Kate Semple workshop

Mid-century vessels

Collage of leftovers

In mid-June I took part in an online workshop with Kate Semple, organised by STILL Flower Drawing. It was a wonderful hour of creative messiness. We made patterned papers to create a still life collage of vases. I loved working at a fast speed - it stopped me over-thinking things, and the final collage has a more spontaneous feel as a result. As always with collage, I’m more interested in the bits that are left behind afterwards, so have gone on to create some more smaller collages in my sketchbook.

Week 6 – ink

Collage of enlarged photocopy or original drawing

Strange plant matter found in the street

Grape hyacinth seedheads

Pine cone found on the street

My final week of 30 days of daily drawings. These were drawings using Indian ink and some of my plant inks made last year. I really enjoyed completing a drawing every day, and I may not keep it up in terms of theming each week, but I’ll definitely continue filling up this sketchbook.

Week 5 – rubber stamps

The sepals of a rock rose

The sepals of a geum

The daisy-like flowers of Mexican fleabane

Snow-in-summer flowers

A week of carving simple rubber stamps based on plant shapes to create repeat patterns.

Week 4 - water-soluble

Sweet William with water-soluble brush pens.

A bold and a quiet drawing of Salvia with dip pen and brush pen.

Bay leaves with water-soluble pens and pencils.

Hydrangea leaves and flowerhead buds with a dip pen and watersoluble pens.

Five days of experimenting with water-soluble media – Koi Colouring Brush Pens and Derwent Inktense coloured pencils. Feel like I need to use these more to explore their potentail…

Week 3 – collages

A rhododendron flower – look like it could work well as a rubber stamp

A ripped sugar paper collage, and a coloured pencil drawing of the collage

A collage of young sedum leaves (using random papers from my box of paper scraps)…. and a wax crayon rubbing of the collage

Phlox flower – two collages using leftover gouache strips from last October’s daily drawings

A week of daily collages – one of my favourite ways of working as I never know what I’m going to end up with when I sit down with a blank page. Always a nice surprise!

Week 2 - ink drawings

Euphorbia – ink with chalk pastel

Broom - dip pen

Red Valerian – ink blob transfer technique

Penstemon leaves - negative space painted with white gouache, then covered in black ink and washed off… the ink is left in the unpainted spaces.

My second week of daily drawings in May – this week I’ve tried different techniques and drawing implements with black ink…

Draw More May

Monoprint, water-soluble crayon and collage

Monoprint, foam stamps and posca pen

Monoprint and watercolour

Monoprint, gouache and rubber stamp

Trying to get back into a daily practice of drawing this month (possibly limited to weekdays). This first week I’ve been playing with back-drawn monoprints, and - as I’m always more fond of the left behind bits - adding an additional page using leftovers each day…

Ghosts in the Machine

Rather belatedly, but better late than never... I’m thrilled to be part of the United Artists’ World Book Night publication ‘Ghosts in the Machine’ launched last weekend at BABE 2022. An ethereal - and bumper - collection of monochrome images creating a bibliography of all participants’ favourite ghost stories. I chose Daphne du Maurier’s ‘Rebecca’. There’s a wonderful exhibition of all the prints at Bower Ashton Library until 29 June and you can view a short film of the project at https://youtu.be/5cHj5NQvh2c

Many thanks to Linda Parr (@lsp_books) and Sarah Bodman for organising this excellent annual collaborative project - it’s always a joy to take part...

Making flowery trouser books

Fantastic to be teaching again after a very long time – I ran a workshop on making a single sheet folded book with a cover containing floral monoprints. We ctreated backdrawn monoprints and then coloured them with foam stamps - some brilliant results from all the participants, and the inky mess was surprisingly minimal!

Pages from a garden residency

Had fun giving a short talk at BABE 2022 last weekend on the books I made as part of my Garden Residency last year (which was ironically meant to be a break from making books!) Interesting to see them all together as a group, and it’s given me a few ideas for new future editions.

BABE at Bower

UWE Artists’ Book Club (ABC) table at BABE

An amazing stash of goodies from BABE 2022 - so much inspiration!

I had a brilliant time at the Bristol Artists’ Book Event (BABE) at UWE Bower Ashton campus last weekend. I really enjoyed my time on the ABC table… lovely to catch up with so many friends in real life. And such a treat to spend a whole day talking about books. I’d missed it more than I realised. It felt like waking up after a long hibernation. I sold a lot of books and bought a lot of books too - it’s a circular economy!

Plant Ink

Inspired by my trusty Pantone swatch book - in almost daily use for the past 20 years - Plant Ink is a limited edition catalogue of natural ink samples made as part of my Garden Residency last year. It could have had an alternative title of Fifty Shades of Brown, but it’s interesting to see all the colours together in one place to appreciate the subtle differences in those shades. The book will be available for the first time at BABE (the Bristol Artist’s Book Event) this coming weekend, and then in my online shop from next week…

UPDATE: Over the moon that the whole edition of 15 copies of Plant Ink sold out over the past week, so I’m afraid it won’t be listed in my online shop. Many thanks to anyone who bought a copy!

Sketchbook Revival 2022

Taking Zoom portrait sketches up a notch with Carla Sondheim

A calligraphic folded book and pocket with Rachel Hazell

Pattern making with Faith Evans-Sills

Even the sketchbook was made in a workshop with Sarah Matthews

Apologies for the silence on here recently - I’ve been very busy but just not blogging about it as I needed a bit of a screen break. I’ve had a lot of fun taking part in the Sketchbook Revival 2022, hosted by Karen Abend. Lots of brilliant online workshops (all for free - amazing!) with a lot of inspiration for different creative approaches for filling a sketchbook.

Waste not want not

I had a stack of painty paper squares left over from December’s daily drawing monoprints. I pimped them up with ink stamp pads, Indian ink and white gouache. Here they are arranged into new grids.

A year of daily drawings

Working out how to turn my daily drawings from last year into a book. This is the first time I’ve seen the sheets all together as I stuck each one into my journal as they were completed at the end of each month. I like how there’s a shift from black and white to limited colour then brighter colour as the months warm up. Encouraging to see while we’re still in a very monochrome part of the year...

The beginning of a new book

Back in my happy place... planning a small edition of natural ink sample books (inspired by my trusty Pantone swatch book - a graphic designer’s best friend). Surprised how a couple of the inks have become much more intense (hazel catkin and hypericum) and pleasantly surprised that only one jar has gone mouldy (oak galls)...

Chinese thread books

Excellent online workshop by Gen Harrison last week for the ABC group at UWE – learning how to make a version of a Chinese thread book (Zhen Xian Bao). Layers of compartments in one small book structure. Boxes within a book. Mine was a bit clunky, despite the expert tuition, but it was so great to be making again. Many thanks Gen!

Following on from the online workshop, I made another Chinese thread book (Zhen Xian Bao) so I don’t forget how to do it. A bit less wonky than my first attempt, and fun to decorate the paper with rubber stamps...

Exciting news...

A rather belated post to mark the exciting news that following one of my Lockdown books being acquired by the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, it is currently on display in their New Arrivals exhibition (running until April). Very happy to be sharing a case with the very talented Susie Wilson. Many thanks to Archivist Kirstie Meehan for including my book in this exhibition.

It feels appropriate to be exhibited in Scotland as the original book was created as part of an ABC print exchange and was posted north of the border to the lovely Gen Harrison. The first digitally printed version was bought by someone in Scotland, and the book then featured last December in an exhibition in Edinburgh’s Upright Gallery.

Many thanks to everyone who has bought a copy of this book – it’s raised over £200 for Bristol Northwest Foodbank.

Leftover stencils

Playing around with some leftover tracing paper stencils that have been coloured with ink stamp pads. I think I’m going to use this as a starting point for an embroidery. I like how it looks when inversed in Photoshop too...

A year-long test

The opposite of instant gratification... here are the results of the lightfastness test I set up last January for yarn I dyed in autumn 2020. The top lollipop stick of each pair has been sat on my sunny studio window sill for a year. The bottom sticks are the same yarn that’s been stored in a dark box during that time. The first photo shows the more fugitive colours - sloes and red cabbage are particularly unstable. The second photo shows dyes from trees and herbs - I’m surprised how little those colours have faded in the sunlight...