ground and taped around the edges before I set off today and tried a few new approaches - watercolour with clear gesso and a little pastel ground, gouache with pastel ground, pastel with clear gesso.

The Colours of Nightlight, altered sketchbook

The Colours of Nightlight, altered sketchbook February, 2017 

I was restless last night. I discovered a new artist on Pinterest and kept waking up thinking about his work.  Do you know Sandy Murphy's work?  I have pinned a lot in the past day... He attended the Glasgow School of Art and is a few years older than me.  His paintings astound me. You can see a few here:  http://www.thompsonsgallery.co.uk/artist.php/Sandy-Murphy-328/  He makes it look so simple and his colours make my heart sing.

Today in my altered sketchbook I thought about our walks with Lyra and the night light that is still hanging around as we walk in the winter. I tried to find the colours of daybreak and to keep things alive. 

Sketching at the Edges of Abstraction

I know logically that shapes are shapes and a cup or a flower is just a shape of colour, but I think differently about things I can name and use my pastels differently as I draw.  I often feel that my best drawing happens when I am truly confused and can't understand the things I can name so they become simply colours next to each other rather than a hand or a foot or a petal. I hate that feeling, and the confusion isn't always good, but I wonder if it is about a different part of my brain being activated.

This altered sketchbook (using soft pastel) is about the edges where figurative and abstract mark making meet. I have said before that making fused plastic is a playful part of my practice where I am freed to respond and which is more like solving a puzzle than drawing.  It is intuitive and does require careful looking, but it isn't as rooted in eye-hand coordination, it is more about discovery. As I progress through the altered sketchbook, will it be possible to combine the two in a different kind of drawing?

Last year I made a series of pastel drawings where I combined still life objects with some of  my painted paper collages, drawing about the two together.  They were surprising. Is this a direction that could be intriguing?

These are the last two of my dining on plastic pieces.  You can see more about them and the other from previous weeks at that blog here:
.http://diningonplastic.blogspot.co.uk

Mozarella and Mangoes at the Pier

Carrots Downriver

Still Life by Colour

Yellow and Pink, 23 x 25cm, pastel on paper

While running my 30 minutes this morning, I decided to put myself under a new kind of pressure. I made no New Years resolutions this year but am chipping away at the things that need changing anyway. 

A few days ago I saw a twitter feed about a sketchbook open submission and I have been debating whether I could finish my altered pastel sketchbooks in time for the deadline.  Finishing them would have meant altering my course with the two that I have on the go. One is life drawings and the other is landscapes in Maine.  This morning I decided to attempt to make a new altered book sketchbook focused on whatever I was working on in the studio, so studies, after studies and related things and experiments. As I was looking at the set up I had made (the one with the orange and green) I considered how even as I was setting the still life up I kept thinking: THESE ARE NOT MY COLOURS. I wondered whether still life set-ups intentionally focusing on colour would teach me anything or lead my anywhere. 

Yellow and Pink was fun to compose.  Who knew I had any yellow. The big yellow motif behind the flowers is a plastic bag I found while walking.  The yellow things are lemons.

altered sketchbook still life by colour and experiments P 1 & 2

I started the altered sketchbook in Glasgow at Christmas but I hadn't had the time I envisaged and it went nowhere, so I began again leaving a little of what was there before.