Holiday sketches

A couple of sketches from a past holiday in Worcestershire.  They certainly bring back happy memories.

Both these were done on site, the first in the grounds of a stately home we visited; the second, a tiny sketch as we neared the end of a 5 mile walk through estate farmland.  My journal entry for that day records "We had a worryingly close encounter with three cows and their respective calves, but managed to escape unscathed".

The Ice House at Croome Park - pen and watercolour

Pirton Church - pen and watercolour

Piano hinge book

I finally managed to attempt the September challenge of the Facebook group "Crafting Handmade Books".  This was the piano hinge book on page 142 of The Art of the Fold.

I cut down some pages from an old atlas to use for this and, as the pages were rather wide, I folded them in at the fore edge - this compensates for the thickness of the spine.

Atlas pages and bamboo skewers
Finished size approx. 6.5" x 8"

Experimental backgrounds

I am continuing to re-visit old work as I am still finding it difficult to fit in much in the way of new sketches or paintings.

These were from some of my early attempts at painted papers, which were mainly intended for use in artists' books. On a couple of leftover scraps, I tried out some small floral sketches, using negative glazing in the background to accentuate the image.  These papers started off with wax crayon scribbles, overlaid with varigated washes of acrylic ink.

Wax crayon and acrylic ink, both approximately 6" x 4"

September's Urban Sketch

I managed to grab a couple of hours on Saturday to join our local Urban Sketchers group at St. Augustine's Church, Even Swindon.

The church was built in the early 1900's and is closely surrounded by housing, so a good view of the outside of the building was difficult to find.

Inside, my photo does not do justice to the magnificent, semi-circular apse.  The images of Christ, Mary Magdalene and St. Augustine were painted in the late 1980s, with a stunning background of gold leaf.  I was very rusty after a couple of months without keeping up my drawing practice and my attempt to get this aspect down on paper failed miserably, so I found a viewpoint in the narrow strip of garden bounding one side of the building.

Pen, watercolour with touches of oil pastel
5" x 8"

Sketches from the past ..

Continuing with my delve into work from the past .....

This was a postcard size watercolour painting of a
scene on the Norfolk Broads

An imaginary book cover illustration for one of
our art group's competitions

A scene from the Italianate style village of Portmeirion, North Wales, where we
were lucky enough to rent a cottage for a few days many years ago.  This village
was the backdrop for the television series "The Prisoner".