I have been working purely digitally for a while, which I love - but I always end up with a hankering for the human presence of the hand, and the alchemy of materials. Above is a watercolour from one of my sketchbooks, with wax resist and simple, free pen lines, which I made a while ago. I am very interested in designing patterns which could contain this freedom, I haven't figured it out yet, but it's something which has been going on in the background of my mind for over a year. Also, I haven't a clue which pen I used to worked on wax! It has bonded perfectly with the resist - experiments required (and possibly a lot of spoilt pens).

Above is a set of six little monotypes from the same sketchbook. I have always loved making monotype drawings. Using a glass plate rolled with printing ink or oil paint, paper is placed over the plate and I draw on the paper. It means when the paper is peeled away from the plate it reveals a mirror image of the drawing plus accidental smudges and textures. These surprises are exciting, and I use the technique both for illustration and in my Heather Eliza drawings.

This week I began to isolate sketches from my book (I did write about getting my jugs out and working with them, but NO, that's SO wrong!! Raised a few laughs on Instagram, though) . Here is a rudimentary something I put together as an experiment. The original monotype drawing was made on hand-made bark paper which supplies the lovely colour and texture for the fuzzy ink lines, cut out and placed over a digitally created linen-weave background. It may take a while, but I'll see where I go with this.

PS: I decided not to do Inktober on Instagram this year, I just have too many pots on the boil at the moment. I was tempted, but focus is required.

We celebrated B's 60th birthday on Wednesday, so I took 3 days off this week. Monday and Tuesday I set aside for baking, preparation and making him a special painted card/art piece. Wednesday itself was a lovely day of special foods, deliveries of gifts and balloons, and pampering B. Then it was back to normal on Thursday and Friday working on the children's book, but I found myself a bit short of blog and Instagram material to share. Normally I collect incidental bits and pieces from my illustrations and assemble them into a still life or pattern at the end of the working week, but I had nothing new I could share this time (although the illustrations are working beautifully! - watch this space).

Luckily, I had started this still life in blue a few weeks ago, and all it needed was a pattern for the drapes to finish it. I had had plans for developing the pattern of ovals which I made at the beginning of February, so I worked on that today, and the still life was finished. Incidentally, I am most interested in patterns which have a block printed appearance at the moment (last week's post shows that, too). I was passionately in love with William Morris wallpapers and Indian printed textiles as a youngster in the 1970's, and it never really left me, but right now I am interested in fresh, simple shapes with lots of texture.

When I was at art school still life was my favourite genre, I loved going to the college wardrobes and cupboards to select objects for my paintings. Now, for the last few weeks I have been organised enough to collect elements as I work into a scrap-book file so that at the end of the week I can make a still life with them. Although this work is digital, I have noticed that the process of composing and problem solving is the same as painting and in fact the end result resembles my paintings.

Still collecting ideas based on coastal flora to use in illustrations, I found Sea Stock this week, and on Thursday I discovered that Sea Bindweed and Beach Morning Glory are actually the same plant - I have yet to identify the little yellow flowers which I originally thought were Beach Morning Glory. I would never have known there existed such a wide variety of plants which grow on sand dunes in the UK; now I'm looking forward to visiting the beach in summertime for a good old poke around to see what I can find.

Thanks for visiting, see you next week! ​

Just as storm Ciara last week influenced my choice of colour, I sheltered from storm Dennis this week in calm, bright colours; also taking comfort after a personal incident - I upset a kettle of boiling water over my knee on Monday and burnt myself badly. I found distraction from pain in lots of mark-making and gentle, small objects. The seaside theme still prevails, here we have driftwood, seaweed and coral shapes alongside those British seaside classics: flip flops, a mug of tea, a picnic blanket, and a bucket and spade.

​Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

It has been a howling, windy week, and the three old sash windows in my work room have been shuddering and rattling like wild skeletons as the side of the house was buffeted by storm Ciara. The turmoil outside perhaps led me to select muted, calm colours for work.
It has been a while since I made a close-toned still life. I have always loved still life painting; I always used oils at art school, where I learnt painting in the traditional Scottish manner with a slightly modernist twist using tilted perspective and beautiful colour harmonies. At the moment I am working digitally on illustrations for that children's book I keep mentioning, so the images shown here were created using textures created earlier in the week for some of the characters and their environment.

This pattern emerged from a texture made (without giving too much away) for an animal in the story. It forms the animal's skin, but I could see the pattern emerging quite clearly alongside the animal's character as I worked on him. I played with colour-ways for the pattern and was pleased with these two - earth and mineral, my favourites! When I have time I would like to refine them, I already have ideas that would look great on textiles for curtains. Or tote bags. Or cushion covers. Or blankets - I think you know where I'm going.

Thanks for visiting, see you next week!