Oh to be in England, now that April's here ....















The weather has been gorgeous over Easter - unfortunately I've been pretty busy with paperwork and stuff that meant I didn't get out sketching.

I have to put mirror plates on some paintings tomorrow for a group exhibition at the local museum and deliver them on Friday.

There is a pastel exhibiton coming up soon with another group but I've had authorisation that coloured pencils are allowed so that means I can show some of the flowers I did in cp. That takes the pressure off a little and means I can get on with the big canvasses, series of seascapes and hopefully start the rivers and canals project :>)

I think I might treat myself to a nice big new A3 sketchbook for the rivers/canals project - I really do prefer to work a bit bigger. Buying art materials is fun :>) , I like to keep project research stuff together so I'll probably have a one small sketchbook and a large one - apart from any canvasses I do plein air.

The image above is digital - scanned watercolour doodles combined with fragments of poetry. For some reason I never did one for summer but did for winter and autumn, with appropriate fragments of words.

I remember studying Home Thoughts from Abroad, 'oh to be in England, now that April's there, when the lowest boughs on the brushwood sheaf, round the elm tree bole are in tiny leaf - in England now' - written by a homesick poet, Robert Browning in Italy, and deliberately saved to study in April by our teacher. I was living in Malta and of course it was already hot there - it meant a lot more reading it whilst living abroad, with slight twinges of homesickness :>)

Comments

Lindsay said…
Glad to hear you will have more time for your rivers and canals project. You are making me look more at water near by where I live: Lake Michigan and the Des Plains River. Can you tell me how large an A3 is? Here in the US, I drag around my 8 1/2 x 11" book but I'd prefer to sketch even larger than this. But enough is enough weight!
1:47 am
vivien said…
Hi Lindsay

The size you quote is A4 and an A3 is double the size - so you can imagine what a lovely big spread a double page image is :)

I've been sorting out new sketchbooks for the project and I've got an A3 hard backed Daler and Rowney and a lovely A3 hardback that is bound landscape style, so very very wide for double page spreads, then I'm also going to use a small A6 book.

The A sizes double or halve with each number

A6 is postcard size, A5 is hand written letter size (double an A6), A4 is computer paper letter size and A3 is double that - they go on up past A1 which is a bit bigger than the old Imperial size of drawing paper/watercolour sheets and A0 is massive.

I agree about the weight!
11:59 am
Lindsay said…
Thanks Vivien for the education on A sizes! Wow and A3 sounds lovely. I'm going to look in the the Daler Rowney one you mentioned. I want to open up a bit with my landscapes. Can't wait to see your new work!
1:40 pm
kate said…
I loved your spring ... with quotes and beautiful colours!
6:33 pm
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