Tasmania

Today is the second day of our holiday in tasmania. We've been touring the city which is very hilly like wellington. It is about the same temperature as wellington too and drizzly. Unfortunately the room we are staying in at the university student residence is extremely hot. So when it is 19c outside it is 30C+ in our room which has the windows nailed shut. Thursday is forecast to be 30c outside so I imagine that will mean our room will be 40c. I bought a fan today. I may have to sleep in the fridge. Tomorrow we are going to MONA gallery which has a reputation for being confronting.

I have been drawing but haven't worked out a way to load photos to my blog from my iPad. I did manage to put some on Facebook though.

Drawings - don't laugh!

9/1/13 Ink and brush - might have to work a bit on the proportions in order to draw arms that are not like little Tyrannosaurus stumps

8/1/13
This is about the 4th attempt at these roses. The first few are duds. I seem to be better at black and white than color.

Dud below from 7/1/13

Should have left out the ink line.

Only 3 days left of the 'Wind it Up' exhibition at Pataka in Porirua if you would like to see my dyed Pojagi.

I went to the gallery today and it looked like a whole load of kids had been playing in a sandbox, there was rice and wheat all over the floor. They'd even dug the fabric out from the bottom of the bowl.

Drawing a day

Loading my drawings onto the blog seemed like such a good idea until some of them started to not turn out very well. I'm too embarrassed to show anyone the drawing of the roses or the attempt at drawing my son. I did do some quick sketches tonight using watered down ink, and they aren't too bad but they are still wet so I can't put them on the scanner. One of the drawbacks of leaving the drawing till 11pm at night is that it is then too late to do another one if the first one turns out awful.

Tomorrow i am going to try to do the drawing earlier in the day and I will also load some drawings from today and maybe some of the duds :-(

Maybe I should go back to drawing with the sewing machine.

Very windy and not very warm here compared with the rest of the country which is getting some of the heatwave from Australia.

Drawing the cat and 2013 classes

Drawing for 6th Jan 2013.
Here is Jack the cat. I'm going to have another go at drawing him today using different media. I used a brush and watered down ink for these. I am trying to get away from drawing an outline and coloring it in. jack is  a brown Burmese so I've had to make him look lighter than he is. He looks like a brown blob in photos.

Here he is in real life, pretending to be a bookshelf ornament.

If you live in Wellington, New Zealand, I have just arranged to teach some classes at Nancy's Embroidery on Thorndon Quay. Mary is still doing some changes to the timetable but these are the classes. Most are only 3 hours long on a Sunday.

Machine Quilting
Machine Sashiko
Hand Sashiko
Fabric painting and printing
Handmade books (Japanese bookbinding)

Day 4 and 5 drawings

I promise, I did do a drawing yesterday but I just can't show anyone. I started well , I was drawing a picture of my husband asleep in an armchair, it wasn't going well but I could have fixed it, then he moved to face a completely different direction so I gave up and went to bed.

Day 5 drawing is a picture using lots of texture and marks, from my sitting room through the window. I was also watching Castaway with Tom Hanks on the telly so I was a bit distracted.

I can see that I need to work on faces. I did another drawing of my son and it actually looks like him  but it makes him look about 10 years old. The proportions must be out, and if he kept still long enough I would try and work out the proportions using a pencil at arms length.

Day 3 drawing - bamboo pen

I'm still following the book 'One Drawing a Day' at this stage but I suspect I shall go off on my own pretty soon. Did I mention that you can get it as an ebook on Kindle books?

I didn't have a bamboo pen for the day 3 exercise so had to use a stick thing which may have once been a paintbrush handle. Once again it was nearly midnight before I managed to get the drawing done because I spent the day doing other stuff like gardening, washing, adjusting a dressmaking pattern to have size 10 shoulders and size 18 hips (you didn't really need to know that). In fact anything to procrastinate and put off drawing but when I start drawing I do enjoy it.

So anyway, day 3 was supposed to be a drawing of a person done in ink with a bamboo pen. People are difficult. I screwed up the first picture and have severely cropped this one so you can't see what a mess I made of the legs. Also - the hands are too small. It is an attempt at drawing one of my sons in his customary position - on the couch playing a game on his iPod.

Hi Renesstitcher, why not load some of your drawings onto your blog and I'll put a link to mine. We'll start a new blog if we get enough people to make it worthwhile.

Anyone else want to join in? It doesn't have to be scary, don't worry about how badly you draw - my son looks nothing like the picture above and the proportions are way off (he's 6ft 3ins) , we all get better with practice.

New Year's Resolution!

I am going to try and do a drawing a day for as long as I can manage. Drawing has never been my strong point so I am going to practice. To start with I am following the ideas in a book called  'One Drawing a Day'.

I am posting my drawings for 1st and 2nd of January here. I am hoping to improve. If anyone would like to join me in doing a drawing a day, then leave a comment and maybe we can start a separate list or blog to share drawings. Drawings can be done using a sewing machine or by computer if that suits you better.

Happy New year and may you stick to your resolutions for as long as you can :-)

Drawing 1. 1st Jan 2013
The first exercise in the book is to draw a still life and the writers encourage you to just draw -don't worry too much if it is accurate, just keep the pen down and go for it.  I did this late at night on the 1st of Jan, after spending most of the day in the garden. I was putting off the first drawing as I was procrastinating about starting. These are a collection of Kokeshi dolls from Japan, which are on the bookcase at home. I might have another go at drawing them later using watercolor or pen and ink.

Drawing 2. 2nd Jan 2013
My sons and I spent 2 hours clearing a plant called Wandering Jew, aka Wandering Willy or Tradescantia fluminensis, from my mothers garden. New Zealanders will understand what a pain this plant is. It spreads through any shady spot in the garden, putting down roots and suffocating other plants. It is a real nuisance. We clear it one year and the next year it is all back again. I see some websites where people who live outside of New Zealand  worry that they can't keep this plant alive in a pot, I would gladly give them 8 large black rubbish bags of the stuff.
So here is my drawing for day 2.

 The book says to use pen and ink. I watered down the ink for the shading. The picture looks so innocuous , but if I chuck this scrap in the compost heap it will grow into a monster, see below.

Link for Photo above. 

The next drawing is supposed to be done using a bamboo pen but I couldn't find one of them so I will find and use a twig or feather.

So anyone want to join me?
More later
Clare