Floods ferry, Cambridgeshire UK

Floods Ferry is a back road that passes a factory and scattered farmhouses before leading you onto the bypass to our local town March.

Had to pop into March so I took my sketchbook and parked up twice to make a couple of quick thumbnails before moving on.

 

My baby, Kinx, got stung on his paw by a bee!!!

I thought he'd broken his leg he squealed and shook so much..Bless him!

He is fine now.

 

Rainy Day Sketchcrawl

14-07-12, a photo by Anita Davies on Flickr.

Poured with rain during the recent sketch crawl date here in the Fens so I decided to simply sketch my day .... Grid style!

Workshop Preparation

12-02-12, a photo by Anita Davies on Flickr.

Various media (inktense pencils, Noodlers bullet proof black ink, watercolour, gouache) in daily journal

Journal Grids

Ink and watercolour in daily journal

It's been ages since I sketched in grid format and I've no idea why. I love filling the little boxes and watching the results of a mixture of subjects party together like this on a spread.

Journal Grid

The Everyday in May posts have taken over from my daily journal posts this month but I have still been filling pages none the less.
I'm having alot of fun adjusting from the smooth HP paper in my Canson journal to the CP paper in my new 'Flo' journal. The usual 0.1 pigment liners I use do not like the paper very much but my Lamy Safari seems to enjoy any surface put before it. The Daniel Smith watercolours are such a pleasure to work with and I'm gradually finding my way with them.

The door was sketched while waiting for Harry to come out of school.
The necklace was a gift from my Mum, a little 'just because' treat, it has beautiful delicate trinkets hanging from it aswell as a large amber stone.
The roll is topped with sunflower and poppy seeds and was delicious!!!

I have so much to post, more homes from my 'Close to Home' project and lots more journal pages, so be prepared for a visual bombardment over the next couple of weeks.

Another One Bites The Dust

These are the last pages of my second Canson watercolour sketchbook, which means I can now begin my handmade journal 'Flo', made by Kala.


Those of you that requested a Canson journal from me will be pleased to hear they are now in stock and on their way to me.

More Grids

Sunday Grid

A journal page from the weekend.

I'm finding it easier to use grids with small sketches in for my journal entries since signing up to the Everyday in May project and choosing a theme. That and the 'Close to Home' project take up a good part of my art time and the grid format allows me to make small studies throughout my day of anything I choose to sketch

...A little freedom in a month full of themes!

Column Week 13

These are the images and text that made up my illustrated column entry in the Cambs Times and Wisbech Standard, in print today:



These days my shopping trips to Tesco are usually accompanied with a visit to their café, where I indulge in a frothy Latte and sketch some of the customers as they go about their day; a great exercise in studying the human figure.
So, you can imagine my disappointment when I found the café boarded up during my visit on Tuesday morning. The huge renovation project that has been going on there had finally reached the café and stolen part of my shopping ritual.
Keen to return home with a page of sketches in my journal, I found my way back to the car park and made good use of an inconvenient situation by sketching a few of the numerous changes that surrounded me.
Not such a disappointment after all, although I really did miss my routine Latte!

If you would like to see more, my daily journal entries can be found on my blog : http://artbyanita.blogspot.com/.
Wednesday Night Art Workshops. Benwick Road Recreation Centre, Doddington. Contact Anita: 07790554201

Finally...

These are the last pages in my 40th Birthday Journal my Sons gifted me at the beginning of April. It has been a pleasure to use.



My truck went in for it's first MOT on Monday.
A little early, I parked firstly in Church Lane, Doddington and sketched some tulips in bloom and a lamp post. I later added my truck key to the page.

My second stop was in a lay by on Wimblington Road, just before Sisco garage, where I stopped just long enough to grab a quick sketch of the road ahead and surrounding landscape in greyscale.
While waiting for my Mum to collect me I sketched a diesel pump.



Later Monday evening I sneaked a sketch of my eldest watching TV.

Finally, I ended this journal in the best possible way...With one last cuppa and a few thoughts.



What next?....

Oh, I think I have plenty to keep me busy!

Bluebells

The bluebells have woken and dressed my garden with their pretty bonnets.

Last Fruits

Over the weekend I found the last tomato in the fridge and the last of the grapes and made a few quick studies with them in my journal using various coloured pigment liners and watercolour.


10 min sketches


5 min sketches

Mid Week Journal Pages

'Concentrated on values using watercolour and a still life of manikins and flowers. Journal homework: monochrome flower.'


'Can't quite pull the pieces together today. I'm craving peace, comfort and warmth. They are here but I just can't grasp them'

Tea or Coffee?

For me, it has to be coffee!

I can't operate without it.
My right eye refuses to open until it's oiled by my morning cuppa.

No milk or sugar....strong and black.
Untainted.
Unless it's a latte or Cappuccino, then it has to have plenty of both.

I'm sure I'm addicted.
I average 20 cups a day
It's the only refreshment that passes my lips.

Sleep is not a happening thing.
I sleep an average of 4 hours a night.
Everyone blames the caffeine.
Truth is, I was a night owl long before our relationship began!

Monochrome

On Friday I arrived a few minutes early to collect Harry from school and took the opportunity to sketch one of the houses from the truck. I had approx. 10 minutes before I had to dash to the classroom door, so I jotted down the light direction and added black watercolour back at home later that evening.
It is part of a double spread for Friday, shown below:



Vivien Blackburn recently attended a interesting talk by an illustrator who asked everyone to do a series of 4 x 2.5 inch sketches of their day from memory/imagination and presented the idea to Wet Canvas members in the General Sketchbook thread.
I didn't measure my boxes but instead divided a page in my journal and filled it on Saturday.
It was fun!

I Got Mail

Friday brought the end to what seemed a long week being the first week back to school after two weeks Easter holiday. It also brought lots of goodies in the post ordered with my Birthday money!

Danny Gregory's - Creative License Book
Simon Schama's - Power Of Art 3 DVD set
Lust For Life - Old Movie where Kirk Douglas plays Van Gogh

and...

I also bought myself the DVD 'Music and Lyrics' while shopping at Tesco for just £3 - Bargain!

I'm itching to watch them all and get my teeth into Danny's book, believe it or not, it's the first of his books I have purchased so I'm looking forward to it. I'm not much of a reader, I get restless and flip and skip alot. I have yet to read an art book cover to cover, perhaps I'll face this challenge with Danny's book?

Another Double Grid

Another double spread in my beautiful journal from spacedogstudios on Etsy.

The Penny Has Dropped

This is Wednesday. A short drive into Chatteris purely for sketching, the clippings from the weekend's hedge trimming, a cigarette break and a little TV before bed...Nothing special to read about if it was written in word but art makes everything so much more interesting doesn't it!


I have been missing double spreads in my sketchbook. I stopped creating them when I took on my newspaper column thinking the line through the middle would prove a problem in print. However, what I failed to see, until last week, was that I could still produce spreads if I didn't cross the page while drawing...Doh!
Why is it that the simple things can often be invisible to us?
Anyway, the penny has finally dropped, as the saying goes, and here is what these two pages look like in my beautiful Birthday book side by side.

A Hunting We Shall Go

The art from life forum over at Wet Canvas run a weekly scavenger hunt.

Basically, a member creates a list of objects and challenges and you sketch from the list over the week with the aim of completing it.

It was these hunts that first started me keeping a sketchbook and I still find them very handy as a quick resource for inspiration when choosing a subject becomes a task.

I completed 6 of the items from this week's list in the grid format below, each box measures approx. 5 cms square.

My 7th entry covers the 'sketch a pile of something' item, I chose eggshells, watercolour, a large square brush and a slightly different approach to how I usually work.

Another Day

...Another grid.

Here's a journal page from a busy day spent running around town last week. I limited my palette to red, green and blue...Just for fun!