A belated catch-up

A mixed bag of birds for my August daily drawings… my favourites are the simplest ones done quickly, it’s easy to overwork a drawing at this small scale.

September’s daily drawings with my inktense pencils were of pot plants… really fun to draw.

October daily drawings - some of the delicious food I ate on holiday. I’m not in the habit of photographing my meals so it was hard to remember to collect reference as I went.

November daily drawings - I decided to challenge myself to draw something that I’m not interested in… transport. Turns out there’s a reason you tend to draw things that interest you - it’s a lot more fun.

December’s drawings were of some of the odd bits and pieces who share my studio space. An eclectic bunch, but they all remind me of something and they brighten my (admittedly cluttered) work space.

I’m afraid I’ve neglected this blog for quite some time, but I just wanted to belatedly wrap up my year of daily drawings, getting to know my inherited Inktense pencils. With extended thanks to, and fond memories of my friend Kate Johnson who originally owned the pencils and very kindly passed them onto me. They are a wonderful reminder of her creative inspiration, and she is much missed.

I’m certainly less intimidated by the pencils than I was at the start of 2023, and I now have a much clearer idea of how to combine their wet and dry qualities. Limiting the drawings to weekdays makes the challenge a lot more do-able. And I’m convinced that the discipline of starting a work day with a drawing is a good one - even if I don’t feel like it one day, it’s always enjoyable, and I feel like I’ve achieved something before reaching for the on switch on my computer.

Check out my Instagram feed @corinne_welch_ for a slightly more reliable update on what I’ve been up to recently… 

Daily drawings – June

A month of drawing flowers from my garden. This brought back fond memories of my garden residency in 2021 (already feels a lifetime ago). Halfway through the year, and I feel much more comfortable with the inktense pencils now, and a lot more familiar with the colour range. Still plenty of potential to explore though…

Guernsey sketches

A wonderful week camping in Guernsey in mid-June - lovely to be by the sea in the sunshine from dawn til dusk, and squeezing in a few sketches here and there…

STILL workshops

I’ve really enjoyed taking part in a few online STILL Flower Drawing workshops over the past few weeks. A great opportunity to spend an hour in the evening drawing plants, inspired by really inspiring artists… watercolour painting with Moira Frith, coloured pencil drawing with Claudia Lowry, and charcoal drawing with Molly Martin. A real treat.

Daily Drawings - May

May was a colourful month for my daily drawing challenge, learning how to use my inktense pencils. The collective noun for a group of butterflies is a kaleidoscope, which seems appropriate.

Daily Drawings – April

A month of trees. Very much back in my comfort zone as I’ve had a busy month with work and needed a more familiar subject matter for swift daily drawings. I was thinking that the range of greens was a bit limited, but then - after completing the final drawing - I found four extra greens hiding in my pencil case. Doh. Better late than never.

Museum drawings

Recent sketchbook drawings from museum artefacts (using Koi brush pens and Inktense pencils). Some drawings were done in situ (Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and Bristol Museum and Art Gallery) and some from online collections (Pitt Rivers and the Britich Museum).

Daily dog drawings

Who knew? Dogs are much more fun to draw than people. My daily drawings for March. This was a good subject matter for learning how to mix the wet and dry properties of the inktense pencils. A limited colour range though… mostly browns and greys, apart from the odd pink tongue!

A patchwork of memories

International Women's Day seems an appropriate day to post this... my entry for this year's World Book Night submission on the theme of memory.

A painting I’ve made of of a small blanket made by my mum before I was born, using scraps of dress and curtain fabric which held memories for her. I vividly remember this blanket from my childhood, and was always fascinated by the bold patterns and colours (an early influence perhaps?) A 1970's patchwork of layered memories of two generations of women.

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 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…

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...

Week fifty two

One final collage of offcuts for the year

My small article in the latest issue of Printmaking Today

Penultimate dye experiment of the year – Yarrow (achillea)

December’s daily drawings - back-drawn monoprints with natural ink

And so ends my 2021 Garden Residency... it’s been a diversion, an excuse to experiment, some much needed structure, and license to play. A creative sabbatical. Accompanied throughout by my trusty studio assistant, Otto (a Vizsla of senior years).

One final collage of monoprinting offcuts before the year came to a close. If in doubt, cut out circles and arrange them in a grid. Always a useful creative un-blocker.

My last two dye experiments of the year are out of the dyepot... that makes 55 in total. Shown here is Yarrow (achillea) and I have Teasel drying at the moment. To be honest the colour palettes are very similar. A rather unexceptional end to a year of colour creation, but I’m looking forward to using some of the dyed fabric, yarn and thread from my dye experiments in new work next year.

In a piece of perfect timing, I received some exciting post on the penultimate day of this year-long project. I’m thrilled to bits to have a small piece on my garden residency in the latest Printmaking Today magazine. Many thanks to editor Leonie Bradley for including me in this issue.

My final month of daily drawings... 31 days of (rather splodgy) back-drawn monoprints coloured with natural ink (mostly marigold, black dahlia and oak twigs). As with all of the other eleven sheets, it’s interesting to see the overall effect as they accumulate through the month, rather than focusing on one drawing in particular.

I’m pleased to have completed my year-long challenge of a drawing a day, and I think I may have unintentionally made it into a habit (although I may reduce it to just weekdays as this is easier to build into my work schedule). Here’s to more drawing in 2022!

Amongst many other things, this Garden Residency has been a useful exercise in maintaining a weekly blog entry – based on my many Instagram posts throughout the year. I’ve really appreciated all the words of support, encouragement and feedback – it’s been a good way of feeling more connected during an otherwise isolated year.

I now need to finish recording my work in my journal, and take some time to consolidate and reflect, before working out my next steps. In the meantime, wishing everyone a happy and healthy new year... x

Week forty one

Colouring up monoprints with natural inks

A soild version of the folded book of garden sketches I made in Norfolk last month

After the small back-drawn monoprints I made of seed heads last month, I decided to try something a bit more detailed. I made some quick sketches in the garden and then painted the back of them with black oil paint and traced them off to make simple monoprints. I then coloured them up with natural ink (black poppy, rhubarb root and acorn galls + iron oxide). The inks work well with the quality of line in the monoprints and soften the overall effect.

From analogue to digital… I’ve taken the line drawings from the folded book I made in Norfolk last month and played around with reversing areas in Photoshop to make solid shapes. An interesting exercise in balancing black and white. Some of these may be good starting points for trying out making tetra-pak prints. Possibly something for next month…

Week thirty nine

Back from holiday, and a quiet-ish week on the Garden Residency front as I catch up with work.

I completed my daily drawings for September - using gouache this month. It’s felt more of an exercise in colour mixing than in observation, but hopefully it captures some of the late-summer colour in various gardens this month (my own in Bristol, my parent’s in Shropshire and my holiday in Norfolk).

I had fun trying out my new set of brush pens with a drawing of cosmos and asters in the front garden... lovely bright colours in what was been a grey, rainy week. Definitely picked the right week for my holiday!

Inspired by the seedheads of hollyhocks in the garden where I’ve been staying in Norfolk, I carved and printed a new rubber stamp repeat pattern. I think this could work on both paper and fabric – I’m interested to scale it up a bit, and also to introduce some colour.