looking at lines in nature

Taking a walk is always an adventure.  Sometimes what I see can be overwhelming  in terms of pattern and line.   These photos are from a National Park near Shepparton, Victoria.  The sun was strong and the sky was very blue and clear.  

otherwise engaged in fund raising activities

Of late I have been really engaged in fund raising activities for the embroiderers Guild NSW Inc  and have been active in raising funds for an extensively refurbished building with like minded fellow embroiderers.  

My home group,Stitchers Plus,  are doing their bit and plan is a Devonshire Tea event on 18 April next year.

Readers based in Sydney - mark you diaries and come along for a fun event at Concord Community Centre... I will post more details in February.

Those readers who can't come - consider making a donation to the cause -  here is a link  on the Guild Website which talks about the building and links to a donation form.  Australian residents may be entitled to a tax deductible donation :-)  its got to be win win doesn't it?

sketch club

Sketch club was not a success this week - too tired to deal with the challenges this model gave me in  her poses and I left early.

I have been stitching though and Stitchers Plus, my home group at the Embroiderers' Guild, met last Saturday.  It was out last meeting for the year and we had usual show and tell and talk fest.  We also had our Christmas Party.  I came home exhausted but happy.  Jenny has put photos of some of our work on the Stitchers Plus blog - click here to have a look or visit the side bar link.

back to sketch club ... finally

After a false start last week (arrived to discover that it had moved to new premises) I made it back to sketch club after 5 months absence.  I was a bit scared as I hadn't drawn a body in that time. Bernice was the model for the night and I seemed to get tortuous foreshortened views  and couldn't  fit her on the page.  But I came away with a couple of quick sketches  and a longer 20 minute study down that I like. Willow and A3 cartridge paper.

Golden leaves

 I have been playing with some stitches to try and broaden my repertoire but still come back to old favourites - may the were the ones I learnt first?

Blanket stitch and whipped running stitch feature in this sample.

I got the outline by making a  rubbing with blue crayon - the blue is hidden or rubbed off in most cases - or merges with the threads.

The fabric was remnant of hand dyed cotton I hadn't had the heart to discard.

No I just have a bit of embellished fabric ...

Must learn to toss some stuff soon.  Creativity is not encouraged by crowding.   A good friend has suggested that it helps to categorize things as friends, acquaintances and strangers.  I have a lot of strangers in terms of fabric but keep hanging on to them because I collected the fabric with a view to making a particular thing.  I am now convinced I should store my strangers fora year and if I haven't been to 'visit' they should be donated to a good home.  Only time will tell.

play and inspriation - lino prints

Had a fun day yesterday and played with simple lino prints for half a day - its very addictive and had to stop or I would have run out of paper.  

I had been itching to play with lino printing for a some time.  A little while ago I bought some heavy rubber (sort of looks and feels like those white erasers by Stabilo) which is so easy to carve from Lyn Britten at Batik Eotoro and the tools to carve  it with.   You can carve on both sides of these blocks so I felt I got really good value  for my dollar.  And then I came home put them in a safe place and couldn't find them for a month!   I used student quality acrylic paint for coloured stamps and something called block printing colour for the black.  The latter was definitely a better quality to use but I like to effects that the acrylic gave.   Some of the paper I used was coloured with watercolour wash.

Quite some time ago Stitchers Plus had a design exercise where we made continuous patterns from a single drawing - the trick being to make sure that all the lines at the edge of the drawing would meet when you flipped the pattern around.   I used this technique and had such fun and came out with a couple of reasonable prints and a bit of inspiration for embroidery too :-

Looking for something else to stamp I then added the stamp to a collage I had been working on - I had painted, pasted and stamped onto a canvas tile which had remained unfinished and was waiting for that something else to bring it to completion.  I think the stamps do that.

Cheers all

Revisiting photos

I was revisiting photos taken on a holiday in central  west NSW on our way to the Open Plains Zoo at Dubbo. On a not major road we came across a series of sculptures featuring animals and bicycles.  I took quite a few pics but one of my favourites was the pink elephant.   We just had to turn back so I could get this shot.  There were far too many to keep stopping but it made a very enjoyable diversion.  More photos can be found at Animals on Bikes - Public Art Scupltures

The zoo was interesting too - you can walk around it if you are feeling energetic - or drive and stop at points of interest.  our trip was a couple of years ago and we were lucky enough to see a baby white rhino and his mum.