“When we look with our eyes, from our hearts, through the lens, it’s a completely different photo and something really powerful can happen” Jen Lemen
Check out this awesome video of Jen’s story on her journey from happy snapper to $50,000 world photography prize winner…
***
And if you are in the mood for wishing, please help me make a dream come true here!
Imagine the scene. Ten people sketching furiously to a strict time limit of ten seconds, one life model pose after another, papers flying everywhere, tossed to the floor on each ring of the bell for a new pose, new piece of paper, new sketch. A veritable storm of drawing paper and charcoal dust…
10 second sketch (10 seconds is seriously quick! I’m not sure I even looked at the paper in that time!)
I spent most of Saturday at the Northern Film School taking a fascinating workshop on Drawing Figures for Animation. Five solid hours of live drawing, with the longest sitting at 20 minutes – exhausting but exhilarating. And seriously good practice. We did a mixture of contour drawings, gesture drawings and charicatures with charcoal, pencil and marker pens. I came away with about eighty sketches, and a whole lot more confidence in figure drawing.
30 second sketch
Sometimes it is worth putting a time limit on your work to focus your attention and really make you look. Then it’s up to you whether you stick to the rules, break the rules or abandon the rules altogether!
2-minute sketch
When was the last time you played around in your sketchbook?
You guys rock!! Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Seriously, I cannot believe how generously you shared your advice to help me get over my first-machine-use-phobia. And I think you cured me!! I started off with baby steps as advised by the lovely Anne at Craft Gossip Sewing, and then I realised how much fun it was, and just started whizzing along!
Look what I made, thanks to you (and I surprised myself that I actually don’t care they are all wonky)…
Stitched postcards…
A four-weeks-at-a-glance wall planner with interchangeable pockets (red thread inspired by Rebecca Sower – thanks for the intro Stella)…
A journal (thanks Lorrie – remember the little heart?)…
And some other bits and pieces too. I am now officially in love with my sewing machine.
And I love all the blog and website links you shared. So inspiring and lots still to check out.
Did I say thank you SO much!
Is it just me or she beautiful, this shiny new birthday present of mine?
In fact, she is so beautiful, I am too scared to plug her in.
I so want to make gorgeous things.
But I haven’t the first clue how to use her.
I have a pile of fabric. And ribbon. And some buttons.
But I might break my beautiful machine when I try to stitch them all together.
So I bought a book, like I always do when I’m stuck.
And another, like I always do when I’m still stuck.
I now have eleven books on sewing.
But I still don’t know where to start.
It’s like I need to know everything before I can make anything.
I don’t know how much is enough.
Please help me!
Any inspiring sewing blogs, project ideas, mixed media artists using stitch, you name it, I want to know about it. Do you have a story about how you learnt to sew? I want to hear about it!
Just a little bit more knowledge. And then I promise to plug her in.
Thought I’d share a piece from a series I am working on – ‘Bloom True’. The smells and colours of the emerging spring made me want to paint flowers.
Recently I was introduced to the incredibly talented Flora Bowley in a post by Lorrie Spotts, and instantly loved her work. I was intrigued to then discover she is teaching a workshop at Squam in the autumn, entitled… Bloom True! It felt like a sign so I have recklessly signed up for Squam and will be heading back to the US for more creative fun with lovely American gals later in the year. I have also signed up for a photography workshop with Susannah Conway and wabi-sabi paper with Judy Wise.
Anyone else going? It’s going to be so much fun.
But for now, I am living in the moment of gorgeous sunshine, long mountain bike rides and painting – bliss.
Happy weekend!
Cherry blossom (Japanese ink on rice paper 12″ x 6″)
When I started learning Japanese 15 years ago I used to stay up until the early hours of the morning in the college library copying characters from an old dictionary, dipping my brush in juicy ink, sweeping it across the rice paper and marvelling at the words that spilt out. Such a beautiful script, each word a picture in itself. The therapeutic quiet rhythm of shaping the text belied the speed at which each piece was created.
Although sometimes it is good to work on a creation for days, weeks, months even, there is something fundamentally satisfying about finishing a piece in under a minute. I took out my old brushes again yesterday and tried this with sumi-e (Japanese ink painting) with a little help from Takumasa Ono. As the ink flowed through the bristles the memories flooded back.
Girl (Japanese ink on rice paper 12″x9″)…trying to emerge from a long dark winter, seedlings wiggling up through the ground, trees preparing their new wardrobe, daffodils blooming courageously.
Snowdrops and Daffodils. Image credit: Dominic Alves
Is it just me, or do they look like they are whispering secrets?
“Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
This feels like a good time to reflect, breathe in and look forward. A time for something new…
Just wanted to introduce you to this delicious foodie/love-of-things-homemade book ‘A Homemade Life’, as author Molly Wizenberg has just announced a new book tour of the US. As I am not planning to be in the US in April I sadly can’t go to any of them, so I thought I’d tell you about it instead, so maybe you could pop along and indulge for me! The dates are on her award-winning blog Orangette, along with lots of tasty recipes and ponderings about food and life.
Following the death of her father, Molly took herself away to Paris, a city that ‘held vivid memories of a childhood trip with her father, of early morning walks on the cobbled streets of the Latin Quarter and the taste of her first pain au chocolat’. There she discovered that her heart was in the kitchen, and she goes on to tell a tale of cooking, eating, reading and love (with recipes!).
It’s funny, reflective, inspiring, and you can almost taste the vanilla bean buttermilk cake. Yum.
ART: Manolo Blahnik Drawings by Anna Wintour – a collection of sketches of some of the world’s most gorgeous shoes.
ADVENTURE: Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert – ‘one woman’s search for everything’.
STORY: The Other Hand by Chris Cleave – on the back cover it says ‘We don’t want to tell you what happens in this book. It’s a truly special story and we don’t want to spoil it’. I won’t spoil it either; let’s just say that it is stunning and shocking, sad and uplifting in equal measure.
What better breath of fresh air during the working day than a quick gallery fix? One of the most wonderful things about London is that apart from special exhibitions, all the museums and art galleries are free, and no-one tries to sell you anything (except when you exit via the gift shop…).
Anyway, finding myself at a conference near the financial district, I snuck into the corner gallery of ‘Bloomberg SPACE’ to see Damien Deroubaix’s contribution to the new Comma series of special commissions.
Enitled ‘ A place to lose oneself’, the blurb says ‘The visual noise that Damien Deroubaix energetically orchestrates in his paintings, sculptures and woodcuts is overwhelming: brutal, deafening, sharp and dissonant.’
His piece is a tree.
But somehow it is more than that. It is an angry tree, and in the silent white gallery space, it really does create visual noise. Not my ‘taste’ and perhaps not the most peaceful lunchbreak, but certainly a thought-provoking one.
It made me think about what makes me like some art and not other, and in the end I think it comes down to whether it speaks to me, tells me a story, and whether the colours and textures draw me in.
How do you know what you like?
Yesterday I added my two stitches to the world’s biggest knitted textile! Force of nature Ingrid Wagner had brought her 4-metre long(!) needles to the Twisted Thread Stitch and Craft Show at Olympia, showcasing her particular style of ‘big knitting’ and raising money for Breast Cancer Care.
Ingrid holds the Guinness World Record for knitting with the biggest needles, which were over twice as long as she is tall! She said that it made her feel like she was a character in The Borrowers – either that or she was knitting a scarf for a Big Friendly Giant…
Ingrid also makes divine wall hangings and rugs out of this ‘big knit yarn’ which is about 4cm wide.
Watch out for the giant needles coming to a town near you, and knit a stitch or two for Breast Cancer Care. There’s nothing like women supporting women.