Travelling sketchbook - from rose bowl to poppy seedhead

My next trot round the travelling sketchbook circuit saw me receive some very creative still life pages. Hmmm...how to take this on...I wondered.

Suddenly one shape leapt out at me, looking for all the world like a poppy seedhead, that wonderful sculptural shape that so many people are clearly inspired by.

I remembered having some dried seedheads from a couple of years back, collecting dust in my 'room'. Perfect for giving me a bit of sketching practice first of all, giving input for something else later on....hopefully.

So I set to work. Here are some sketches. I guess the important thing is that this stage really made me look at the seedheads to really understand their structure better. The idea being that my final image will be more real and more 'of me' because of this observation. In theory.

Then I happened to go to the Hiroshige exhibition at Winchester's Discovery Centre (on until May 24th). The exhibition is a series of woodcuts from the marvellous Ashmolean's collection. The subject matter is classic Japanese woodcut material: views at the 53 stations along the Tokaido Road, done in the 1830s. Well worth popping in to see. And the exhibition is free!

So as I mooched along I stopped in front of this

Utagawa Hiroshige - 53 stations of the Tokaido Road - Ashmolean collection

I really loved the delicate rendering of the depth of field in the early morning fog using different muted greys. Maybe I can use that somehow in my poppy image using printed seedhead silhouettes, I thought, rather ambitiously!

Later, I started to carve some adigraf shapes, based on my sketches.

A couple of weeks ago, I ordered a gelli plate from Gelli Arts. Following some on-line tutorials I also carved a polystyrene plate for the background and some OHP film too. First efforts were mixed and pretty unpredictable, but a lot of fun to do.

This was my favourite. Sort of like looking through poppy seedheads into the setting sun.

My travelling sketchbook page was this (I thought I needed to be brave enough to sketch directly into the sketchbook).

Viral in China - Tibetan couple's wedding photos

'BBC Trending - The wedding photos that captivated China'

Look at this link that was on the BBC website on 18/4/15: a Tibetan couple's set-piece wedding photos marrying the modern and the traditional. It seems Chinese social media users have swooned. Ironic given China's usual treatment of Tibetans

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-32353687

The whole set is here.
http://www.zhangzishi.cc/20150410zh.html

They are really worth a look - just beautiful and such high quality.

Cheeky chicken egg cosy - Easter crafting

Yesterday, some girlfriends and I sat down with a little Easter project: to make a Good Friday chicken-shaped egg cosy! It was precious crafting time so a couple of daughters were sent off on an Easter egg hunt and the other, a tiny tot, set to painting her first blown egg.

The Big Girls disappeared into a lovely zoned out creative space for a couple of hours...

Here's the result of my various cuttings and stitchings.

Unfortunately, my seam allowances didn't allow for the way felt sits round an egg...so I added a 'gusset' so he could breathe!

What a handsome fellow!

Travelling sketchbook - dragonfly wings

The next sketchbook I received was from E. Here is a tiny section of her second piece, together with a list of what it brought to my mind, after a few days of letting it sit.

I loved the idea of iridescent sections of dragonfly wings, the sun glinting off them.

So in my back book, I had a little go. I found some textured wallpaper and some origami paper and dyed them with Procion MX dyes. I tried a bit of stitching with silk thread to suggest the tiny sections on one, but while I liked the effect, the silk just got too tangled up, so I canned that and used three strands of regular embroidery thread - much better. I smeared the second with glitter, which looked lovely, but gets lost in the photograph.

This is what I put into the sketchbook that I passed on. I rubbed the dragonfly 'bodies' with Inktense sticks, just to give a bit of texture. Think I preferred the composition of the top one, somehow. Anyway, fun!