Half term already?

I still measure and break down the year into chunks by the school / academic year, partly from being married to a now retired teacher, and partly from having gone to various adult education classes of one sort or another all my life.

I have gone to Mags Bradley’s water-colour painting class for many years, and we started up for real again in Sreptember, after Zoom sessions during part of Lockdown and beyond. The venue has changed, as the room we used at Caistor Art and Heritage Centre was too small for social distancing, This was a shame as the cafe section provided good drinks for coffee time, delivering them to the room so we could continue with our work, and good lunches and snacks for after the class.

The new venue is a room in the Town Hall, where we have a lot more space and even our own table to spread out on. I no longer have to make sure I’m on the left as I tend to spread out to the left and gradually drift that way as I’m working. The classes more or less follow the school year, but tend to start a bit later in September as folk squeeze in holidays after the children go back to school. They’ve have gone down from six to five, which is partly why they seem to have gone so quickly this half term.

We started with drawing hog weed just to get our hand and eyes back in. Some have been painting and drawing very regularly without classes, and others nothing at all since we finished the real classes in March 2020. I sit somewhere in the middle, but it was good to just observe and draw; also weeds are something that I like to draw anyway.

In the second half of the two-hour session we added some paint. I was less happy with my results and certainly needed to get back into it.

The following week we did more painting, a landscape with hogweed in the foreground. Small sections I was reasonable happy with, but not even croppable to end up with whole picture. It was using a mix of watercolour paint, water soluble crayons and a little white gouache: definitely a learning curve piece.

The third week was hips and haws, starting off drawing in my sketchbook again. I really enjoyed this one. The autumn palette is my favourite to work with, whether in paint or fabric and threads.

I didn’t manage to finish the painting in the session and still haven’t got back to it. There is certainly still plenty of source material in the hedgerows and garden if I don’t leave it too long.

Week four was another landscape with hips in the foreground. Again it needs some more work, but I rather liked this one. The fabrics at the top of the image are the bits I use to wipe my brushes of excess paint and some of them I will stitch into eventually.

The final week was always an experimental / play session, often my favourite of the block and this week’s was no exception. I split my sheet of watercolour into four with masking tape and did four little landscapes. Lots of pigment, the sky wet-in-wet and the foreground dry paper, but having small pieces of cellophane added while it was still really wet which gives lovely textures. You never quite know what you are going to get, but that adds to the fun. The shiny bits are where the cellophane still is, patience is required waiting for it to dry completely. I may work into some areas a little more.

Speeding up

My days seem to be speeding up again, more things that I am involved with have started up for real again in the last few weeks. The various sewing groups I go to have changed: from nothing at all, weekly or monthly newsletters, Zoom workshops and meetings, to meeting up again. Several of them have generated new projects already.

Much as I love new projects, it all feels a bit overwhelming. Seeing more people and lots of conversation and catching up is great too, but so much to talk about. How did we fit it all in pre-lockdown?

I’m sure it will all feel normal again soon.

The photo above is for an exhibition in the Chapter House at Lincoln Cathedral next August. No, no, no, not as it is! At Lincolnshire Textiles a few weeks ago we were shown a mock-up of the finished piece in paper, lots of round-ended triangles of various sizes and lengths, in various shades of blue. Anybody wanting to participate was asked to trace off one of the shapes, and write their name on the cartoon, so that none get duplicated. There was a pile of fabric to take a piece from, if required, and I took a piece of fine blue linen. I rarely work in blue so have very little myself, and couldn’t think of anything suitable in my stash. I have got some blue threads, these are my starting ones.

I’d watched the http://textile.artist.org workshop by Jean Draper “Stitching in mid-air” earlier in the week and fancied having a go, so this was my first idea. I’d no idea how to make a frame the right shape, but have now cobbled together something I hope will work. I’ve had a little trial so far, and whether it will look how I see it in my head, time will tell.

I’ve also cut two pieces of pelmet vilene and made myself a new pattern piece. The back is likely to be at least partly visible, so that needs to be taken into consideration too.

At the Allsorts group a fortnight ago it was suggested that we start some Christmas projects, seems a bit soon really. But on past experience, when we don’t start them until mid-November I never manage to get them finished, unless it’s a gift for somebody else. I’m usually finishing mine off on Boxing Day at best, or before they get put away on Twelfth Night, but more likely the following year or even years later.

This is my new resolution: not to be finishing things off at the last minute, or even starting it at the last minute. I want to enjoy the process, not stressing out about getting things finished in time.

My piece of plastic canvas and bag of red and green threads nearly got finished in the morning. The usual problems with counting with canvas work, and predictably not following instructions, and wanting it to mirror image in the middle; a few stitches had to be undone, but it worked in the end.

I’ve used a strand of my favourite Madeira Metallics with the perle thread, which catches the light (I can see a loop on the larger than life size photo below that needs taking through to the back), and Twilley’s Goldfingering.

There was a table of intersting beads and bits and pieces for us to dip into, so I picked out a few sparkly bits to make a tassle. It just needs a piece of red felt attaching to the back, and it’ll be ready for the tree.

I’d missed the last meeting of SEATA (Scunthorpe Embroidery and Textile Association) as it clashed with the Grasby Village Hall Exhibiton, but Sandra brought me a Christmas Challenge decoration pack including a felt pear kit, which I have started. Gold buttonhole stitch to attach the middle (core?), and some purple reverse chain stitching that I could do while we chatted, that’s all I’ve done so far. But I’m getting in front of myself with even starting these things! I’ve not started the Challenge, inspiration hasn’t struck yet.

Finishing off old projects is on the back burner for the moment, but I do want to keep up with and on top of the new ones. I did manage quite a few, while new ones weren’t coming at me thick and fast!

Painting and drawing

Back of orchid

The last of Mags Bradley’s zoom painting classes have been this week. They have been running since the autumn, but numbers have been dropping the last few weeks, as people have been allowed out more. About now, the real classes normally stop until September, when we are ready to get back after (normally) holidays and days out during the summer. We do sometimes have a few ‘en plein aire’ sessions at the coast or class members’ gardens, and Mags allotment (I’ve not managed that one yet), and we may have a few of those if / when the weather gets better / more predictable than it has been of late.

They have been good, in many ways, but they have involved a lot of preparation for Mags on a weekly basis, as well as learning to navigate Zoom herself, and helping the rest of us to use it too. It certainly hasn’t been as easy to correct our mistakes as we go along, or to yell ‘stop’ before I (and a few others, apparently) overwork our piece. But it has made us all have to be more self reliant on decision making, as we go along.

We have painted a large variety of things, including landscapes, seascapes, woodland, flowers, plants, still lifes of a range of objects, and unusually our own hands.

In the real classes we often had an arrangement of objects, or real flowers or plants in the middle of the room, all of us having a different view of the set-up. Mags would demonstrate, and talk about what we were going to do. We mainly used watercolours, but occasionally acrylic inks, coffee, watercolour pencils or Neo colours.

For the Zoom classes we had to work much more from photographs, Mags sending out ones for us to print out at the beginning of each week. She would then demonstrate, and we would more or less follow along. We would share our work (if we wanted to) with the group at the end of the session. In real classes we always went and looked at everybody else’s work, too. It’s a good way to learn more, and see different ways of working.

Often we are all quietly absorbed in what we were doing, but it was good to chat at coffee-time, and at the beginning and end of the sessions. This was more difficult to do on Zoom, but it was good to see one another, and get to know a little bit about folk from the other classes. There were three real classes, each week, but two zoom ones. I usually did both.

As always, my results were better in some sessions than in others; sometimes it was the subject matter, other times getting or not getting in the zone. Also for me, I like to work from life, or at least from my own photos. When. you take a photo you are already deciding which aspects interest you, and you have a mental image of more than just the photo in front of you (or I often do).

When I went to Howard Boyd’s (O.H Boyd) pencil-drawing class nearly twenty years ago to learn to draw, he insisted that we drew from life. He could always tell who had done their homework from a photo, where the image is already flattened to 2D, rather than your own interpretation of making something 2D (your piece) from 3D (reality). Yes, you really can learn to draw. I wasn’t convinced at the time, but having told him I couldn’t draw, he asked if I could write my own name. Yes, well, in that case, he told me, you have the manual dexterity to draw, all you need is to practise, to learn to look / observe, and to draw what you see, not what you think you see.

Especially in last few weeks I have worked from my own photos, with one notable exception: a canal scene with some cottages. I was quite pleased with my cottages, because usually I struggle with buildings, and even their reflections in the water. Then Colin came into the kitchen to make a coffee about half way through the session. “I wouldn’t want to live there, it’s getting flooded” he remarked. I’d got the perspective all wrong.

Section of canal paining with a rainbow over it
from a crystal hanging in the window.

Mags learned something from my mistake too. When I held it up for help, she found she could mark a line where I needed to change the bank.

It’s still a work in progress, but at least the cottages are not getting flooded now.

Improved, but room for more.

Sometimes, in the second session of the week, I have continued with a painting from the first session, or more often gone back to it, while waiting for paint to dry on the current painting. This orchid was tricky to apply Howard’s “draw what you see, not what you think you see” as the blooms are normally symmetrical. This one isn’t, so I made it more so (with artistic licence) or it would have just looked wrong. I ended up doing three sketches which just didn’t look right, and ended up drawing the back, not from the photo above but from the orchid in front of me, where I was able to draw just the flower and not the dishwasher behind. The disadvantage of photos is that you can’t change the background, where the eye focuses on what you want to see, sometimes not even being aware of what’s behind until you look at the photo.

Sketch of the back and guidelines on the watercolour paper

Detail of the back of the orchid

Also, with artistic licence you can change the orientation.

A sideways-on orchid looked wrong, but I drew it as I saw it, then turned my paper round. It is floating in mid air, but I just wanted to capture it, as it is, rather than thinking about composition.

Front of the orchid

In this close-up version, I had thought about the composition and wanted to focus on the details of the centre of the flower.

Composition decision

I’ve enjoyed the classes, and they have made me draw and paint at least twice a week. I need to continue on my own, and often the second (plus) attempts have had better outcomes. Practice, practice, practice leads to improvements.