Prints

Prints of my journey piece are now available on etsy. Hope you're having a nice weekend!

Finally found

I've been stuck at home the last few days with a horrible cold and cough and have got sooooo bored. This evening there's been nothing good on TV to distract me so I got to looking for old books that I had as a kid, then I started thinking about old toys...

My very first memory is of playing in my grandparents' house in Cape Town before we moved to England when I was two. So we're talking pretty early memories. What I remembered was playing with these lovely little wooden blocks they had (I think from my Dad's childhood), that were made of hardwood and stained in purple, and pink, and brown. I loved tocking them together and remember my granny and my older sister piling them up (I guess I was a bit too little to manage it myself though!). I have to say I got a little emotional when I stumbled across this vintage set of Cuisenaire Rods - I now know that's their proper name - that sold a few days ago on ebay.

There's a book about colour theory that I had when we moved to England that I'm working on finding too, and I think I can pretty much attribute my entire fascination with colour to these two sources! I can't describe how exciting this is!

Nice pair

A lucky half hour at the car boot sale this morning - Avocados and Catherineholm pots.

And we're back.

Didn't take me long to get back to bright colours did it?

After coveting Tif's beautiful collection of vintage knitting needles I decided that I was going to be good and frugal this week, ie no more buying 60's children's picturebooks on Abe Books, or anything else on ebay. But when I accidentally found myself in a charity shop yesterday (ignore the fact I'd parked up and put money in the meter round the corner, it was total chance I happened to be there.... OK?) there they were.

A box full of knitting needles, a lot of them brightly coloured in all shades of yellow, red, coral, turquoise and green and for 5p per pair. I can't even knit but my goodness they're nice to play with and sort into colours and pairs. I've actually had to put them in a cupboard upstairs so I can get on with some work today.

I need help people.

Softly, softly

Don't you sometimes just need a bit of quiet colour and tactility?

I've been making paper with little flecks of painted paper and gold card, a lovely way to re-use all those scraps that I end up with after a good scalpel collage session. I've also been burnishing with the back of a metal spoon to give clay a wonderful silky feel and a slight pinkness, like the pot is blushing.

My big project is coming along. I'm having to trick myself into doing bits of it though. I start off with a bit of typography, looking carefully at retro typefaces and reproducing them in colour, then I move onto a bit of architecture picked out from the cine films and finally, when I've loosened up I can get into drawing figures which is not my greatest strength. Add several litres of tea and you get an idea of what my work-at-home Thursdays are like. I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

Hope you are having a productive and fun week. And Happy St Patrick's Day!

The journey so far...

These are a few of the drawings I've been churning out for my big project for uni. I'm drawing inspiration from postcards, business cards, cine films and ephemera from the 1960s to 80s when my grandad was travelling around the world. My aim is to create ten or so a3 sheets of drawings and typographic studies per week (bearing in mind I have a printmaking module and a creative writing one to work on!) so that by the end of the Easter hol I can start scanning and piecing together my website/film from the best drawings. Daunting is not the word.

Hope you're getting a bit of sun this weekend. It can't make up its mind here. I'm off to the museum soon to help with a families afternoon painting Chinese masks, should be fun! Have a good one whatever you're doing.