"I begin with an idea ... and then it becomes something else"
~ Picasso

Wednesday 15 April 2015

summer on a spring day

I had a wonderful day in St. Ives on Monday
 

the day started out very misty in St. Ives but by lunchtime it had cleared and
after our session at St. Ives Textiles a few of us went for lunch at Porthmeor Café
 

I discovered these lovely seedheads outside Tate St. Ives
 I had to grab my camera ...
 

 
we had a very good session at St. Ives Textiles ... playing with markal oil paint sticks
 
I mainly used the metallic and iridescent oil sticks with stencils on paper
and rubbings on thin cotton fabric
 
 
this is a stencilling on paper using a limited palette of black silver and copper
 
 
and this is a relief print from a rubbing on paper
 
 
a more colourful rubbing on paper which I will work into with watercolour later
 
 
and a bluebell pattern rubbing on cotton fabric
 
 
once the oil has dried out sufficiently and the fabric has been heat pressed
I plan to over dye the cotton and hand stitch into it
 
these are all samples for my current sketchbook
 
 
I will be sharing the group's session with markal oil sticks on the website next week
 
I've already posted "seeds and pods" to the site this week (an earlier session)
you can click on the link below if you would like to follow along ...
 
 
in my garden ...
my bluebells are not quite flowering yet ... but it won't be long!
 
 
meanwhile ... I am enjoying a blue haze of grape hyacinths and forget me knots
 
 
 
 
for quite a while I sat on the steps in the sunshine
watching a pale blue butterfly flit in the dappled light
(I wasn't quick enough to capture it)
 
 
I sat there doing nothing ... just closed my eyes for a few moments
and all I could hear was birdsong and the cry of the gulls down in the harbour
it was utter bliss!!
 
 
forget me knots with their sunshiney middles
are such friendly little chaps nodding in the breeze
 
they like to muck in and mingle with other beauties
and I think they are "up there" amongst my most favourite flowers
 
 
 
once the Cornish mist lifted it was like summer on a spring day
and you can quite see why I've been distracted by the garden this past week!
 
before coming in to sew ... I pressed a garden full of wild flowers
in my big flower presses and between the pages of a big book
they will make me smile when I rediscover them again in winter time

3 comments:

Carol Rigby said...

This beautiful post has made me smile on this murky looking day. The weather is not being kind to us today so to see the lovely views of St. Ives and the lovely flowers has cheered me up. Your work with markal sticks is lovely. I can't wait to see how you add to them. I hope you will share it with us. I am off to check out the St.Ives Textiles website.

Julie said...

Your forget-me-knots are beautiful. we have a lot of grape hyacinth in the garden and violets popping up everywhere. Stewart has carefully mown round them in the front garden :-) I love listening to the birds singing in the garden and seeing the little violets dotted through the lawn.

Magpie's Mumblings said...

What a delight to see such cheerful flowers on what has proven to be a dull wet windy day here. Trying very hard to not pay attention to the weather man who keeps insisting that we are likely to have snow on Thursday.