Creative Sketchbooks

A couple of people have asked about the ‘Creative Sketchbooks’ C&G course I took last year, and I promised I would blog about it – so here is Part 1. [I have divided it into sections because my posts seem to be getting longer and I don’t want to bore everyone silly!]

Which reminds me that I have been meaning to comment on the number of visits to my blog – nearly 1300 when I last looked. I never thought when I started this that there would be so many [or any, really!] Thank you all – you encourage me to keep going.

So – back to Creative Sketchbooks. This course was pioneered by the Kemshalls and you can see lots of other people’s work on their website:

http://www.lindakemshall.com/StudentExhibitionMenuBooks.htm

However I took the course at my local college, with Susan Chapman:

http://www.quilters.fsbusiness.co.uk/

In the first term we looked at the C&G design staples :

colour

form

shape

line

and texture

and made samples for a portfolio.

We also looked at lots of different techniques, including sloshing Koh-i-noor on blank pages, printing, air brushing, sloshing Koh-i-noor on blank pages, making rubbings, making stamps etc etc etc - oh, and did i mention sloshing Koh-i-noor on blank pages?

If you have read my blog before you will probably not be surprised that I didn’t just put these in a portfolio …

I made one of these little books as an experiment:

And discovered that it fitted neatly into this box:

So all my technique samples ended up in it. [The box had a bottle of wine in it originally and hung around my workroom for years because it was too good to throw away.]

I painted it with Brusho mixed with meths, as described in the leaflet that came with the Brusho. Not recommended - the colour ran - although it does show off the grain.


Part 2 will follow when I get a moment ...