More blooms

The rainy weather has kept me indoors and away from gardening so I have been spending a lot of time drawing and preparing teaching examples for the summer school I will be teaching in a few weeks time in association with Horsley Printmakers.

The Bloom and Grow summer school takes place Thursday to Sunday | August 9, 10, 11, 12th.

 

Gardens, allotments, foliage and flowers are the inspiration for this four day mixed media course which celebrates the British love affair with their gardens. We will start with simple line drawings of flowers and vegetables in pencil and pen and ink, moving on to colour using inks, pastels, resists and a variety of mark making. You will learn to abstract the essence of the natural forms turning them into mixed media compositions which include collage. We will have a printmaking day using rollers, stencils and brushes to apply colour to metal plates to make richly coloured monotypes which can also be collaged and drawn into. If you are a textile artist you may also like to print your monotypes on to fabric for embellishment at a later stage. If the weather is clement we hope to visit a very pretty local allotment where you can take photographs and draw if you choose to.

If you are interested in booking on the course please book through the Horsley Printmakers website.

Kindle Case

I love new technology but don't always like how it looks. Here is the little light weight bag I have made for my kindle. They will be available to buy from my studio soon.

Bloom and Grow

Every summer I run a summer school for Horsley Printmakers. This is probably my favourite printmaking teaching of the year as the luxury of 4 days really allows the students to achieve a huge amount of work and explore many techniques. This summer's course is called Bloom and Grow and runs from 9th - 12th August.  There are still 2 places left so if you are interested CLICK HERE for a link to Horsley Printmakers site. Meanwhile here are some images from my sketchbooks on a loosely floral theme.  However hard I try in my drawing styles I always refer back to surface pattern techniques ( my degree was in International Textiles and Surface Pattern) and these paintings and drawings look as though they are a starting point for something else - fashion or interior prints maybe.

Red

I've been going through a red phase....

Towards Abstraction

Printmaking brings out a completely different side to my artistic output. With rollers and brushes in hand I love to make gestural and instinctive marks. These monotypes are abstract but are also based loosely on two themes.  The  warm palette relates to an obsession with taking photographs of weather damage on boats and the cooler blue tones refer to research into traditional japanese architecture. I'll photograph some pages of the sketchbook to which the images relate soon and post them up.

Precious Memories

I am still taking bookings for  "Precious Memories" on Sunday July 8th. In the last few years this has proved to be my most popular course. This is  probably because participants can bring things which have a personal resonance for them and learn to collage them into a resolved piece which they can treasure. There is more information about the course on my web site CLICK HERE for more details and if you want to book then please contact me through the web site contacts box.

Les glaneuses

An attempt to work into an old piece of needlepoint, not sure it works really...