Lots of Pics

What weather, yesterday, for a bank holiday Monday - it poured all day. Sunday was lovely and we went for a massive walk. We hope to move house next year (if the market collapse allows) and I’ve not taken on any teaching in 2009 to allow for this. Will still be doing lots of talks, though. We don’t plan to move far but we’d like a nicer, slightly smaller house. It was interesting to brainstorm the necessities and we discovered that our main one (apart from sufficient room to sleep and work) was to live near some good walks so that we didn’t have to get in the car to go for our exercise. We are lucky here to have good walking nearby and wouldn’t want to lose it. Having a food shop close by has moved to the bottom of the list now that Mr Tesco brings it in a van! On the other hand we don’t want to live in the depths of the country and be totally dependent on a car.


Having identified an area, we have been researching the walks and, as we keep getting lost, the coffee shops for unexpected lunch stops. So that’s what we did on Saturday and Sunday and now my legs really ache.

Yesterday we polished up Quiltwow (WoW is ready) and I did a lot of messy gesso, some for the next book but some was just for fun. My design to stitch book is getting quite full. Here’s a gesso and cast paper section - not a good photo as it is too shiny to show the detail.



Clive, having finished his OU studies, has enrolled on an Open College of the Arts Drawing course. He has excellent drawing skills (he used to be much better than me at things like figures and wild-life) but hasn’t done any for so long that he wanted to start all over again. He has had his first assessment back and was very encouraged. I do find that drawing needs to be done frequently to keep the hand and eye in trim. So, there we are in the evenings, like Darby and Joan with our sketch books on our knees. Mine has to share my lap with Stevens which makes for interesting impromptu lines and I can’t recommend a cat as a drawing board.

I didn’t post the pics from the Marlborough course so here are some of the goodies. They were a wonderful group and we had such a fun day. This is by Dale.





Here’s is Maggie Harris (The Other Maggie) using a design from her sketchbook.



Work in progress.



Are you fed up with Displacement Maps yet? Let me know because I have other ideas for later blogs. Here’s a goody. Fill a blank page with a colourful gradient using the fill tool.






Then displace this image with a displacement map. I used a photo of a poppy from our Sissinghurst day.




Duplicate three times in the Layer menu and then click on the top layer and go to Effects and Edges - Find all. Finally, reduce the opacity on the top layer.





Love that pale effect. Now play with the blend modes - this is Difference on the top layer only.