heat seeker

The cold weather is affecting all of us .. my daughter's kitten snuck into my office and fell asleep on my lap top. I am careful to close the door now if I am not ready to shut down.

Sketch club is pretty much a constant in my life - I am not Leonardo but each time I go I do a better drawing. (Of course I only post the more reasonable ones I do.) And I love the fact that I can crop the photo so that I have something proportionate to the ground that it is on. I seemed to get mostly back views for the longer poses last night - which means I had to work on shadow to give contrast/form. One day I post a first and last drawing of the night.


There is discussion on the radio at the moment to the effect that anyone can became good at something if they practise for 10,000 hours. As I tend to only draw when I go to sketch club I have a lot of hours to clock up!

According to the fellow speaking it is important to try and extend your limitations and push yourself to the outer limits of your boundary (and change the molecular structure of the brain). The second important thing was to have rigorous critical feedback.

I have enrolled in acrylic painting class and had one enjoyable lesson. Its the first time I have really picked up a paint brush with the intention of doing something other than a background was for a journal or paint fabric on which to embroider. Jan, our teacher , set up a wonderful still life of simple lush primary colours and round shapes - all I could think was what a wonderful idea for an embroidered work! So I won't throw away my painting - or at least I will take a photo of it before I do - so I have a resource to call on when I get around to doing that.

I am clocking up my hours with hand stitching - my current embroidery project is a play with blue, grey and creamish threads on canvas using limited stitch types to create a mandala effect.

My stitching soul mates (stitchers plus) have our works hanging at Embroiderers' Guild HQ exhibtion spece this month. We had a preview evening on 29.7 and it has taken me this long to recover from the work up to it! It was a great evening. A couple of photos of my work are below. Click on the Stichers Plus link in the side bar to see more of the exhibition: