as we are preparing for an unexpected visitation from Babybel and her dad – but I came across an amazing website.
http://www.museums.ox.ac.uk/artefact/sitemap.html
A wonderful collection of artistic inspirations, highly recommended – as good as the V&A website in a very different way.
Well done, Oxford Museums! Makes me want to go back to the Pitt Rivers…
to everyone in the UK whose weather has deteriorated today.
It is entirely my fault.
I bought a sun hat yesterday.
We went with Babybel, her mum, dad, and dog, to the wood festival at Queen Elizabeth Country Park, where a good time was had by all. Babybel was equally fascinated by a heavy horse pulling logs, a man carving with a chain saw, and drawing in the children’s activities tent.
But it was very hot, so on the way out I bought a hat.
And today it has b
It did mean I had no more excuses, and had to face up to going out in the garden and screen printing.
I made some freezer paper stencils, which is my preferred method – not that I know a wide range of methods…
This was the first, and the least successful. Note to self – metallic fabric paint does not work well for screen printing.
This one, inspired by our cupressus hedge, was more successful. Apologies to those who dislike cupressus, but it does have fascinating fronds. B****r to cut out, though.
As you may have noticed, I like positive/negative patterns.
Some of the colour choices are a little odd, based on what came to light in the hand-dye stash, and setting myself to use up some fabric paints I’ve had for far too long. [Note to self – pearlised fabric paints don’t work too well for screen printing either.]
I found something else in the stash cupboard while I was in there.
I ended up with 20 screen printed ‘drawings’ - some on fabric and some on paper. Not all of them will go in the homework book, and those that do will probably get some stitch or more printing – I fancy a leafy linocut – except it won’t be lino…
I also think I’ll use up my transparent fabric paints with some sun prints – anyone know if sunprints work on paper? That’s assuming I haven’t driven the sun away permanently.
Of course, when the sun did come out this afternoon, I forgot to wear my sun hat.
I’m afraid that my enthusiasm for the 100 drawings has disappeared – I think I was probably energized by all the adrenaline associated with the end of term, but now I've wound down.
I did make some preparations.
I’ve had the felt to make myself a printing surface for a loooong time – so long that I had used it for something else, bought some more, and used a lot of that. But I managed to stretch it out to cover a bit of plywood Wensleydale found for me. Although, as you can see, it’s not that well stretched.
I was going to use it for some screen printing – but look at the sunshine! Far too hot to screen print – the ink would have dried in seconds.
So I sat in one of the chairs and worked on this - two pockets for a zapper holder. But now it’s got to the stage where I need to use the machine and the weather is to nice to sit inside. So I'll have to find some more hand embroidery to do. Or some drawing …
There is a forecast of rain [possibly] – but they‘ve been forecasting rain [possibly] for weeks now and we’ve barely had a drop.
We have a feeling that Quality Control is feeling better – although, as JP guessed, we have to take her back to the vets next week for a check up. It could be because she is back to making her beautiful flying leaps [followed by clumsy landings, but they always were]. But it is more because when W. opened the bedroom door this morning he was greeted by the sight of a dismembered pigeon on the landing.
26 & 27 are these two - the inverse scan which I’ve shown you before, and a scan of shells, which I played with in Picasa to make it look sandy.
This rather odd effort is 28.It’s best described as reverse appliquΓ©, embroidered from the back, using phone book pages – to which I added some gold paint because it looked a bit boring. If I try it again I will use some of the pages with more colour. I will also use some more robust paper as the base layer, as the phone book backing tor away when I didn’t want it to.
The workroom floor is now covered with bits of torn paper, though.
I’ve been a bit quiet, due to several outings, both the pleasant and less pleasant kind. The latter involved taking Quality Control to the vets, and then picking her up from the vets after a little dentistry for a loose tooth, some X-rays because she’s been limping, and a rather large bill. The limp is probably due to some ligament damage and not serious, unlike the damage to our bank account …
The pleasant outings were both arty – first to Winchester Cathedral to an exhibition by the Society of Portrait Sculptors, and then, with Mr and Mrs Cheddar, to Art in the Garden.
The former was, in my opinion, a curate’s egg. There were some excellent pieces, and some that did nothing for me at all. [Not saying which was which!] And of course they were all, in my eyes, in competition with ‘Sound II’ in the crypt, which takes a lot of beating – although with such dry weather it was not at it’s best.
[For those who don’t know the piece – the link shows water at the feet of the statue – in dry weather the water disappears and you don’t get the magical reflections.]
Art in the Garden was also variable – but there were some lovely pieces. We all liked this one by Eric Duggan – and Mrs C kindly identified the perfect spot for it in our garden. She didn’t offer to buy it for us, though…
I also like this by Carole Waller – textiles, in case you hadn't realised. We saw some of her clothing at an exhibition in Woodstock a year or so ago so it was great to see some of her sculptural pieces.
from this …
to these [except it’s crept in there] …
or these …
or these …
or even these – but probably not the fake one.
Yes, I have got a lot.
I had fun scanning some of them today. Of course, they don’t scan well, being lumpy – so you get images that look like this. Not, I think, destined to be one of the 100.
But sometimes, if you scan and invert the colours, you get something quite magical and eerie.
It needs cropping, but this will be one of the 100, eventually.
So, having made 25 or 26 ‘drawings’ – I’ve given myself some time off college work, and decided to make a replacement for this. Beautiful, isn’t it? It was one of the first things I made in my venture into patchwork and, although it was intended to hold needlework tools, it has seen long service holding a series of zappers.
I looked at it last night and thought ‘yuk’. And this afternoon I did a bit of completely undesigned machine patchwork.
I’m a closet c
This will become two pockets, when it’s had some hand stitch – rather a random collection of patches as I was trying to make it all out of scraps. Why is it that your scrap bag never gets any emptier, no matter how many scraps you use? [Or that when you first type ‘scrap’ you miss out one letter – but fortunately I spotted the omission in time.]
for this year at least. And after taking down the display yesterday I felt very flat – just like I used to do after exams all those years ago!
So nothing much else was achieved yesterday apart from cooking and vegging in front of the telly, watching the Tour de France.
I did manage something this morning. Some more shells. [I admit it, I’m fixated on this rather boring shell.]
I did turn it round to draw it from a different position – and I experimented with different media – pen, graphite, ink and a cotton bud, and rubbed out graphite and charcoal – which is the one I like best.
I also played with one of the pages in the homework 
It looked to me like a landscape so i added some oil pastel to bring out that effect.
It was only when I was photographing it that I realised it might be something else. Though I'm not sure what that makes the sun….
I think that makes 25.
And this afternoon I vegged out in front of the TDF again.
A few days ago Cheese Minor, who is the original cycling fan in the family, wrote on Facebook that the great thing about the Tour De France was that Brits couldn’t be disappointed.
WRONG!!!!!!! [Apart from David Millar, of course. So far.]
External examiner seen. ΓΌ
Exhibition stewarded. ΓΌ
Too much money spent at Winifred Cottage and Art Van Go. ΓΌ
Time to hit the white wine, watch the Tour de France preview and relax – until I have to take it all down tomorrow.
The interview with the external examiner was more stressful than I had anticipated – I haven’t seen one for over 40 years, and I’m out of practice at being challenged - in the nicest possible way, of course. The overall conclusion was that I need to simplify the message in my work and make it much more obvious, not worry about technique or making it pretty, start doing the things that frighten me and work on my drawing. None of it earth shattering but a bit disheartening, I'm afraid.
I’ve decided I need to do more adventurous ‘drawing’ – like screen printing or image transfer, perhaps – which may slow down production a bit.
Stewarding was exhausting in a different way – just standing around and talking for 2 hours without the benefit of a glass in your hand is hard work!
We won’t talk about spending money – but I did get this, – scrolling down the link may give you some idea why. 
So no new drawings over the last two days – although I did add some deer to this page, using a commercial stencil. I felt it needed something and I did once see a deer in the Winchester Park and Ride car park, which is where most of the tickets came from! It’s come out a bit bright so I may risk a coffee wash.
