Seaside Sketchbook

'The One That Got Away' ~ Watercolour on Paper

Hello!

I thought I'd take five minutes to share some of the sketches from my holiday with you (and work done at home inspired by my travels), as promised in my last post.  

 

I tend to carry a small hard backed sketch book with me in my bag most of the time (either a small moleskine or A6 Daler Rowney), along with a pencil and fine line waterproof black pen (a Staedler number 01), so that I can catch interesting moments that might make for good paintings later on.

 

Do you remember the photograph I took of the harbour wall in Falmouth in my Holiday Post?  Here it is:

 

I drew the above sketch whilst waiting for a little boat to take us back to St Mawes, just before it started to rain!

Drawing in a sketch book has the same ability to transport me back to a place in time as does a favourite tune.  I can recall sounds, atmosphere, scents, how I was feeling, and the weather just by looking through my sketches.  

These little boats were drawn from our car, parked up above the beach at Portreath.  It had lashed it down with  monsoonal style rain all morning and we had taken our wee girl to 'Build a Bear' as the beach was out of the question.  After this, we drove the odd mile or so to the coast and after we had finished our picnic, all huddled in a steamy damp car (no, not the nicest of scenarios!), the rest of our little party, wrapped up in waterproofs,  took her down on the sand to look for shells.  The rain had turned to drizzle with a blustery wind by this point, and I remember making the most of ten minutes solitude to capture a couple of little boats in my book, that I could see out the window to my right.


Looking at this sketch now, I also remember armies of dark grey clouds marching heavily across the horizon, and the sea was leaden and dark, with a bright aquamarine band on the shoreline.  Raindrops spattered across the car windscreen, and gulls shreiked and harassed the occasional huddled figures of tourists, who seemed intent on making the best of it despite the soggy conditions.


When I came home, I used the sketch above to do a sunnier painting:

I like turning something 'real' into something more illustrative!
The top painting is unfinished, I decided to begin the second one below instead and embellished it with stamped letters.

The paints I used for these pictures are my New and Compleeeedly Delicious White Night set (shown above in spanking new condition before I got stuck in!).
The paints are Russian, and have been produced by a company in St Petersburg since 1934.  They use very fine pigments and even honey in their colours.  The colours themselves are extremely fine, fantastic to blend and mix and are proving to be a very valuable investment.

I have been using them again this morning, to create something slightly different...

'Party' ~ Watercolour on Paper

I hope you have a fabulous weekend, thanks for dropping by - i'll be back soon to talk about crocheted blankets on a budget, and an Almost Finished shawl!


Love J x

Inspiring Myself

Hello there.

Before I begin, I want to say a huge thank you to all of you dear souls who stopped by to wish me and the Little One well. Your kind messages made me feel much better, but alas, although the infection has gone, the head cold remains and we continue to wade through oodles of tissues and slurp nasty cough linctus.

Needless to say, I've been in dire need of a Pick-Me-Up. Being ill usually leaves me feeling quite low energy wise, and often I'm not even able to muster the enthusiasm to do a bit of crochet which is usually a cheerful pursuit in itself...I have only had sufficient energy to stroke the RR fondly and wistfully, and so, I have turned to my sketch books and Inspiration Book in order to lift my spirits these last few days - it's quite a tonic to inspire myself with painting ideas I'd forgotten all about, and to look at gorgeous pictures and recipes I'd previously pasted into my Inspiration Book.

The sketch above was done a couple of weekends ago, before the vile bug struck us down. The sun was shining and it was incredibly warm so I wandered off across the road to do a bit of drawing at the allotments. It really is a fabulous little place, tucked in a little dip below a grassy verge and by the riverside. It teams with plant pots, rickety fencing, old buckets and benches, forgotten cups of tea, spades, tipsy greenhouses (you know, the ones that lean precariously to one side defying gravity) and all other such allotment type paraphanalia...including My Chickens.

I say 'My' Chickens...hmmmm....well, I pretend they are mine dear readers, yes I do. I have a crazy love affair with these plump bronze feathered creatures. I can see them from my bedroom window and often find myself gazing at them strutting about and swooning with delight at their doings. One day, I will have chickens of my own, but for now I am playing Pretend and that is Good for now. I have a feeling, as batty as it probably sounds, a few of you will probably understand where Im coming from on that one :D

So I whiled away a good hour or so there with my trusty Moleskine...

Here is a little hand made bench, quite crudely fashioned out of a plank of old wood and two tree stumps!! How completely delightful!! It was covered in a pile of parsnips that had seen better days, and a rusty old horseshoe.

Going back in my book, I found some of the earliest sketches which I drew in preparation for my Little Red character...

...and some more recent ones from this winter, of blackbirds in my back garden.

And then I dug out my Inspiration Book.

Have you got one yourself? Have you the faintest idea what I'm talking about??

My Inspiration Book is a spiral bound sketch book full of all sorts of stuff, clippings from magazines, recipes, photographs, postcards, lovely websites and so on. It is a treasure trove of wonderful things I wanted to remember, Just In Case.

This little home made book never fails to lift the spirits and get me in a creative frame of mind.

Another example of something that lights the creative fire, is this:

My daughter, although only two, is forever drawing. She has a Doodle Draw (otherwise she would go through an entire ream of A4 paper in a week) and is constantly surprising and inspiring me.

The picture above is of herself, singing in the garden with two Buzzy Bees on two Pretty Flowers.

I love how children are a bottomless pit of enthusiasm and inspiration.

I'm also inspired by Simple Stuff. Little pleasures that we encounter through our days, like the perfect candy floss pink of the blossom against a pure (and clear) blue sky...

...I also like things like fresh bed linen that has dried in a warm breeze,

the scent of fields on a summers evening, heady with that special herby smell you only get at that time of year...

...I like scraping out the bottom of the G&B chocolate spread jar with the long handled jam spoon...

...I like walking on an empty beach watching the sea foam hiss up the sand...

and

I like this:

It's not finished yet, but I'm perhaps about half way through. Rainbow Ripple is coming on just beautifully and the wool I'm using (Sublime cashmere merino silk dk) is an absolute dream to work with, and so very, very soft.

This is going to be one of those divine blankets that come on lots of adventures with us. One that will get hauled about on picnics, evenings on the beach eating fish and chips out of paper, and snuggling up on the sofa with on a cold afternoon watching something fabulous like Amelie or Chocolat.

Talking of chocolate....you remember in my last post I told you I was going to try and be very healthy and perk up the old immune system?

Well, I have been trying. I've been trying very hard, eating much more fruit, veg and salad than normal and drinking pints of water and herbal tea.

In all honesty I do feel much better, and I've lost 4lb without even trying.

But.

I have to say, all this healthy eating is Good but it lacks something.

It lacks Treats, and in my home Treats are necessary...and an apple just doesn't compensate for a clotted cream laden scone oozing with strawberry jam.

So, after several days of being Very Good and building up the immune system, I caved in and baked apricot flapjacks with the Little One. Oh my goodness, the aroma as it baked of heady rich syrupy goodness...I could hardly contain myself!!!

So a happy medium is reached. Yes, we will continue to eat much more good stuff than before as we feel better inside and out, but we will also have cakes and flapjacks and puddings because life simply tastes better with them than without!

Sending you love, thank you for popping by my blog today ~ don't forget to drop me a 'Hello' if you do, it's always grand to hear from you!

Julia x