Seasons of Colour – March, Autumn

I am up in my house in Castlemaine, enjoying the lovely autumn weather, this in the best time of year in Central Victoria. I am having a lazy afternoon drawing in the sun on my bed with the French windows open. It really doesn’t get better than this.

Doing well so far and have already completed March’s drawing.

All at once the seasons have turned. Autumn arrived almost instantly. The weather cooled, the nights became almost frosty and the clear sunny days of autumn are here. This is my favourite time of year. It is still warm and sunny, but the burning heat is gone. We have a long, slow descent into winter. Everything seems to relax and breath a sigh of relief to have the heat of February behind us.

I saw this pea vine wrapping around and through an old palling fence. The bright orange flowers against the weathered grey was such a striking colour combination. The leaves have not turned yet, but here is a splash of autumn orange.

Karen

Inspiration behind a new project

I have been working on a new project for awhile in my head, but had not got far enough with it to start to put it down on paper.  For better or worse I am really good at visualising and will play with images in my head before I even start to rough them out.  This is a great bonus for me, but the down side is that I don’t jot things down as much as I should and can sometimes forget, also there are many benefits to roughing things out and having working drawings for the design process.

Trumpet Passion Nancy Blum

Trumpet Passion Nancy Blum Detail

Anyway, I have been wanting to combine my drawings of flowers with the patterns and to make these into really big drawings, but would they work, could I do such big pencil drawings and would anyone else like them?  In my wandering around Pinterest (yes I am a little addicted to this site, but so many wonderful images, really inspirational) and found this American artist who was doing all these things.

Nancy Blum is an artist who works across a variety of mediums and has created these enormous pencil works of flowers against an intricate world of pattern and layered images. I was spellbound by them.  The size was larger then I had dared to dream of and she had layered flowers over patterns and repeated images and they look fabulous.  Could I use her as inspiration for my own work?

Converge-detail Nancy Blum

3 Rectangles Nancy Blum

Well I am going to give it a right good shot.  I have drawn my background pattern and am getting ready to draw the Sturt Desert Pea to go on top of it.  I have decided to do it with cut outs, I like the layering of the work, and if gives me greater freedom to add and subtract from the work until I get an overall image I like.  If it doesn’t work out I will be able to use the images in other ways.

Desert Pea Background Pattern Detail

The background is deliberately muted so that it will work behind the other images.  Crossing my fingers and hoping it will work.

Karen

Seasons of Colour – February

 

Cumquats Seasons of Colours

I have been wanting to do more quick drawing, a bit like the ones I do when I am on holidays, but with a little more direction.  In my usual way I have been pondering on what I could do.  It needed to be more than just random sketches and I wanted some sort of timetable for it to keep me going.

In my wanderings around the internet and Pinterest I found this lovely British designer and her fabulous blog, Sam Pickard Design and have decided to use her concept of seasonal drawings.  

My idea is to do a drawing at least every month that shows the seasonal colours and plants of interest around me, to do quick drawings, patterns etc and a bit of writing about why I choose that subject.  I want it as a bit of a diary for the year, a look at different colour schemes and some pattern ideas.  In my bookbinding frenzy I made a journal for all this to go into and I have done my first drawing for February.  Just squeaked that one in for the month.

So my first subject is cumquats, so fresh and summery. My excerpt in the journal reads.

Its the end of summer and it feels like the really hot weather is behind us now.  The garden is scorched and the trees have lost most of their leaves (through heat stress).  It has been a brutal summer with incredible heat waves for days on end and many plants have struggled to survive.

Not much colour left out there apart from the cumquat tree.  It has managed to keep its bright orange fruit, though its leaves have yellowed.  But when we went to use the fruit they were dried out inside, just not enough water for juice.  Still the colours are lovely and they remind me of late summer.

So there is my first post in my seasons of colour, I hope you like the idea and I hope my drawings get better over time.

Karen

 

Secret Book Binding Business

 

Secret Belgium Binding Journal 27cm x 24.5cm 200gsm paper

Here is the last book I made in my book binding frenzy.  it is a journal with thick watercolour paper pages.  I made it for myself for a little drawing project I wanted to undertake.

It is bound using the ‘Secret Belgium’ binding technique.  Don’t you just love the title, how could I not have a go at this.  This binding technique is similar to coptic but it has a spine that is sewn.  A slightly tricksy technique but I am very pleased with the finished result.

Sewing on the spine – Secret Belgium Binding

Secret Belgium Binding Journal Spine Detail

I added a couple of extra details to this book, it has a closure of a crystal button and a handmade cord, which I finally choose after a weeks dithering around with a multitude of different options.  I am far more decisive when making decisions for other people and hopeless when it is something for me.  It took me four months to choose paint colours for my house and I was able to choose all the colours for a whole house in 3 hours when I was a colour consultant.

Button and cord closure

I also added washi tape to the edges of the papers to give it greater strength, a nice subtle touch to the journal.

Secret Belgium Binding Journal Binding Detail

So that is the book binding for the moment, I have been drawing in my journal and have started a new large art work, so plenty happening at the moment.

Karen