applehead

tools of the trade....

Busy drawing pencils at the moment...

I have an idea for a new project :it will have to wait until after the New Year when I find a bit of time to work on it. In the meantime, plenty of sketching and thinking time.

Off to Sydney, next week to catch up with family, friends and sunshine. I plan on eating mangoes, swimming in the ocean and wearing very light floaty things! And sunblock, of course.

Not a scarf or woolly jumper in sight.

Although the idea of a bikini is kind of alarming after a year away....fake tan, anyone?

collection...

of birds' heads in the Natural History Museum.
Another page from my containment journal.

dead birds...

A page from my project journal...the theme is containers;containment. This sketch is drawn from a photo by Rosamund Purcell , in her beautiful book Egg & Nest
I am exploring the idea of museums,glass display cases and curiosity cabinets...my journal is filling with images of dead birds,nests,eggs, skeletons and specimen jars.

There are a few pages of bugs and butterflies all neatly pinned and labelled as well. I have drawn a human skull as well, but that was really just to see if I could!

roundish things....

I have quite a collection gathered from places near and far.

They are very handy for holding down piles of paper, for playing with while you are thinking deep or not so deep thoughts and for lining up rather haphazardly on your windowsill.

Useful things,indeed.

up in the air...

a favourite with all of our family, big and small....

a proper English seaside holiday....

just back from Cornwall- and a very beautiful part of the country it is.

I now understand why everyone kept asking if we had organised wetsuits. We just laughed and assured them that we were going there to swim not surf....

We did the obligatory trip to Padstow- pretty but busy. 
Port Isaac was much more to our liking.

We had dinner at the Slipway Hotel in Port Isaac.The food was excellent and the service so friendly that we went there again the next evening. (You can see how happy we are to find ourselves in a warm spot out of the rain...yes, there was rain....and more rain....)

I made a quick record of what we ate for dinner - otherwise I had lugged my journal around all day for no good reason. I actually had fun with this- something I should try again.

Home again and time to enjoy a few weeks with no school routine. Bliss.
Oh, and the sun came out on the day we headed home.

unremarkable....

nothing really of note happening here,which is why I have been rather quiet on the posting front.
Lately, whenever I sit down in front of the screen and attempt to write a post, I mostly come up with a big blank. If I do write something, I end up deleting it when I realise just how boring it all sounds.
I am doing things- just not very interesting things. At least not the sort of stuff that I feel the need to remark on.
Unremarkable. That's me at the moment.
Today, I decided that I would sit down and do a few very small drawings -the tinier the better.(To give you an idea of scale- the paper is postcard size)
Here they are- nice but unremarkable.

 

Those are rabbits just in case you were wondering. And stars, not flies.
At least I am drawing, which has to be better than say, cleaning the front loader (it frequently gets a  funny smell  which truly bothers and puzzles me - any front loading experts out there feel free to share).
Possibly not as useful though.
Maybe I 'll do something a bit creative with the children's peas and mash potatoes.
Ho- hum......

Oh, I have done something useful and productive today...finally restocked the mostly old paper packs and stuff.

Here.

Now that's a little more interesting. If you like old paper that is.....

 

inspiration....

Krishna frolics with the Gopi girls (detail), folio 2 from the Krishna Lila, Jodhpur, c. 1765; 63.5 x 136.5 cm. © Mehrangarh Museum Trust

During the week, Maggie and I took Grace up to London.Our destination was the British Museum to see the exhibition, 'Garden and Cosmos- The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur' .
Grace played sweet baby and fell asleep almost as soon as we entered the gallery which meant that not only could I take my time and actually look at the paintings- I was also able to do a little bit of sketching. The paintings were simply amazing- beautiful meticulous detail and vivid shimmering colour. I was especially inspired by the intricately rendered trees and plants.

Most of my sketches were an attempt to capture a little of the detail to that later I could attempt to recreate a little garden of my own.
I did buy the catalogue from the exhibition -however I find that sketching from the actual artworks helps me to appreciate and remember the details so much more than if I just work from an image.

Here is my first tree based on some of the sketches I made. No colour yet - just my favourite black super fine pigment liner.

a journal page...

I just knew that there would be more of these small houses...

This page is from a journal I am working on as part of this project...we are almost at the end and I am looking forward to seeing my own journal when it makes its way back to me.

a bit behind...

by now most of you would have read about, heard about ,looked at or perhaps even bought The Book. It seems so long ago that I put together my project for  Meet Me At Mike's: 25 Fun And Crafty Projects.
(I guess it was quite a while as I was pregnant with Grace and she is about to turn one in a week or so....)

 

If anyone decides to make their own, I would love to see how it turns out.