Sketchy

Yesterday I bought myself an A5 sketching notepad and a mechanical pencil that I hope will be reasonably robust. The intention is to keep them with me at all times so that when inspiration hits, I can be ready to sketch. I've always wanted to do this, but for some reason never have. Incidentally, the pencil is very cool - the lead turns just a fraction each time you touch it to the paper so that it wears evenly to remain sharp; technology, huh?

Ryman A6 sketch book (80 pages) and Uni Kuru Toga 0.5 mechanical pencil

I had fun with my new purchases straight away yesterday lunchtime, starting off with some inspiration from the tree at the junction of London Wall and Moorgate.

Number 9 - The Larch

Then very quickly I reprised some old friends from many years ago, the Inskip cow and sheep (the pig was added later and I've not drawn a pig before, hence it being a less well developed drawing).

The crazy-eyed cow and grass-munching sheep were originally from a card I sent to friends many years ago when I stayed (very briefly) in an extremely small village in rural Lancashire

After work, I went into town and while waiting for a friend, I took some inspiration from the flowers in windowboxes and borders.

Flowery

Later, on the tube home from a night out, I decided to develop yesterday's ice cream idea further, making the ice creams more individual.

I Scream. Again.

Even this morning I've been busy. A toad on BBC Breakfast made me draw him.

Toad out of the hole

And then my Gosh!, one of our cats, came and sat on the back of the sofa with her back to me. The sheen of her coat and the shape of her shoulders and hips really called to me. I'm particularly proud of this sketch (although if I were to be critical, I'd say that her top lip is just a little too long in this sketch and her tail a little floofier than IRL).

Gosh! pretending she isn't keeping an eye on me

Oh summer, where art thou?

I'm feeling the need for summery designs at the moment. So on the train into work this morning I doodled this.

It might end up as a linocut print; maybe even on a t-shirt!

I Scream

The fabric of creativity

I'm inordinately excited to have found out about the existence of fabric painting media. Until yesterday, I had thought that painting on fabric required specialist fabric paints or crayons like those I had as a kid. They did the trick, but they really gave quite a basic result.

As a result of the lino printing workshop yesterday, I have discovered, however, that it's possible to buy media that you mix with standard acrylic paint which allows you to paint or print onto fabric to provide a result which will resist washing even in a washing machine. I've always liked using acrylic paint, not least because it's affordable and quite easy to find even in the most basic arts and crafts shops.

Today's research has also enlightened me to products which you can use to create screen printing stencils. Again, I did a bit of screen printing when I was a kid, but it involved cutting a stencil out of paper which had a great many limitations (not least that it would apply ink to the thickness of the paper used).

I sense a whole world of fabric printing opportunities opening up in front of me. My life may never be quite the same ever again!

Owly Towel

Sounds like a Fawlty Towers anagram, doesn't it? But in fact, it's what I've been making today!

Thanks to the lovely Craft Guerrilla's expert guidance, I've spent three hours this afternoon carving a design out of lino and then printing it onto a tea towel. I've had so much fun and - as is always the case when I learn a new craft or technique - my mind is now buzzing with possibilities. Let's just say that if you're on my Christmas card list, I'm already thinking up the design you'll be seeing in seven months.

The workshop was at the Knit With Attitude shop at 127 Stoke Newington High Street and there were four of us participating in the workshop including Louise (Crafty Guider) and Jean-Mary (Meanyjar).

As I wrote yesterday, I'd had an idea in mind for a while, of a little owly chap sitting on a branch. When I got to the workshop, I realised that in fact for a repeated design, the owl would be better on its own, without the branch.

So, I started out by drawing my li'l owl onto the lino block.

Owly. HB pencil on lino.

Then I set about carving! It was lots of fun gouging out chunks from the lino. I loved that the different blades of the tool had different influences, not only the shape and weight of the line, but also the direction; I'd intended that the eye sockets would be tooled from the outside edge, inwards, but the blade I was using gave the line a natural curve to the left, so they ended up with a spiral design which I love.

Shavings of lino ended up all over the place; this is not a hobby for those who don't like mess.

Once I'd finished the design, it was time to ink it up and print a trial run on a scrap of fabric. I'm very into teal at the moment, so I decided on a good, strong teal colour, which I used by mixing a lot of blue, with some yellow and white. The 'ink' was actually acrylic paint with some Daler Rowney System 3 Acrylic Medium mixed into it; the ratio was imprecise, but it seemed to be about 10-20% medium to paint. The medium means that the paint doesn't dry quite so quickly as acrylic paint normally would, allowing you more time to work.

No negativity here!

The first trial print helped me to realise that I needed to shave away a little of the material around the design. In fact, in the end I cut it all away, because I wanted a nice clean edge to the design. Once I was happy with the design, it was time to commit to printing my tea towel. I measured the towel and my design and worked out I that I could fit a row of four owls along each short edge of the towel.

Four in a row.

I had great fun creating my owly towel and it was inspiring to see the designs my fellow workshoppers came up with.

From left to right, Craft Guerrilla, Alison, me, Crafty Guider and Meanyjar.

Logos-a-gogo

Today I created the Pinking Shears logo and favourites icon. I used Word Art and the drawing toolbar in Microsoft Word. Lots of people pooh-pooh Word's graphical capabilities and it does have its limitations, of course, but once you've learned how to use them, there's a great deal of flexibility. I've been a fan of the drawing toolbar of Word since the first time I played with it (which, if I recall correctly, was in the 1990s with MS Word version 2!)

The pinked effect is a lot of small triangles, lined up together and grouped, then rotated as a group with the free rotate tool. The words Pinking and Shears are separate Word Art items. I played around quite a bit with different colours and shades, different shape of Word Art. In fact, the only constants were that I wanted to use my two favourite fonts, Calibri and Cambria and that I wanted the teal-and-orange combination. I had originally rejected the idea of using pink in the design when it was suggested by my partner this morning, but as is often the case, I soon realised she was right.

Once I had something I liked, I did a print preview and used Snag It to grab exactly the part of the screen that I liked, and convert it into a png format file.

Leaning towards Lino

I'm looking forward to Sunday because I'll be learning to Lino Print at a workshop run by Knit With Attitude in Stoke Newington. I have to admit, I'm not a knitter. I've tried, but I just can't get the hang of it (I suppose that's a challenge for another day!). However, I heard about the workshop through Craft Guerrilla's facebook page a few weeks ago. 

I assume that we'll be able to carve our own Lino design for printing, so I've been working on the design of a li'l owly chap sitting on a branch.