There wasn’t anything particular that caught my attention in the last week to merit a sketchbook page, so I returned to my roots as it were and made a little patchwork from paper. The design was inspired by quilt patterns that I have seen that remind me of pathways or trails. One was called the Oregon Trail that I found a few years ago now on a website that no longer appears to exist. Another is the blended triangle pattern from Barbara Dieges.
My little paper quilt doesn’t quite form a trail. There wasn’t enough space on a double page and I didn’t have the patience to cut my triangles any smaller, but I am quite pleased anyway with the result. I like traditional quilt blocks, but put together with a twist. I haven’t ever made a full sized bed quilt. I keep thinking I might, but then some other idea takes precedence and the traditional quilt never gets made.
That is actually not quite the truth. The first quilt I ever made was back at the end of the 1970s. I hand pieced a double bed sized quilt using the English paper piecing method and the grandmother’s flower garden pattern. As I’d never seen a patchwork quilt at the time I didn’t know it should have three layers so mine was just lined with curtain lining and didn’t have a proper binding on it. In fact it started out as a single bed quilt, but I got married before I’d finished it so it grew into a double bed quilt. I still have it, but the curtain lining shrank so it doesn’t lie flat any more. Another thing I didn’t know then, was that it’s good idea to wash your fabric first!
So here’s my little paper quilt. I was interested in getting some texture into the pattern by using different images torn from a magazine. The other thing I like is the contrast between dark and light as in the log cabin patchwork block, so I was experimenting with light and dark triangles.
I’ve had an arrangement of nuts, picked up on one walk just up the road from us, sitting on the dresser waiting to be included in my sketchbook. I was actually thinking of doing something different this week – something more along the lines of a collage, but then I discovered Geni’s new blog Moving Fibers where she is journalling about her Creative Quiltmaking course with the Kemshalls. In particular her posts about exploring greys and from colours to greys inspired me to have a go at using just pencil to sketch the fruits and nuts.
It was a lot harder than I expected. Geni made it look so easy. In particular I found the light areas difficult to get right. I tried not to do much rubbing out so what you see is pretty much exactly what happened when I put pencil to paper. I am finding that drawing is really making me stop and look at things in much more detail. Maybe using a pencil instead of tearing up bits of paper is a very good exercise for me right now. Getting my eye trained to appreciate the minutiae.
Here is my little collection displayed on a piece of bark that I picked up to carry it all home on. I started off trying to include the bark in the sketches too, but that was a bit too challenging for working in just grey so I left it out as I continued to work.
I don’t know what the nuts/seeds are in front of the Constantinople hazelnut. They were difficult to draw as they got lost in my bark background.
I found it hard to get the depth of field right in the horse chestnut husks. They have such lovely rounded cavities, but I didn’t do them justice in my sketching.
This sketchbook is all about my journey of discovery in using a sketchbook. I’m not sure that will be apparent to the people who might look at it once it joins the collection. I don’t have the space in the little journal to write all this stuff that I am putting up on my blog. Pity really, but I hope they enjoy it anyway.
We used to do a lot of cycling when we lived in Munich. Then we moved to live at the top of a hill in Schmitten that meant every bike ride ended in a long slog uphill. About 10km uphill to be more precise. Bike riding didn’t seem such fun suddenly. I actually really enjoy cycling though so we invested in folding bicycles. We did use them once or twice but then other interests came along – quilting and textile art for example – and the bikes were confined to the cellar.
We decided to bring them here to the flat in Kronberg. It’s not so hilly and I don’t have a complete studio either, so I’m not spending so much time on textile art. Last weekend was a long weekend and we had wonderful weather. We went out on the bikes every one of the three days. So what else could I choose as my theme for the sketchbook, if not something to do with the bikes. We have Brompton folding bikes, which really are well designed and easy to fold and unfold once you get the hang of it.
So I decided to sketch the bike itself:
As you can see it has a special park position too – so if there is nothing convenient to lean it against it can still stand on its own.
And here’s a photo of me actually riding (well sitting on) it. This is taken in the center of the Kronberg, next to a fountain with some quite unusual animal figures – dolphins with plaits for instance!
What a coincidence – today I was reading the September issue of Harvard Business Review when the Spotlight Artist caught my eye. HBR has fairly recently started illustrating their Spotlight package with a series of artworks from an artist. I always like to look through the artworks, because they have had some very interesting artists featured. In the September issue it is Jen Stark, an American artist who creates wonderfully elaborate designs using paper cutting techniques.
Then I stumbled upon her again in this post of Lark Crafts blog. It turns out she is one of 30 featured artists in the book PUSH Paper: 30 Artists Explore the Boundaries of Paper Art which is one of the first two books published in the new gallery series PUSH from Lark Crafts. This video gives a good idea of her work, but it is worth looking at her website to see the static images too.
The second book in the new series is PUSH Stichery is curated by Jamie Chalmers – aka Mr. X Stitch. My niece introduced me to his blog Mr X Stitch earlier this year. This post on the Lark Crafts blog gives you a good taste of the goodies each book offers. Two books worth putting on your wish list. I’m adding them to mine!
You may remember that I posted about taking photos in the rain. We did have an ulterior motive for doing so. I sent the photographs to Lark Crafts in the hope of them being accepted into the new book Art Quilt Portfolio: People & Portraits being prepared. The original date for hearing something was mid-September if I remember rightly. So I had more or less given up on the idea that I just might get into print.
Well today I received an email to tell me that I’ve made it into the second round of judging for inclusion into the gallery section of the book. Apparently there was such a huge response that a second round became necessary. Now I have to wait until early 2012 to hear whether Dad’s portrait makes it into the book or not. I also have to get through the vetting process to ensure that the images satisfy the technical specifications. I don’t expect that to be a problem because Sqeze took great care to follow the letter of the law on that account – that was one of the reasons for photographing outside in the rain – to get the best light possible as no manipulation of the images was allowed.
Walking to work one day this week I saw an interesting seed pod lying on the pavement. I stopped to pick it up and realised that there were plenty more under the trees lining the road. I wasn’t sure what the trees were as they are still quite immature. It turned out to be from a lime tree – Linde in German. They are quite common trees in the urban landscape in Germany. The most famous probably being those on “Unter den Linden” in Berlin. Although many towns and villages had a linden tree in their centre, where it was the meeting point to exchange news and gossip and go looking for a wife.
On my way back to the car at the end of the day I picked up some more seeds. Then I spotted this fellow further down the pavement and took a few photos with my mobile phone. I think my behaviour quite surprised some of the other pedestrians also on their way back to their cars.
His lime green colour was the inspiration for the background colour wash to my sketchbook spread for this week made with my aquarelle pencils. I don’t have access to a colour printer at home anymore so he didn’t make it onto my sketchbook pages.
These are the originals:
This morning we walked down into the centre of the village to have a mosey around the flea market and on our way back through the woods I picked up more sketching inspiration. In the space of about 500m we passed sweet chestnut and horse chestnut trees (quite dangerous at the moment as the conkers and chestnuts are falling regularly from the trees and especially the sweet chestnuts come in extremely prickly husks) and a Turkish or Constantinople hazel tree. The latter has quite spectacular bundles of nuts:
It wasn’t hard to find a theme for my sketchbook pages this week. All things seem to revolve around Spain at the moment. We have been trying to choose tiles for the kitchen remotely. That is not all the easy as we were told to choose small format tiles and all the manufacturers seem to have only enormous tiles in their programmes or hideous little ones. We have been trying to source all our materials locally too, so we had to find tile shops that stocked Spanish manufacturers.
As my contract ends next Wednesday I’ve also started looking for a new one. A colleague found an advert looking for someone to work in Madrid which fitted quite well to my skill set. It would be a chance to learn some more Spanish too. I’m not sure whether I want it to come to anything or not. It would make life quite a bit more complicated.
With all that going on in my head what else could I have chosen for my sketchbook?
The first three pages of my sketchbook have been been filled. As I don’t have lots of supplies here I had to learn how to use those that I do. I bought some watercolour pencils at least 2 years ago now and haven’t used them at all. But I did bring them here to the flat as being something that didn’t take up much space. I found a good video on YouTube to get me started:
I did a little practice in my other sketchbook. It seemed a lot easier than using watercolour paints. Then I was ready to put pencil to paper in the “real” sketchbook.
For the feathers I used a mixture of artist’s pencils and watercolour pencils. I had my real feather to look at of course. I was quite chuffed when Sqeze asked me where I got the other feathers from. They must be pretty realistic then. I like the quilts I’ve seen that are like maps, particularly those of Valerie Goodwin. So I decided to put a little map on the other page. The triangles are of course directly inspired by flying geese borders in patchwork quilts.
Not quite so polished as the quilts that inspired it, but not bad for a beginning I felt.
As I’m a collector of inspiring quotes I chose 3 of them that I felt expressed my feelings and intentions at the start of this little project and wrote them on the first page.
And finally I stuck in the feather that started off the train of thought for my first pair of pages.
Now I just have to find something to inspire me for the next spread of pages.
My sketchbook arrived this week. I was surprised at how small the envelope was. I was expecting something a little larger – not having taken any notice of the dimensions mentioned on the project website.
The sketchbook (with the brown cover) is 18 x 13cm – I’m not sure whether I’m pleased or not. On the one hand it certainly isn’t as intimidating as I had expected, to be confronted with blank paper that needs to be filled up. It’s quite a manageable amount. On the other hand for someone who is used to working in an A3 sketchbook, when I do use one, it will be quite a change and probably a challenge to have such a small area to use at one time.
Last night Sqeze found a tiny feather in the bedroom that had found its way in through a cracked open window. So I thought that would be my starting point for “Travel with Me”. My idea is to pick a jumping off point for each set of pages of something that crosses my path during the week. Even it I don’t find anything each week I should be able to fill the pages by the deadline for posting of Jan. 31st, 2012.
As I have fairly limited art supplies in my temporary abode it will also be an exercise in creating within a set of constraints. I’m not planning on buying more supplies to clutter up the flat – I don’t feel comfortable crowded in by “stuff”. I’ll see how I get on and only buy things that I really notice I’m missing.
I just had something happen to me that appears to be becoming more and more prevalent on blogs. I was trying to add a comment to the new blog Tea and Talk for Two started by Helen Conway and Diane Perin Hock. And couldn’t because none of the options offered for identifying yourself work for me.
I have a googlemail account, but even trying that option, google then wanted me to set up a blogger account, which I don’t want. So I didn’t. This has happened to me a couple of times in the last few weeks. I have written to the authors if I could find a way to do so, but rarely get a reply.
While writing this I just had a reply from Helen to say she has altered the access to allow the Name/URL option. It was not part of the default options. So at least I now know that it is probably a nasty attempt on the part of these big internet providers to get you to sign up to their groups. I won’t though. I’m still adverse to leaving an electronic trail of myself all across the www. I’m not anti the web. In fact I use it a lot, but I do think that we are all becoming glass people – totally see-through and baring our souls. Me, I prefer to have a bit more control over how much of myself I give away to the world at large.
So having got that off my chest, let me recommend Tea and Talk for Two. I think it could well be a blog that turns out to be worth eavesdropping on
Ruth | Category: 
