My Happy Friday Sketchbooks

Have you ever put something away in a 'safe place' never to find it again? 

I thought that happened to me and some of my sketch books, I couldn't find them and my worse fears were I had put them in a carrier bag and thrown them out in error, something I'd never do, my sketchbooks are precious and I often refer back to them and I'm always adding to them. I'd even taken photo's of the books and lots of the pages to keep as reference on the computer.

But this week....

I found them.

My Sketchbooks

 My books are important to me, I make notes, not just in writing but in paint, oil pastels and ink.

A selection of pages

 I jot down ideas, compile and compare colours. 

Colour Board

I play around with tissue paper, chalks and paint. I occasionally use a bit of gold leaf.

Playing with the colours

And a couple of Tree Frogs just because they are so cute.

Cute Tree Frogs

I hope you have enjoyed looking at some of my sketchbook pages. I'd love to know if you keep a sketchbook, diary or some sort of journal. 

I've linked this post to The Planet Penny Happy Friday link up

Jan x

 

Handmade Monday

I'm lucky enough to live in an area that is not too far from many lovely buildings, many of them are Tudor, I love the black and white Tudor houses and one such house is home to a lovely little museum. The Ancient House Museum is a late 15th Century timber framed building, that now houses lots of interesting exhibits. Its higgledy piggledy with lots of crooked beams and sloping floors.

 

Ancient House Museum Sketches

I have done a couple of sketches of the house, a few tweeks and it will be finished, then I need to decide whether to keep it all black and white or should I add a bit of colour, what do you think? I'd love your views.

Ancient House, Thetford

I've linked this post to Handmade Harbour's Linky Party so grab a cuppa, follow the link and have a nosey.

Jan x

Seed Head Sketches

 Seed Heads

Hello everybody, I hope you've all had a good week.

 Following on from my previous post and the photo's of the seed heads I decided to do a bit of sketching. 

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My sketch books are never far from reach and having a nosey through them I found some old seed head sketches so I added some new ones.

One of these looks like exploding clouds or popcorn or even sheep on sticks.

Pencil thumbnails of seed heads

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 These dandelion heads are sketched using pencil, watercolour paints and chalk.

 

Dandelion seed heads

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These next sketches have been done using pencil, watercolour paint and oil pastels.
I also collect seeds and other items when I'm out and about then tape them into the sketchbook.

Sycamore and other seeds

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These preliminary sketches will eventually form the basis of some paintings I'm planning, I'd like to do some bright, colourful abstract paintings for my summer exhibition so I'll keep you posted, meanwhile I'm off to check out more blogs over at the Handmade Harbour Link up

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Jan x

The bunny that wasn't really there

Do you see things that aren't really there? No I don't mean ghosties or spooks, I mean pictures in the cloud formations or faces in the flame of a fire. I do, I send my hubby crazy sometimes with comments like, 'can you see a dog in that shadow'? or 'oooh, look at that face in that wallpaper pattern'.

A few days ago I was gazing out of the kitchen window while waiting for the kettle to boil, I was thinking that I really need to get out and do some weeding when I spotted a bunny rabbit, or possibly a hare, it's disguised as a weed, it's about 18 inches tall to the tip of it's ears and I'd swear it appeared overnight.

Bunny Weed

Can you see it?, ok, take a step back from the screen, can you see it now?, if you still can't see what I can see, screw your eyes up and make the picture a bit fuzzy, surely you can see it now. Aren't they magnificent ears?

So using this image as inspiration I jotted down a few sketches....

Quick bunny sketches

Bunny disguised as a weed

I'll pop these with my other sketches of 'things that are not really there'. Yes I really do have a folder called 'Things that are not really there'
So next time you are out and about see if you can find something that isn't there, you may even find a bunny.

Happy hunting

Jan x

This post is linked to Handmade Harbour's linky party, pop over and check it out.

A wet week and a bit of Fimo

What a week we've had, first it rained, then it rained, then......yes you guessed right, it rained some more. Last week my husband and I set off for a few days camping!!! at a bike rally!!! on the bike!!! it was a bit...

wet and a little bit muddy!!!

A bit wet...

a bit muddy

It took us 4 hours to travel the 150 miles, partially due to the weather and partially due to the fact that we had to traverse the M25 for part of the journey.
But it wasn't all doom and gloom, in between the showers we had sunshine (not much, but it was there), lots of other enthusiasts braved the weather, some came as far afield as Belgium and Switzerland, as well as those from all around the UK and despite the wet stuff we all had a brilliant time.

A few friends at Lodsworth

We were in a beautiful part of Britain, Lodsworth in West Sussex, we popped into the village to the local community shop which was designed and built by Ben Law and some of his apprentices. You may remember Ben Law from Ben Law's Woodland House on T.V's Grand Designs.

Community Village Shop, Lodsworth

We arrived home dryish, we managed to avoid the worse of the showers, then it was the job of offloading the bike and unpacking our bags, I find that's always the worse thing about going away, don't you?  


After a good nights sleep and a lazy day I decided that I would play around with a bit of Fimo rather than get my paints out, modeling with polymer clay is something I can do sitting on a comfy sofa with a tray on my knee. 


Keeping up with my toadstool designs I done a few sketches......

Toadstool sketches

........... and made a few of these......

Toadstool Pendants

They're not finished yet, they still need to be baked. I've made quite a few and I will experiment with some of them by using a dark wash with acrylic paint to give an aged look. So watch this space.


I'm linking this post to a great Linky Party so don't forget to pop over to Wendy's Blog and check out who else is there.


Wishing you all a great and dry week

Jan x

Bicycles and sketches

Hello all, another Handmade Monday has come around and what a busy time it's been. 

I have been doing  lots of prep this week for a couple of 'one woman shows' that have been organised for me......ooer, that sounds a bit grand don't you think? 

The first one is to be held over the Easter Period in a lovely little Tea Room at Brandon Country Park. 

I made the fatal mistake of thinking I had lots of time to get my paintings done and organised but as usual have left everything to the last minute.

I 'sort' of know what I want to do, so that's 'sort' of good, I've done a few sketches, so that's good, 

My bicycle sketches

I've transferred some of the sketches onto my canvases, I consider that very good.

Bicycle sketches on 3 canvases

Now all I need to do is get the paintings done and hopefully show them to you in a future post. I decided to go with a bicycle theme, mainly because the park has lots of cycle paths and attracts lots of cyclists. It's a lovely peaceful place to go for a rides or walks and to enjoy nature.
I don't mind the walking bit but I don't 'do' cycles, painting them is one thing, riding them is quite another, they don't like me, really, they don't, as soon as I go near one of these contraptions they conspire against me, go all wibbly wobbly and to throw me to the ground. 

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My second show is at an Abstract Gallery in a Coffee Shop in Newmarket, that's not until November so hey there's plenty of time.... isn't there?!

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Oh and in between these two I'm taking part in a group Art Show to be held at a Local Church in June. I'd better get my skates on.

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Don't forget to check out all the other busy crafters over at 1st Unique Gifts blog

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Have a good week all,

Jan x

Pictures from my Sketchbook

I keep a copy of these body measurements close by when I'm sketching at home, I jotted these down quite some time ago and are used as a rough guide only. They act as a reminder as to the dimensions of  an average body!!
You can get a lot more detailed charts by searching online for 'drawing body proportions'

A rough guide to Body Proportion

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Here are a few sketches from my  'People' folder.

I used this position for my Summer Fairy. In the second sketch you can just see where I altered the arm position and a slight tilt in the head. The sketch starts off as a scribble and when I see the line that is right I keep that and erase most of what I don't need.

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Summer Fairy

A lot of my scribbles and sketches are done on loose paper and I keep them in a folder, this makes it easy for me to keep the same or similar subjects together. I often refer back to old sketches as well as keep adding new ones.

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Here are a few more, some more successful than others. I like to keep some of my 'not so good' sketches so I can see where I went wrong and what I need to correct.

I love the stance in the centre sketch.

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Jan x

Bird sketches in the garden

In my last post I mentioned that I was going to do a lot more sketching. Sketching means many things to many people, it can be a quick thumb sketch to serve as a record of something you have seen or thought, it can be a way of keeping a record or a reminder of something you may want to use or do at a later date.

 These are some quick workings out for a set of canvases most of you have seen before, for those who haven't or if you want to see them again you can see the pictures here and here

Most of us use this type of thumbnail sketch, usually on any old scrap of paper, notebook or even an envelope, whatever is at hand at the time. It is a good way of working out composition and size. Most of these sketches have been done using pencil with a couple done in ink (el cheapo biro).


Some sketches can be more involved or more intricate and look like finished studies. There are no rules about sketching, there are as many styles as there are people.
You can sketch from books, photographs or real life and you can use any medium, most people use pencil as it is clean and readily available but you can use charcoal, pastels, watercolour or oil paint. Or how about mixed media, tissue paper, glue and even clay. There is no time restraint on a sketch, it can be a quick 2 minutes to a goodly few hours, there are no rules about detail, you can do as little or as much as you want.  The only boundaries are those we put in place ourselves.

To me sketching is a good way of practising some subjects that challenge me and by golly, I need some practise. The beach sketches above were done from memory and imagination, these next lot are done from life. This week has been a bit on the cold side to say the least and I'm certainly not going to freeze my fingers off sitting out in the cold so I started doing a few bits just from looking out of my windows.
Here are some of the results....

Birds in the Garden

There is no real detail in these sketches, I just wanted to capture the positions of the birds in the shrubs. 

The Great Tit eating out of the coconut shell was the most difficult because it was fluttering it's wings continually, the 3 birds sitting together was the easiest to sketch as these little cuties didn't move for long periods, the other 2 are juvenile blackbirds and were not to bad because they repeat the same stance quite often. 

These are 5 minute sketches done in pencil then afterwards I quickly went over the main lines with a pen.

I'm going to try and do a few sketches each week and possibly do a regularish post using both new and old sketches.

 Wishing you all a good week-end

Jan x