Week six

Playing around with homemade inks - thank goodness for the blue of the red cabbage to break all those browns up a bit!

Christmas bouquet dyeing experiments (1)

Christmas bouquet dyeing experiments (2)

Drawing and traced outline for a woodcut print

Starting to carve the woodcut print

White posca pen on tracing paper to record snow patterns from bitmapped photos taken last month

A work-in-progress kind of a week… I’m stitching on top of a small collage of naturally dyed fabric scraps (see top picture) whilst hibernating in the evenings. I’ve been playing with my homemade inks to see how the colours look alongside each other (bit of a crossover with my stitching trials). I’ve catalogued the results of (non-scientific) dye experiments with Christmas bouquets of flowers donated by a neighbour once they were past their best. There was more colour in them than I expected. I’ve been carving a woodcut - my first in years - based on a sketch I did whilst taking part in the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch at the end of last month… looking forward to doing some printmaking again. Finally, I used some photos I took in the brief snow we had in Bristol on 24 January as a basis for some white posca pen drawings onto tracing paper. I’m planning to make these into a small book (what else?)

Week five

The cover of my single sheet book of line walks

Line walks in my garden - one a day for seven days, using different drawing materials

Dye results from Christmas tree branches - lovely chocolatey browns

More Christmas leftovers - yew sprigs and holly berries from a friend’s festive table centrepiece

A ladder of dyed thread samples – these are all the colours from January’s experiments

A pleasing symmetry - a tiny woven panel of yarn dyed with oak twigs, sewn back onto one of the twigs from the same tree

My January sheet of daily drawings… last month was silhouettes, this month will be line drawings

A week of consolidation… I’ve collated all my artwork from January into my large sketchbook so I have a record of the year as it unfolds. I’ve set myself a challenge within the ‘residency’ to complete a small drawing every day - the final image above shows the completed sheet for January. I started off simple with ink silhouettes to get me into the drawing habit, and I’m moving onto line drawings this month. I’m hoping that the silhouettes will be useful source material for rubber stamps, stencils and patterns. It’s been an interesting exercise in looking more closely at plants, and it’s good to start each day with a drawing.

At the end of January I completed a drawn line walking down the garden each day for a week - they became more interesting when overlaid. I made this into a single sheet book - it doesn’t exactly follow the path of the journey down the garden the way it’s cut and folded, but it’s a more compact way of containing the visual record.

Some more dyeing experiments have been dried and catalogued – Christmas tree branches, yew sprigs and holly berries. Mixed results, but I really like the range of chocolate brown tones from the Christmas tree. It was also good to see January’s dyed thread experiments all together on a sample card. A much wider range of colours than I had realised.

Finally, a tiny panel of woven yarn (created on a card pin loom) dyed with oak twigs – I sewed it onto an oak twig from the same tree, which seemed to be the most appropriate way of displaying something so small. I’d like to make more of these, linking the dyed yarn back to the trees of origin.

Week four

Wax resist ink drawings based on photos on branches in the snow taken in the brief window of white stuff on Sunday morning

Ink drawing of a Viburnum branch - colour rubbed from the actual berries and leaves

Collage of natural ink offcuts with drawings of fruit tree branches

A neater version of the stamped pattern I created a couple of weeks ago for covers on a coptic bound sketchbook. The linen thread is dyed with red onion - a perfect match for the ‘pear tart’ ink stamp pad

Experiment with stitching onto paper. Naturally dyed linen thread over the top of the corresponding homemade ink. From left to right: onion skins, hawthorn, holly berry and eucalyptus bark

A close up of the holly berry circle… this is my favourite ink so far - a really rich colour

Another productive week… my ‘garden residency’ seems to be balancing well with my day job so far - by doing something every day, I find I get into a rhythm of working and can maintain some momentum. This first month has been a lot of trying things out, but having just spent a day pulling everything together into a large scrapbook to record my progress, I’m happy with how it’s shaping up. Results have been a bit hit and miss, but I’ve learnt a lot and had fun getting back to playing again. It’s certainly been a welcome distraction in a particularly bleak January, and has left very little time for feeling bored or hemmed in at home.

Week three

Collaging with offcuts from paper used to test homemade ink samples

Speed drawing exercise (herb bed in my garden)

Collage made from speed drawing (above)

Red cabbage ink - pink when it hits the paper, but teal 10 minutes later. Magic!

Starting to catalogue and record results for my natural dyeing experiments.

A productive week in spite of the rain and being busy with design work. I’m starting to get into a habit of making artwork first thing in the morning before work and then doing more mindful/mindless tasks (see dye sample cards above) in the evenings when watching TV. I’ve really enjoyed starting to use my inks - the speed drawing used mint ink - and also creating collages with offcuts. I’m always happiest with the most random results. It was fun making and weaving on a tiny pin loom, and I’m keen to explore this further to make samples of the dyed yarn. Good to finally start to catalogue my dye samples… very pleasing to make the swatch cards, and I think they will be a really useful record.