Travelling sketchbook - little green apples

The next travelling sketchbook pages I received were a marvellous confection of silver and golden apples and a Yeats poem to match from M.

Our own apple trees were already spilling fruit from a hugely plentiful summer and as we picked and crushed and bottled, I thought about how much the crop changes throughout the year and the progression of gorgeous colours as it all matures and ripens and....drops.

I don't know why, but I liked the idea of colour spilling over edges when I started. Maybe that freshness got a bit lost.

But again I started with texture. I built up some Liquitex Matte Gel, but it took a lot of layers before it got anything like yummy enough with a few peaks and troughs. I was intending to draw with Inktense pencils over the top and then swirl around some water, to let it settle in valleys, so I did need the odd valley! It also required a few layers of gesso over the top to make it interesting enough.

This was my first attempt.

Nice textures, but it did all look a bit bare. I suddenly remembered my trusty stack of paper napkins and wondered about introducing some background colour (I collaged on just the top layer of 3- or 4-ply napkins, pasted on with acrylic medium, which you can then work over with other paints, pencils etc).

I wanted to echo the 'through the seasons' look of the apples.

This was what I passed on to the next person.

Travelling sketchbook - a bubblewrap special

Next, I received an image of a raptor with a very beady eye from E in the Travelling Sketchbook circus.

That eye transfixed me and the tissue paper-layered feathers made me think first of a caveman's pelt.
Ooh, some kind of deep texture.

Then at home I spied some bubblewrap, just hangin'....with sunlight glinting through it, and I was off on eskimos and ice. Amazing what connections our brains make. Just catching those micro thoughts as they speed past is the tricky bit, I think.

So I started to play.

The bubblewrap looked like bubbles in frozen ice. Particularly with some marbled paper that I once did, tucked behind it.

The 'pools' are some Procion MX dyed paper. It can give such lovely deep colour.

Big bubblewrap or small....? In many ways, I liked the big bubbles better as they seemed less uniform and therefore had more energy. But they really bulked out the sketchbook (curses!).

I realised that all that ice was making me feel a bit scared and I tracked it to a feeling of nagging fear at being trapped.

I added some eyes. Maybe they were always in my mind from my first response to the bird that came my way as my inspiration image. I got even more scared when I saw that little face, trapped not far, but in the end too far from the waterhole.

I needed something a bit gentler colourwise though, I thought. So I dialled back on the marbled paper to a calmer selection of colours.

But those terrified eyes still stared from under the thick, unyielding ice.....

WI Nutcracker - FIMO accessories

Tomorrow we are off to the ROYAL OPERA HOUSE!!! to see the Nutcracker on wonderful subsidised tickers from the WI. I know!!!

There will be a photographer there to photograph the kids' Nutcracker-themed accessories. So I did one too.

Was my Sugar Plum Fairy supposed to be ghoulish? It somehow headed off in that direction with a FIMO body pierced with knitting needles....

...and then I somehow got into the vibe with a piece of hand-dyed felt, some coloured silk husks and a few sequins.

Hope it doesn't make any little children cry...

Texas - Roundhouse: stupendous Spiteri

Sharleen Spiteri was on fire at the Roundhouse, London, on Sunday Dec 13th 2015, leading Texas in a romp through the last 25 years.

All the best tunes, maximum energy, the woman is glorious.

My favourite, Halo, came out early and the party started. By the time we got to Inner Smile, I was just completely happy.

I love a good front woman, one born to it, in charge and having a ball. And then, by all accounts, walking home afterwards.

Travelling sketchbook - swirls and curls

The sketchbook I received had a line of mandalas, portals to an inner world...swirls, coils, a circular maze....where would this take me?

As I sat at the hairdresser reading a magazine a day or so later I glanced up, and in the mirror I saw curls and swirls....outer curls and swirls.

What a great thing a tiny notebook is for capturing all manner of thoughts...

That weekend I got out my gelli plate to do some printing including some circular motifs, just to see what happened.

I used an A5 plate and also a round one, which when I stood back a bit, just seemed to beg for a face or two to peep out from the stamped curls. With some sooty black lashes, I was taken back to my original inspiration at the hairdressers: the lowered lashes of ladies being pampered.

Travelling sketchbook - catch up The First

In August, I received a lovely buttery watercolour of a peachy sunset with some inky geese flying towards the horizon.

It reminded me of birdwatching at RSPB Mersehead, the barnacle geese swooping in from Svalbard on an autumn day, and of all the birdlife that we see when we go up to Dumfries & Galloway and the Solway Firth.

I thought I'd wait until we got up there, to see what particularly inspired me. A week later, the flowers were a sight to see, particularly the roses, pinks and purples of the willow herb, which I decided to have a closer look at.

I'd never noticed how red the spent pods were.

As I crouched beside it, looking intently and scribbling with my Inktense pencils, raptors circled high overhead and in the end, I wasn't sure whether I watched them, or whether they were watching me, nestled into the ferns and grass, like a pottering mouse or a tiny bunny....

Glittery FIMO ornaments - WI crafting heaven

After a bit of a break and a new computer, I feel bound to share my WI crafting paradise last night.

Thanks to our Glorious Leader Sam, and oiled with tea, wine and cakes, we rolled, printed, cut, baked, and ribboned, with these marvellous results.