This week I made a pattern from townhouses inspired by Edinburgh terraces. I enjoyed the drawing work, I found plenty of scope for imagination.

Architecture is finding its way back into my work since the house move from rural Perthshire back to Dunfermline town, Fife, where I was born and grew up. I now have familiar views from my work room over lovely houses and an abundance of trees and gardens. My Dad was an architect, and I used to work in his studio during school holidays; I still have many of his architectural plans and drawings.

It is interesting that fewer midges, other insects, and plant life are appearing in my work now - it is great fun to introduce them to buildings in drawings (not literally!)

​Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

Monday: I finished the linear flower drawing I was working on during  the previous week.
Tuesday: a mock-up for some colour ideas for a pattern.
Wednesday: I began work on a coloured version of the linear flowers, painting with gouache.
Thursday: I completed the gouache work when it filled the entire sheet of paper.
​Friday: i played around with different coloured stems and backfill fronds.
Then, over the weekend I took scans of some the sprigs in the drawing and cleaned them up. They look pretty and full of character which I like, I am sure they will come in useful.

​Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

I made a return to working with my hands this week, as opposed to digitally!

Procreate on iPad was a miracle during the house move, requiring no space or materials other than a stylus and a charger which enabled me to continue to work and generate new ideas (when there was time). I created some digital work which I find truly wonderful - see last week's post.

At the beginning of this week, however, I was struggling with it. In the end I became aware that I was trying to replicate my freehand drawing methods and it wasn't working for me. I tried every brush and everything the digital brushes could do, but I was going silently mad in the process. I know there are artists out there who effortlessly produce work in Procreate and create their own brushes to suit, and I can't tell the difference between their digital and hand-made works, but I was spending hours - days and hours - and getting frustrated and wasting time producing hellish, ugly, stiff, overwrought works.

In the end I thought that was nuts. My studio is well enough organised now to be able to work by hand and get it into Photoshop. I set up my room so I have a drawing table and a Mac table with a large enough monitor to finish hand drawn and painted work for Redbubble merchandise, so here is what I came up with: a floral watercolour which became a very lovely pattern, a home-made rubber stamps design (ditto), and a cyan line drawing of a spaced-out cat in a garden which I don't know yet what will become.

I will continue to work in Procreate, it is an amazingly powerful tool for iPad and I enjoy using it. I have created many works over the past year, discovering fascinating ideas which I wouldn't have happened without it (see previous posts!). But I have to say it was lovely to get out the pens, pencils and watercolours again, too.

Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

PS I will be linking to my Redbubble shop, it just doesn't have very much content yet!