Category: COLOUR

30 drawings in 30 days – first 10 drawings

#1/30 – Municipio – Pescina, Italy
#2/30 – Various plants from the garden – Pescina, Italy

#3/30 – Pescina (old town), Italy

#4-5-6/30 – Various subjects – Catanzaro Lido, Italy

#7/30 – La Tonnina – Catanzaro Lido, Italy
#8/30 – Pineta – Roccelletta di Borgia, Italy
#9/30 – Strada per Pescina, Italy (from photo)

#10/30 – Colline sopra Roccelletta di Borgia, Italy

And the first 10 drawings are done, almost as planned! I have been using my Moleskine watercolour notebook (21 x 13cm) as I’m planning to complete all the sketchbooks I have lying around the house by the end of the year. I have used different page layouts, so far: portrait, landscape, landscape with 4 horizontal inserts and landscape with 3 vertical inserts.
The first batch contains different type of sketches, some of them were done on the spot, some others were done using photos I had taken with my phone. I managed to do one drawing a day, except for drawings number 4, 5 and 6 that were done on the same day…you can tell by the size of the drawings and the lack of details…..

Note: In the UK the hash # isn’t printed on the Apple Mac computer keyboard, so just press “alt”+3.

Back to the roots

It has been a while since I shared my thoughts on here. Although my head has been busy with ideas, projects and various topics I seemed to never find the right time to write about it. It’s the lazy part of me that prevailed over the past few months (two, three?? Has it been that long?). Maybe, or it’s just that all those things didn’t excite me enough to find the time to actually do them/write about them. So after two days of ups and downs, lots of reading and lots of talking to G, I figure out that sometimes you need to go back to what made you start in the first place. It all begun (or better said resurfaced) back in 2005, about a year after moving to London when I enrolled in an evening art class at the local education centre. My childhood memories resurfaced and I rediscovered that sensation of fulfilment that I had lost along the way. Back then it was just a way of relaxing the brain from my daily job, but it soon became a necessity, something I would miss if I wasn’t doing it. And after 7 years it’s still the same…when I’m not painting or drawing I’m thinking about it. So here it comes, a new challenge for the rest of the summer: 30 drawings in 30 days! There are plenty of groups around the blog world that are taking up similar challenges; I might join some of them, just in case my motivation runs low along the way. But I will be doing it just for me, to make sure I do find the time every day to escape into my personal space if only just for a few minutes. Depending on the time available, I’m aiming to post three batches of ten drawings, hopefully with some accompanying text. And all starts today!

Striped canvas – Update


DIY Project 1 – Update 
I finally decided to tackle the first of the October projects…about time! but the thought of using acrylics on a big white canvas was a bit daunting. I started out easily, just using thin paper tape to define each row and then started with the first wash of colours. The bottom part looks smoother than the top, where you can clearly see the changes in colours. Also, after removing the tape I realised some of the paint had moved under it….acrylics on a canvas definitely work differently than watercolours! I’m hoping to be able to rectify things with the second wash.

On another note: When I started the monthly projects plan I thought I was overloading myself with too many things to do and that at the end of the month I would have actually felt as nothing had been done. However, being almost at the end of the month, I’m quite pleased to have at least started the majority of the projects. I know I haven’t finished any yet, but this way I can jump from one thing to another without ever getting bored.

October Plan // DIY Projects

Last day of September today, so I thought I get better organised for the coming month! It will be a busy month….finishing off house renovation, attend antenatal classes and a lot of other things that have been on my ‘to do list’ for months now!
But I’ve set two goals I want to achieve by the end of the month:
DIY Project 1 
I’ve been thinking about a large canvas painting to hang on our bedroom wall for about a year, but couldn’t make up my mind on the subject. I knew I wanted to use acrylics to do it, as I wanted it to be big and narrow, and I didn’t feel very confident in using watercolours for doing big washes. So inspiration stroke a few days ago while flipping through The Watercolour Expert, from the Royal Watercolour Society in London (a gift I received from my colleagues when I left my previous job). I came across a painting from David Whitaker called Sunrise – Sunset and I felt in love.
Sunrise – Sunset, Watercolours (49 x 97 cm)
The painting look simple, it’s just a set of stripes with colours ranging from blues/purples to oranges/yellows. But if you look close enough, each stripe actually has most of the colours in it, so it’s not just a matter of painting each of them using only one colour as I thought at first!
Anyway, I’ve decided that I’ll give it a go…it will be my art project for this month. Got a big size canvas (40 x 120 cm) half price from Surbiton Arts, acrylic paints and a roll of narrow paper tape.
I hope that this is all I need!
Forgot to mention that I have never used acrylics before….maybe some tests before starting would be a good idea!
DIY Project 2
For the second project I got inspired by one of the books I got from the library a while ago (post here). It’s a felted bowl, an orange one for our living room to start with, which I will probably use as a keys or jewellery bowl. If it goes down well I’m planning to do a few more as Christmas presents. 
It’s quite easy to knit (instructions to follow soon), but still not sure if I can do it without a circular needle just stitching the ends together before felting! I will give it a go as it is, and see what results I get!

Pencil shades….& relaxation technique

Came back from the exam this afternoon quite tired and still feeling a bit as I had been pushed under a lorry! I think it went well, but will have to wait until the end of November to know the results 🙂
G asked me to help him out with some pencil effects for some work is doing at the moment, so I drew some squares on scrap pieces of watercolour paper and started to pencil them in. I had so forgotten how relaxing it is when your mind get lost in doing something so repetitive and, if you think about it, a bit boring! I sat on the couch for at least half an hour just thinking about nothing else but filling the blank squares…soooo relaxing!
Will have to remember to do some more in the future if I need to take my mind off things; I could actually make some art work using this technique, maybe using coloured pencils……will put it down in my ‘to do list ideas’!