Conte crayons

My first try with the conte crayons I got in Manchester, just a lovely tiny pack of the four original colours, sanguine, white, black and brown, and I really enjoyed using them.  Less dusty than soft / chalk pastels but more controllable and sharp than oil pastels and didn't need any fixing.  This was a good likeness of the model, who was this striking, and the use of coloured paper really made the highlights stand out.  I feel I'm slowly getting a handle on anatomy and being able to see hue rather than just colour. I think I like exactness and a more graphic style rather than a diffuse style, I'm drawn to line and blocks of colour

Double moss stitch

As if I haven't got enough to do, to use up the cheap double knit wool I've got left I decided to make a sampler blanket of lots of stitches that I like, so I got the book Knit and Purl Stitches: 250 to knit by Erika Knight from the library and set to.  Unfortunately the book doesn't give any tensions so I'm just using size 7 needles, double knit wool and casting on 35 stitches and hoping for the best...  The swatches give me a nice break, I can do one in a few hours depending on complexity.  The multiples number is self explanatory, the plus number is the number of balancing stitches I needed to add on, so 34 is a multiple of 2 plus 1 is 35, great.  Sure it won't always be so easy!
 Double Moss Stich
Multiple of 2 + 1
1st row: k1, *p1, k1; rep from * to end
2nd row: p1, *k1, p1; rep from * to end
3rd row: As 2nd row
4th row: As 1st row
Rep these 4 rows

Oil pastels first time

I had oil pastels as a child but never could really use them, so I sat down with Karen, who uses them a lot, and started this Orkney landscape.  She showed me how to measure, measure and measure again to create an accurate drawing, how to blend using both fingers and other pastels, and how to match my colours more accurately, not depending on the eye but actually bringing the photo up to drawing to check colour, darkness and contrast.  Finished this off on lazy Sunday and am happy with the effect.  The pastels themselves were a bit of a trial, on a visit to my dad in Manchester I made a pilgrimage to the wonderful Fred Aldous on Lever Street and bought a lovely box of 36 oil pastels, but I must have left them behind because I can't find them.  So it was a sharpish visit to WH Smiths running in the door 10 minutes before closing to get some more.  Sweet daughter said she was delighted to try out her trainers, and incidentally we found that Lidl were selling fabulous pads of coloured paper at only £1.49 each, so that was good!

DUFC hat #2

Skull flap hat by Carolyn

Finally sat down in my kitchen and finished off my second attempt at a hat in Dundee United colours, it's big but really comfy.  Another lovely pattern from Ravelry. My only real issue was keeping the stitches on my dpns, much swearing while picking up lost stitches and recounting how many I had on each needle.  Sat down on a Sunday morning while my husband and child were busy beating each other up and got some peace.

Measure, measure and measure again. And anatomy

For the first time a life class I felt completely satisfied with, deep thanks to Karen the previous night teaching me to measure and remeasure, and to both her and Lesley for buying me Sarah Simblet's Anatomy for the Artist which I have been slowly reading.  I didn't think any of it was going in to my rather dull brain but I am beginning to be able to pick out the antomy under the skin which will also apparently make my drawing more accurate, rather than focusing on surface level details.  This model's hands were beautifully large and I was happily able to lose myself in details of beard, trousers and shoes.

Coloured pencils and pen and ink

This was a restless art class, I couldn't get settled, I started doing a large scale pen and ink with ink washes but kept spilling red ink over myself and wasn't happy with the colours of the model's shirt darkening too quickly.  So towards the end I did a couple of drawings in my sketch book.  I'm very happy with the pencil drawing which follows the contours of the model's face.  The pen and ink drawing was an interesting error, both the head and body are correctly drawn from quite an odd perspective, I really enjoy the challenge of odd perspectives, but they are out of proportion with each other.  I'm fascinated by the relative importance of our senses and the idea of drawing elements out of proportion with reference to their salinity to us interests me, for me the head would be larger than the body because I pay too much attention to cerebral matters and am doing mindfulness to redress the balance.  It would be interesting to empahsise the eyes and minimise the ears, as the senses we tend to prejudice one over the other.

DUFC hat #1

Well, I encountered my first catastrophic failure, I'm sure it was me not the pattern but I did a fantastic ear flap hat in orange and black, the colours of my husband and daughter's favourite football team, and by proxy mine, Dundee United, my English team being Cambridge United...  It had these great mad skulls on the side that were really my kind of thing. I don't know what I did wrong, but it was too small for any of us, and wouldn't even fit my daughter's doll.  Oh well, now starting another, you live and learn...