Italy

I have just come home from a holiday in lovely, hot, culturally rich Italy. I took many many photographs but here a re a few with a bit of a textile theme going on.

Fabric Flowers

I have been making these to sell in my studio at an Open Studios event we are having at The Hearth on the weekend of August  25th and 26th. It is a floral based weekend with a Flower Festival in Horsley Village Church and guest artists in the Hall all with work to do with flowers, including Louise Bradley whose work I have bought myself over the years.

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.