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.

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.

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.

Week forty

I started the week working on another saved-from-the-bin piece... offcuts from my daily drawing gouache brush cleaning colour swatches last month made into a collage, then turned into a repeat pattern in photoshop. I’ve scaled this up to A2 so I can get some sheets of wrapping paper printed.

Whilst I was in a bright colour mood, I started to introduce colour to my hollyhock rubber stamp repeat pattern. This also may work as wrapping paper.

Interesting dye results from black poppies - these have self-seeded all over my front garden, and I gathered the spent petals earlier in the summer and froze them. They make a nice range of soft grey-greens similar to black hellebore petals.

Finally, some hidden hieroglyphics revealed themselves as I went to clean out a dye pot one morning... my favourite patterns and symbols are accidental ones.

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.

Week thirty one

Teasel dye results

Rubber stamps based on pattern of shaows on a garden chair

Really pleased with the dye results from the teasels… a blue/grey on the cotton and linen fabric and thread, and a khaki green on the yarn and woollen blanket. I’d be interested to try dyeing with them again, but maybe soaked for longer and more chopped up to see if I can get a stronger blue. I boiled the dye down to make an ink - the first attempt was a disaster as it boiled dry and then exploded all over a white wall (note to self: it stains!) But the second attempt worksed well and gave an unusual grey ink – a welcome addition to complete my sample sheet of natural ink samples.

I carved a rubber stamp based on a photo I took of shadows on a garden chair… it worked better when overprinted in a contrasting colour, or cut up into a grid collage.

A bit of a hiatus in the dyeing experiments as I need to mordant more fabric (my least favourite part of the dye process as it takes so long).

Week twenty seven

Shades of grey - planning for a new embroidery

Yarn embroidery based on natural ink drawings from a few weeks back

Dyeing with globe artichoke leaves

I revisited my original garden map drawings (see Week Nine) and made a repeat pattern rubber stamp tile. It didn’t work that well in black, but once I started playing around with it in colour, and adding extra patterned elements, it started to become more interesting.

I finished my yarn embroidery that was based on the natural ink drawings of shapes in the garden I did a few weeks back (see Week Seventeen). The fabric is woollen blanket dyed with ivy leaves, and the yarns are dyed with swiss cheese plant, black hellebore and lily flowers (with and without iron oxide). I like the tactile nature of embroidering with yarn, and the texture that can be created by stitching in different directions. I think the solid blocks of colour that can be achieved are also a more effective use of the yarn than crocheting. My next embroidery will be based on my drawings of budding viburnum flowerheads - I’ve been shortlisting greys for this from my naturally dyed stash of fabric and threads.

Finally, I dyed a batch of materials with globe artichoke leaves… a little underwhelming on fabric, but the yarn and threads took on pleasing yellowy green shades. I’ve harvested most of the fruits from the two plants, and have just left four for the bees.

Week seventeen

Scans of Acer leaves unfurling (once a week from the end of March)

Reconfigured grid drawing (acorn gall+ iron ink and masking fluid)

Grid drawing filled in with natural ink

Single sheet folded book of flowerpot base plasticine prints (and acrylic paint)

Carving and stamping one of the flowerpot prints to create a repeatable pattern

A week of continuing on with projects started earlier in the month… happy to complete April’s daily drawings (now one third of the way through the year - doesn’t time fly when you can’t go anywhere?!) The drawings this month were done with a ruling pen and masking fluid, then coloured with a range of natural inks. Some worked better than others, but I’d like to use these as a starting point for some embroidered drawings. Edging slowly towards using colour as the garden begins to brighten up.

I’ve been scanning buds/leaves from the Acer tree outside my studio each week since the end of March. Fascinating to see the progress of the leaes as the tree comes into full leaf. I’m going to try to remember to keep scanning monthly from now on to capture the colour changes between now and October. I made the sequence into a short animation, which you can see on my Instagram feed.

I photocopied my garden grid drawing from last week and cut each square in half to reconfigure the layout. I tried this out in monochrome with acorn gall/iron ink and then masked out a second version for natural inks. It feels like work in progress rather than a finished piece, but I’m interested to see how it’s shifting into quilty territory. This garden residency is confirming my longstanding interest in switching between paper and fabric.

I also re-visited my flowerpot base plasticine prints - making an A4 sheet of prints into a folded single sheet book (the colour is neon pink acrylic, but looks like a flat red in the photo). Frustrated by the ephemeral nature of the plasticine, I traced one of the early prints and carved it in rubber. This makes a stable block to create a repeat pattern… unexpectedly starts to feel a little like a medieval tiled pattern. Not sure the bottoms of plastic flowerpots were the original inspiration for church floors all those centuries ago!

Week sixteen

Black hellebore flowers make a lovely green dye and ink

Planning out an embroidery based on a collage of natural ink splodges

Drawing seedlings

My World Book Night 2021 entry to the Herbarium

The Herbarium on display in Bower Ashton library (photo ©Linda Parr)

Working with grids (again!) this week. I took some photos of different shapes in the garden – mostly steps and decking – and traced these off to make a masked drawing with natural ink. The ink used was rhubarb root, bramble and acorn gall (with and without iron). This feels like a starting point rather than a finished piece, so I’m looking forward to developing this further.

 I dyed with black hellebore flowers… only a small batch but enough to see that it gave the best green I’ve managed to achieve yet. It also boils down to a good ink.

I re-visited a collage made a couple of weeks back from my ink sample sheets – I isolated a section of this and have traced it off to make a small embroidery. Quite pleasing to see that a similar palette could be chosen with the naturally dyed threads. I think this will work well on linen.

In between tending to my seedlings (currently taking over the spare room, cold frame and greenhouse) I’m enjoying drawing them in a tiny coptic-bound sketchbook given to me by Eva Hejdström.

Finally, Friday was World Book Night and it was a pleasure to take part again in the annual call for entries to mark the occasion. This year a Herbarium has been created – an exhibition of literary-inspired flower illustrations in Bower Ashton library. My illustration of periwinkles was inspired by a poem called ‘A Tale’ by Edward Thomas. These flowers are my nemesis in my garden… it’s an ongoing battle to stop them swamping everything, so it was good to pause and appreciate the beautiful flowers before I start yanking them up all over again! A pdf catalogue of the Herbarium can be downloaded here. Many thanks to Sarah Bodman and Linda Parr for organising this wonderful collaboration.

Week fifteen

The pots in question

Collage of dragon leaf fern prints (with ink made from rhubarb root)

paper weaving with natural ink sample offcuts

A short film I made about my concertina books for BABE 2021

A rather less productive week as I’ve been pitched back into catching up with work. The week ended with BABE 2021 – The Lost Weekend…. an online celebration of artist’s books to replace the usual amazing event in Bristol that was due to be held this year. Not the same as a real life book fair, but a wonderful chance to take part in some collaborative projects and to watch short films made by lots of other book artists (still available to watch here). I made one about five of my concertina books – illustrating the versatility of my very favourite book format, and showing some of my processes and inspirations – you can view it here).

One of the collaborative challenges set for BABE 2021 was to photograph or trace the backs of things… I made some plasticine prints of the bottoms of flowerpots from my shed. I really liked the bold patterns, and plan to carve some rubber stamps based on these prints. I also printed the backs of some dragon leaf ferns - less successful as a print, so I cut it up and made a grid collage using masking fluid and rhubarb root ink. It starts to look like tiger fur!

Finally, some simple paper weaving using more offcuts of my natural ink samples – I’m interested to see the crossover between paper and textile work that’s evolving as part of this ‘garden residency’.

Week thirteen

My sheet of natural ink samples is filling up (with a lot of yellows and browns)…

Practising making cordage from brown paper packaging

Playing around with my garden map pattern stamps in colour

My completed sheet of daily drawings from March

A bit of a rounding up week at the end of the month. I was quite relieved to complete my daily drawings… turns out the tonal pencil sketches are a little out of my comfort zone. It was good to challenge myself though, and a perfect month for slowing down and really looking at all the changes in the garden - a transformation from the start of the month to the end in terms of plant growth. I had a bit of a play with the garden map pattern rubber stamps I made - introducing colour overlays, which gives them a bit more potential interest. This definitely needs further investigation. I continued making cordage from brown paper packaging (during Zoom meetings, off-camera!) and seem to be slowly getting the hang of it through repetition. My ink sample sheet is filling up, but I’ve realised how very many yellows and browns I’ve been creating. Finally, I submitted a collage of ink sample off-cuts for the call-out for BABE2021 to #redesignarainbow set by Angie Butler… not quite a rainbow but certainly a spectrum of natural colour.

Week eleven

Map-like collage with tiny offcuts from ink sample sheet

Different greens extracted from ivy dye

Pattern overload – based on shapes from my garden map drawings

Crocosmia and Nicotiana seeds arrived from Scotland… so pleased to be part of this Seed Library project (See @Plot_55b on Instagram for more information)

A quieter week on the Garden Residency for a couple of reasons… I’m very busy with work, but also as the weather warms up and it’s been dry, a lot of my spare time has been spent either sowing seeds or preparing the garden for a new season of growing things. I need to work out how to carve out a bit more time for creating artwork too. A flurry of stamp carving pattern making based on shapes from my garden maps (using Repper software to isolate the tile shapes before carving). Some work better than others, but there are a few options worth pursuing here. Following on from my ivy dyeing experiments, I dyed larger pieces of woollen blanket to see what different greens I could get with different variables. I chopped up a piece of paper I’ve been using to test samples of homemade ink - some circular, and some made from tinier offcuts (which end up looking rather like a map). Lovely to receive some seeds from The Seed Project run by Susie Wilson and Felicity Bristow up in Scotland… I’m looking forward to growing some nicotiana and crocosmia this year.

Week eight

Starting to crochet up small squares of dyed yarn to create a sampler

Results of dyeing with Hypericum (St John’s Wort) – a good range of colour, much stronger on wool

Finished my stitched fabric collage - bit wonky but good to see what colours go together

A welcome injection of colour – cranberries in the dye pot

Printing my woodcut

February’s daily drawings complete… a month of line drawings with flowers starting to make an appearance towards the end

Felt like the start of Spring this week… mornings are still cold and frosty, but sunshine and blue skies during the day really lifted the spirits. Quite a bit of dyeing going on in the background - should be able to show the results next week… I’m hoping some of the vibrant pink from frozen cranberries left over from Christmas will remain after rinsing. I’ve enjoyed making more rubber stamps to experiment with pattern - I’m going to try to do at least one of these each month so I have a set of patterns by the end of the year. I finished stitching onto my collage of fabric offcuts - it’s pretty rough around the edges, but I quite like the mark making of the stitches, and it’s good to start working with some of the dyed materials and see how the colours work alongside each other. I’ve also started crocheting some small swatches of the dyed yarn (remembering to label them as I go!) so that I can eventually put together a sampler. I completed my month of daily line drawings… it was interesting to see more flowers appearing by the last week of February, so that should bring more inspiration for future months.

Week four

Wax resist ink drawings based on photos on branches in the snow taken in the brief window of white stuff on Sunday morning

Ink drawing of a Viburnum branch - colour rubbed from the actual berries and leaves

Collage of natural ink offcuts with drawings of fruit tree branches

A neater version of the stamped pattern I created a couple of weeks ago for covers on a coptic bound sketchbook. The linen thread is dyed with red onion - a perfect match for the ‘pear tart’ ink stamp pad

Experiment with stitching onto paper. Naturally dyed linen thread over the top of the corresponding homemade ink. From left to right: onion skins, hawthorn, holly berry and eucalyptus bark

A close up of the holly berry circle… this is my favourite ink so far - a really rich colour

Another productive week… my ‘garden residency’ seems to be balancing well with my day job so far - by doing something every day, I find I get into a rhythm of working and can maintain some momentum. This first month has been a lot of trying things out, but having just spent a day pulling everything together into a large scrapbook to record my progress, I’m happy with how it’s shaping up. Results have been a bit hit and miss, but I’ve learnt a lot and had fun getting back to playing again. It’s certainly been a welcome distraction in a particularly bleak January, and has left very little time for feeling bored or hemmed in at home.

Week two

Samples of homemade ink (some more successful than others)

Pattern play with a rubber stamp carved from an ink drawing of periwinkle leaves

Quick ink sketches of rare splashes of colour in the garden at the moment

Red cabbage dye experiments - purple fades to lovely blues and teals

A grey and dreary week here in the UK, but I’ve busied myself making new batches of colour – both for dyeing fabric, thread and yarn, and making ink. I’ve had a few false starts with the ink making – pans boiling dry, or the colour being too weak or crystallising, but I finally seem to be getting the hang of it. Fun to see them all together on a sample sheet… what felt like a lot of non-descript browns have more subtlety than I realised at first glance. I enjoyed making a pattern stamp based on one of my daily ink silhouette drawings, and I’d like to develop this further and start to print onto some of my dyed fabric. It’s been great having the garden as a focus for my artwork to create a welcome distraction from all the depressing headlines at the moment, and of course to make the most of staying at home.

Bits and bobs

Collaged bits and bobs from my typing experiments... they remind me of high-rise buildings... now thinking of a typed cityscape concertina book. . . 

Step away from the typewriter

Typewriter patterns - becomes quite addictive once you get into the swing of it. . . 

Olivetti patterns

Inspired by the wonderful typed patterns in the sketchbooks of Anni Albers at the recent Tate exhibition, I decided to have a dabble myself. Hoping to make a small pamphlet book of the patterns (if my concentration span extends to 16 of them!)