Now we have colour

The electrician was here all day on Friday so I was confined to working in the kitchen to keep out of the way.  I managed to colour in some of my sketchbook page and made a stencil (bottom right hand corner) which appears to work quite well.  Some of the patterns remind me very much of Art Deco not Anglo Saxon!

Staffordshire Hoard

This is the other thing I have been doing.  The patterns are my attempt at working out some of the designs found on items amongst the Staffordshire Hoard.  I am sure that you can see accuracy is not my strong point, although I did draw some grid lines.

I thought I might be able to create a background fabric using lots of bits of the patterns and then work on top of that.  I am making very slow progress, particularly as I will probably have to make some print blocks or stencils.  Unfortunately, once work starts on the house again all my playtime will have to cease!

What a waste

Scrap of fabric which was used as waste when painting the tissue paper

Thursday saw me playing around with the Lynda Monk book again and I have now tried using tissue paper on muslin which gives a lovely soft piece of fabric. (see the gold piece below)  I also managed to find my Indigo Treasure Gold (it was where it should have been, of course, but hidden under something else!!) and the blue piece below is the result of that.  I am afraid the scanner makes the colours incorrect because of the metallic finish and I should really have photographed the pieces.

Tissue Paper on Muslin

Whatever Happened ....

Boredom found me messing around on the computer tidying up some old files yesterday and I found this photo of my younger brother and myself in a school photograph in the playground at Bolton on Swale village school.  The school has now been converted into a house.  I looked so sweet then ....

Staffordshire Hoard

I have been doodling again.  I have been drawing one of the animals from a cheek piece fragment from the Staffordshire Hoard.  It is a good job you cannot see the original!  I had to create a grid as I managed to get the proportions a bit wrong.

I traced the image from my drawing and scanned it into photoshop and I have since been playing around with it - single image, multiple images, flipped image ... etc etc.

 

One of the problems I am forever having when using Photoshop is remembering how to do things.  I wanted a transparent background so that I could overlap the two images shown above. I then erased part of one of them so they looked like they were intertwined.  Better think about using some colour and distressing techniques next so they look old and worn. 

More design options

GREETINGS FROM MALVERN

Happy New Year

Wishing everyone a Happy and Healthy 2012

Malvern Hills

You can tell how bored I have been over the festive season.  I have been doodling with my lovely new Faber Castell PITT sepia artists pens which I had as a Christmas present from one of my lovely friends.  They are super to use.

I have had the postcard for ages and have meant to do an outline sketch with a view to creating a small patchwork landscape hanging for my new Studio (when it is eventually finished).  No hurry on that front then?

Opened Envelope No 3 of the Venture 2 challenge and I will have to start all over again.  I have to chop up the piece of work and reassemble it.  There is no way I am chopping up some hand quilting after it took ages to do.