Moving this blog ...

I am moving this blog to a new home on the Wordpress platform, as this is where my garden journal is hosted and I have decided to keep everything under one roof - so to speak.
My first post is up to-day after more than 6 months away from the studio.

Although it has been a wonderful time - I did have a slight "something is missing" feeling - and of course it was art. I am struggling to get back to a place where I am working creatively - so my entries on my new blog may be a bit sporadic to start with. Please bare with me!

Part of the reason that I have not been in the studio is that I have found work as a gardener - it pays slightly better than art! Plus I have been working in my own garden - which I am passionate about.

Now the nights are drawing in - and the weather is changing - fingers crossed the studio is where I will settle for the winter.

EDIT

Update March 2020 after a long break I now have a new website Karen Hall Art

Digital Art Journal Entry

Please click on the picture for a larger view.
Art Journal entry
Sketchbook pages from 1991

As I am not in my studio very much just now - you may find me in
An Artist's Garden

Please click on the images for a larger view.

Destroy to Create

Interesting day in the studio today - I really wanted to push the development of the images from yesterday and the day before - as a double page spread in my 2008 "Moon Journal".

I also wanted to push my sewing machine as well - because - as yet I have not had time to see what it will really do. I decided to see what the "built in quilting stitches" would do. And I really rather like them. The machine also stitched nicely through the layers - which were - woven paper, painted bondaweb, inkjet transfer on muslin, tissue paper and vyline.

I always find synchronicity interesting. I spent the day yesterday in the veg. garden sorting it out after the high winds and lashing rain we have been having - and I still didn't get to plant the onions. To-day I received a "planting by the moon" e-mail and low and behold - it is tomorrow that is a good day for planting onions!

The page developed further as the day progressed - there is still a couple of things I want to add - but the note about it being a good day to plant onions is down the left hand side - and next to it, is an abstract design I drew, painted and cut out from a sketch I did last summer - when my onions went to seed.

Purple Missus (Lynda Monk) left a comment yesterday - saying she would of been more than happy with the first image on yesterdays post - I think the sub-text of a lot of my work process is "Destroy to Create" and "What happens If ..."

Sometimes this doesn't work at all - but if you push and push - Sometimes the results are wonderful.

Is this is a wonderful page - No it is not - but it is a very useful page. It has some excellent starting points to build on. Which - for me - is a good reason to keep an "art journal"

My mind is buzzing with ideas to develop from what I did today. I know my machine just a little bit more - and perhaps - most importantly - I can plant my onions either to-morrow or Saturday!

Developments

Here are some developments on the picture I posted yesterday - with a view to using them as starting point in my art journal.

The picture above - is simply yesterdays image with the contents of my "to do" list scrawled on top.

I took this page and two photographs of onions that I took last summer. Then I cut these into one inch wide strips and wove them together to create a new back ground paper.

This back ground I will be working on further tomorrow - but I did scan it and alter it in photoshop, and type a journal entry for today on it.

Unfortunately - I have just slopped my cup of tea on my computer keyboard - so need to go and dry it out!

New Year - New Art Journal

Journal page January 8th

A New year and a new journal.

A journal for me is different from a sketchbook - this is where I start with a theme and see where it leads and this year my theme is the wheel of the year as defined by the full moons. (Actually it is the wheel of the year every year!) The journal is where my themes and ideas for significant pieces of work gestate

My sketchbook is just that - sketches and drawings - very rough, samples and ideas, thoughts about techniques. Colour notes, reminders, "what iff's" and so on. I suspect the main difference is that the journal is rather inward looking and the sketchbook is looking out and observing the world. Of course the two feed each other - for how can you draw a wolf moon - unless you have stood under the night sky and truly looked at the moon.

Judy has left a comment giving me a "You make my day Award" which is delightful and I will be following up on this tomorrow. Thank you Judy.

Sketchbooks and Art Journals

Sketchbook page November 2006
I am sorry I cannot give a credit for the rubber stamp - I got it at a stamp fair - and I forget who from - it is however, not my design.

As I am not under high pressure for deadlines - but rather just having studio time, and this means working in sketchbooks - something that I am not very good at - or rather - not as disciplined as I would like.

I cannot believe that the page above is from nearly exactly a year ago. I start a new book - I do a few pages - then it all peters out - as I go straight into the "real" pieces. Then I spend the rest of the year making rough notes on scrappy pieces of paper.

How to "do" my sketchbooks is always something that consumes a large chunk of thought, (when I am not working to deadlines) and I have piles of half used books ranging in size from very small to large and if there is one thing I would like to do - it is to have a more organized approach and paradoxically a more spontaneous approach toward my sketchbooks.

I think I have definitely reached the point where I want to bind my own books - to include all the scrappy bits of paper and notes. I don't want to make beautiful hand stitched journals - although I admire those that do - and have done so myself to commemorate special events. I simply want to wire bind all my stuff up - once every few months - so that all my fabric experiments, figure drawings, notes etc are all in one place - together.

Ho Humm - The trouble with the vertigo - is because I am not working flat out - I have to much time to think! Back to the doctor tomorrow for a chat - and to see what is what.

PS Just found some beautiful handmade books here made by Kaija - sometimes I wish I was a bookbinder!

A Travelling Sketchbook

A Travelling Sketchbook

This is one of a pair of books that Linda Chilton and I exchange every couple of months.

Actually - the books themselves are so heavy and precious now - that we just exchange four pages at a time.

Linda and I have been friends, and artist colleagues for the past 20 + + years. However in July 2005 as we were both moving away from the area that we lived - we decided to keep in touch via sketchbooks.

Linda is the person I turned too whenever I was having artist "collie-wobbles" and these books have been a wonderful way to explore new directions, and still get frank feedback from a trusted friend.

Experiments with Tyvek

To days Journal Page

Tissue Paper, print and fabric layers stuck together, then cut and re-pieced.
Stitching and felt pens.
(size aprox 8ins high)

Very fed up with all these grey skies we are having just now. Not much time in the studio to-day - just enough to do a journal entry.