Getting out there - Sketchbook Challenge

I found the Sketchbook Challenge via a book that I bought at the Royal Academy shop. 

They have a monthly theme and it's just about getting out there and producing....something - anything to keep the creative juices flowing.

This month, this came through

http://uk-mg42.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch?.rand=di10kfvv5bjf0#mail

The theme was Garden Doodles and, as the sun was shining, the post above did get me out there.

For the top one, I had already prepared the page in my sketchbook, colouring it, sticking on a piece of the inside of an envelope and then knocking it back with gesso. Below, the same, but no envelope. For both, I used Inktense sticks and then water slopped over the top with a big brush.

There is nothing special about these, I know. But it was lovely just to be sitting in the sunshine and drinking in the alliums, geums, and geraniums and responding to the colours.

Hay & music to titillate the middle-aged

So we went off to the Hay Literary Festival, camping as usual. The days were warm the nights were COLD, double bagging required. And for some reason this year, most of my acquisitions were not printed matter but.....African textiles.... Hay is twinned with Timbuktu, which was a very important centre for books and scholarly study in the 14 and 1500s, so pretty appropriate really. But that means that they do their twinning fundraisers at the same time as the Festival, so I brought a bag of African wax printed fabrics and a potato printed tablecloth from Zimbabwe. Gorgeous. I love the simple elements of the elephant tablecloth. Just shows how effective a repetitive pattern can be.

But importantly, for those amongst us who have ceased listening to the charts, and therefore never know what 'new' music to listen to, I would like to offer you Rokia Traore, from Mali, who we saw on the Friday night. She is playing Glastonbury this year. I did wonder how that experience might differ from playing to a load of seated, motionless oldies in Gore-texes and fleece hats.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DydY8bHTyg

This was my picture of her from the gig. Looks quite hardcore.

Rokia Traore at Hay, May 2013

The album of hers that I really like is called Tchamantche. It's hypnotic, relaxing.

Otherwise at the Festival, I went human rights-heavy: Hans Blix, two UN guys talking about getting aid to difficult places and blowing the whistle on Darfur. Usually with me it's poets. Not this year. And I saw my hero, Jeremy Bowen. The warzone reporter that I would marry, if I were forced to choose.... I cravenly bought his book so that I could go and ask him a question about US drone attacks on Pakistan (don't ask!).