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Number 5 in the History of my Archive in 10 Objects, is this triple set of bird studies from early 1977.
 |
| Buzzard, Kingfisher, Long-Eared Owl. Watercolour on paper, 1977 |
I was 17, I was about to leave school and start a foundation course at the now-gone and much lamented Bournville School of Art, I was full steam ahead for a career in illustration, the world of graphic art, experimentation and adventure awaited.
But all that was in the future - in the meantime I was generating some income from selling these kinds of traditional studies in a local giftshop/framing gallery in Mere Green. The owner, Mrs Gameson, was extremely supportive of my work and gave me wall space to display and sell pictures of wildlife and familiar scenes of Sutton Coldfield, in watercolour (as here) or pen and ink. Gameson Gallery also managed me as an artist on commission - word of mouth recommendations led me to draw many of the big houses on the private estate in Four Oaks, I'd cycle with sketchpad and ink bottle to anywhere that wanted a drawing - unfortunately this came to an end when one customer returned their house sketch, upset that I'd included the washing on her line in the drawing.
Virtually everything I painted at that time was sold by the gallery, but these three studies survived because they were a birthday gift to my mum in January 1977. I believe they were amongst my first attempts to paint in pure watercolour (that is, just paint, no pen lines).
I carried on working with the Gameson Gallery even after I started my Foundation course, right up until I left for Manchester, Mrs Gameson gave me my first ever one-man (or one kid!) exhibition, mostly wildlife paintings. My parents were particularly proud of this and my father was disappointed when I drifted away from such work. Being an artist in the eyes of my father was to paint attractive pictures, exhibit them, sell them and put them on the wall. He could never really get to grips with my choice to be an illustrator rather than a gallery fine artist, there was a suspicion I was under-selling my talents. I'll always remember him saying "when are you going to paint a
proper picture I can put on the wall?" By "proper", he meant a landscape, seascape or genre oil painting. But eventually he did come round to understanding my creative path.
The fact remains though, of all the work I created and showed my parents over all these years, the one thing that never left their walls, on display without a break for nearly forty years from 1977 until 2016, were these three bird studies.
I always wonder what became of Mrs Gameson...
Every time when the end of a journal draws closer, with just a few pages left – something starts itching. It’s the anticipation, knowing that with just a few pages left, another book is filled with memories, special moments, random sketches and a lot of learning curves.
It’s also the anticipation of a new sketchbook! I don’t know about you, but I have a stack of empty sketchbooks, of different sizes and brands, so I get to choose every time. I like changing format and paper quality, rather than sticking to one particular brand or size. The start of a new sketchbook means new challenges, experiments and play!
So these pages below are quite random – the last one of my Stillman and Birn sketchbook, that I bought in the US. Up next is a Seawhite landscape sketchbook.
Painting fruit with watercolors, and playing around with new tools on the right hand side page: goache!
Enjoying a Saturday afternoon with an espresso, with an interesting perspective – looking downwards from the first floor of the coffee shop.
The post Those last few pages of a journal appeared first on Make Awesome Art.
Each week, along with the Sketchbook Skool students, I am doing the homework assignment from the kourse called “Beginning”. Except for last week, because I taught that klass myself. We’re in the third week now and this week’s teacher is Prashant Miranda. From India, he inspires the klass to draw the sky – no matter where in the world you are.
I did my homework in Amsterdam, looking out of my living room window and up to the clouds. I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing with my watercolors and I don’t even know if I particularly like the art that I made, but it was great fun to play with my watercolors and step out of my comfort zone for this one too!
The post Painting the Sky appeared first on Make Awesome Art.
Summer is on my mind…. i wonder if you could tell by my sketchbook pages.
The post Summer on my mind appeared first on Make Awesome Art.
I am so excited that in Sketchbook Skool, we keep adding amazing artists to our Fakulty. Nina Johansson, who is a fantastic illustrator, urban sketcher and watercolourist is officially joining us, and I just got back from Stockholm, where we filmed a bunch of lessons with her.
She is very inspiring, and so is her art, but Nina is also my kinda gal – positive, passionate, skillful and she has a great sense of humour to top it all off.
We’d been preparing for the video shoot via email and Skype – and then meeting in person is such a treat – especially since she’s been such a great host to make my stay in Stockholm convenient and fun.
Thanks to all great prep work and to our creative film crew, everything went smooth and we had a lot of fun during the shoot!
Gabrielle (sound), Me, Peter (camera) and Nina
An extra treat after wrapping up was having dinner and a sketch with Nina in the center of Stockholm, celebrating our accomplishment.
And on my way back, I made good use of my travel time and enjoyed drawing.
I absolutely love how the drawing below turned out – using just a fountain pen and a grey brushpen. It also opened up an interesting conversation with two of the flight attendants who spotted my drawing. I love how art can connect!
The post Sketchbook Skool News: Nina Johansson! appeared first on Make Awesome Art.
Welcome to Draw Tip Tuesday!
Sometimes you’re just happily mixing your watercolours and then you get to a point where you apply too much! The drawing could get muddy… I’m sure you’ve had this happen before as well. Don’t panic – there’s a trick for this!
There’s more where this came from! Follow me on YouTube by
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The post Draw Tip Tuesday: A Watercolour Trick! appeared first on Make Awesome Art.
By: Koosje Koene,
on 6/15/2016
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Last Friday, the new term inSketchbook Skool started, and it’s pretty exciting! Not only am I teaching my class on sketching food, called ‘Draw It Like It’s Hot’, also the 6-week kourses ‘Beginning’ and ‘Expressing’ are happening as we speak! And it’s not too late to sign up!
This week’s teacher in the kourse called ‘Beginning’ is Sketchbook Skool’s co-founder Danny Gregory, and we’re off to a great start!
His klass is all about how drawing makes us feel and that we all are creative – in our own way.
As Sketchbook Skool’s head master and head mistress, Danny and I alternate doing the homework assignments along with all the others in the Sketchbook Skool Kommunity.
So here’s what I came up with this week, for his homework called ‘Draw And Feel’
The post Draw and Feel appeared first on Make Awesome Art.
Welcome to Draw Tip Tuesday!
Here’s a great way to fill a page with lush watercolours.
There’s more where this came from! Follow me on YouTube by clicking here
Do you like the juiciness of all this? Are you thirsty for more?
Then why don’t you join my online art class on foodie-art? It’s called ‘Draw It Like It’s Hot!’ and it starts this Friday in Sketchbook Skool. Let’s make delicious art together. Find out more and join me by following this link.
The post Draw Tip Tuesday: Watercolours and Pen appeared first on Make Awesome Art.
Traveling is so great. And when you bring a sketchbook, each commute, flight or drive becomes so entertaining!
I don’t mind getting stuck in a traffic jam anymore, because it allows me to draw even more! When I’m not driving myself that is. Obviously.
The post Baby You Can Drive My Car appeared first on Make Awesome Art.
By: Koosje Koene,
on 5/30/2016
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I am a big believer that outside of the comfort zone is where the magic happens. I don’t just believe it does, I know it does.
Here’s a little example of a recent experience in facing creative fears:
The other day I had a delicious meal and ate Dutch asparagus. Those white asparagus come from the south of the Netherlands and can be harvested only for a very short season so every year. So these beauties are celebrated on the plate. All the more reason to draw them too!
So I did.
Although that comic-style recipe illustration doesn’t quite match the rest of the page, I loved working on this and it could be the basis for a version 2.0, an illustrated recipe to send to They Draw And Cook for example.
The eventual purpose (if any) didn’t matter, because I was just enjoying the process of drawing in my sketchbook.
Now it definitely needed color, that was for sure.
So my brush hovered over my color palette, deciding whether to go for a safe color or something different. I wanted a contrasting color and looked at the red watercolor in my palette and thought: red can be quite aggressive, it’s kind of scary.
If something is scary… Do it anyway!
All the more reason, actually.
It might surprise you how much you can accomplish, when exploring the unknown or unpredictable.
And besides: what is the worst that could happen?
My father taught me something valuable, which he learned from his mom: to remind yourself that “your life doesn’t depend on it”. This is especially true when it’s just a drawing!
So I decided to make that red paint bleed all over the page and then also added a layer of red color pencil to deepen the color. And I love where it brought this page.
It may be too bright, and the red doesn’t reflect the delicate flavor of the dish, but it looks great as a sketchbook spread.
What scares you? Go and do something with it. Today.
Oh and if this asparagus drawing tastes like more: join my 4-week online class on illustrating recipes in June. Click here to learn more and sign up!
The post How To Face Your Fears appeared first on Make Awesome Art.
I am lucky to live with someone who doesn’t mind me drawing him. It’s not like I make him sit and pose for me as a life drawing model, but I do draw him when he practices playing one of his instruments, sits reading, or gaming for example.
Sometimes I study just details and come really close by, staring like a maniac at him until I filled a whole page with gestures, features, details.
It’s quite hard to capture ‘him’ though. Maybe because he is so close to me, that makes it harder to draw him? Anyway; this might be a good thing because it’s such a reat exercise and fun to do. And practice does help. The third drawing below, the one where I drew him while he was playing a game; it kind of looks like him!
The post Trying to capture it appeared first on Make Awesome Art.
John and I bought a new tent recently, and a little one-ring stove. We were getting ready for last weekend. Like half the residents of Nether Edge, we were all excited, because our favourite music venue, Café #9, had decided to put on a mini music festival!
It was very do-it-yourself: Jonny hired a field, a generator, a couple of portaloos and some hay bales, bought a big star-shaped marque, then divvied up the cost between about 40 participants and everyone else mucked in to make it happen. Various people offered their different skills and we had a bunting-making evening at the café.
On the Friday afternoon, John and I helped to get things set up.
The sun was shining and the reservoir was glinting behind tall pine trees. Jonny's wife India unpacked buckets of beautiful things and turned our little encampment into a colourful paradise of flowers and lights, pom-poms and cushions. The stage was set!
The music was mainly in the evenings, but people had offered to run different activities during the day. John organised a Saturday morning walk. I offered a sketching session for Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately the rain put paid to most of that... Yes, there was rain. Then more rain.
At least we got our tent up before it hit. By Friday night though, it was pouring down and those coming after work weren't so lucky.
It poured and poured. India's paper stars dissolved. The wind blew the rain in and her cushions and throws wicked up water. It put out the fires. The rain might have dampened everything in sight, but it didn't dampen our spirits. Oh no. We Nether-Edgers are a tough lot.
We huddled under our marquee and ate and drank and chatted and sang. People played guitars, someone brought out a mandolin. Someone arrived with home-baked cheese muffins. someone else brought out a wind-up gramophone and a pile of old 78 records:
In moments when the deluge slowed to a drizzle, kids ran around and people hula-hooped:
Somehow the time became half past two in the morning and we dashed back through the rain to our tents.
Next day started dry, so John's walk went ahead. It was great to see where we actually were. We walked up onto the moors and around the reservoir. We were out for two and a half hours and only got rained on once. It was saving itself...
Yep. Saturday afternoon and evening were EVEN WETTER! Was this possible? John described it best: the rain was biblical. The thing was, even though we couldn't do all the dancing, painting, yoga and star-gazing we had planned, the weather almost did us a favour. Because we spent the whole time together in the marquee, sitting on our hay bales, we really got to know each other and I made so many new friends.
Then in the evening, when the bands arrived the wonderful music totally eclipsed the rain. The main act were the fabulous Goat Ropers Rodeo Band, all the way from Rhyl. Fantastic.
As you can see, I did plenty of painting, though it got tricky as it got dark and we were operating with decorative lights alone.
Some time around midnight the rain stopped. Dan, who had set up a cocktail bar from the back of his van, brought out a record player and a massive pile of LPs. We danced in the mud, in wellies and walking boots, cocktails in hand, to hits from the 70 and 80s mostly. The best boogie I've had in a long while. Numbers dwindled gradually. At half three, John and I gave it up, but apparently the last few stopped up until 5.30!
Sunday was glorious. While those who had to get home packed up their stuff, we put on the kettle for constant tea and a small encampment of 'morning-afters' lounged around our tent.
There was some guitar playing, a bit more hula-hooping, but mostly we just wanted to chill. The Café #9 bus served coffees.
A bass player was discovered asleep under a hay bale.
And then it was time to pack up ourselves. The stragglers mucked in to help clear up and ferry things back into Jonny's van and we said our final goodbyes. not that final though - Jonny is already planning another one for mid summer!
Thanks to various people for taking such great photos, especially Charlie Osguthorpe. And of course thanks to Jonny, for such a brilliant idea and having the energy to make it happen.
By: Koosje Koene,
on 5/25/2016
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Beginning a new sketchbook can be quite exciting and a little bit scary. You don’t know what the paper will be like, how it will combine with your favourite art tools, whether or not you’re going to like it as much as the previous sketchbook you just filled and got kind of attached to… and above all a lot of people fear that first blank page. WHAT to do with it? It has to be meaningful, because it’s a new beginning, it should be a great drawing because it’s the first page of many to follow. Really?
I mean, really really?
No. It’s just the first page. Go for it, if the drawing isn’t as great as you hoped, there is a whole sketchbook left to make up for that flawed drawing. And does it HAVE to be meaningful? Says who?
I got this Stillman and Birn sketchbook on a trip to New York and dived right into it. I sat on the couch and my husband was playing the banjo so I thought I’d draw him. A nice way to practice gesture drawings, hands, faces. as soon as I put the first lines onto the paper I knew things were going to be out of proportion, but I went along with it anyway. To fix things a little, I kept adding things and used hatching lines, and added a bit of blue watercolor. Then I just flipped the page and went on with the next one, not really thinking about it that much and leaving the left page blank.
Then, in Sketchbook Skool‘s kourse ‘Polishing’, we have an amazing Mixed Media artist: Juliana Coles. I am so happy for her to join the Fakulty! What she does is a different style of art journaling than we’ve covered so far in Sketchbook Skool. She layers her pages with drawings, paint, collage, lettering and anything she can find and feels the page needs. she uses writing to spill her thoughts or emotions onto the page and by adding layers of colours and lettering and photos and more paint, she builds very personal, emotional and just beautiful sketchbook pages. She keeps polishing the pages, getting back to them again and again, sometimes over the years. A page is never a finished piece – it can keep evolving and that is so interesting!
It is so different from what I do, and I need to take a big step out of my comfort zone to actually do this mixed media stuff. But outside of the comfort zone IS where the magic happens so I love that challenge! And this is one of the beautiful things about Sketchbook Skool. One week you may be completely inside my comfort zone drawing a meal following Matthew Midgley‘s lead, and a week later you’re exploring and discovering a whole new approach to making art!
So Juliana gives the Sketchbook Skool Students a piece of homework to do the same. She suggests you can look for a page in your sketchbook that you don’t like so much (or that you DO like), and start spicing it up.
So I took out lots of art tools, even ones that I hadn’t used for quite a while and dusted those off, took that page above, and this is what I made:
I also made a video to share my process with the Sketchbook Skool Students, and this is it:
The post How To Fix Flaws appeared first on Make Awesome Art.
One of the many fun things about my artist-in-residence work with the Morgan Centre, is that I have an excuse to sit outside on a sunny day. I love to be outdoors, so often get frustrated when all is glorious outside my window, but I'm stuck on the wrong side of the glass.
When I'm sketching in Manchester, not only can I legitimately sit out on the grass but, since the days I work are completely flexible, I can check out the weather forecast and actually target sunny days. Yeh!
The sketch at the bottom is outside the Arthur Lewis building, where I am based, a patch of grass where students like to spend sunny lunchtimes. The one above is the main quad though: definitely most student's first choice on a really nice day. I spent a very relaxing afternoon sitting amongst them. I was trying to listen in to their chatter while I worked, but the building works in front of the old building was so noisy, it was more or less impossible.
The sketch below is the Oxford Road, from earlier that morning. I hadn't intended to sketch there. I was on my way to the quad, when I was struck by the sudden appearance of a ferris wheel. It wasn't there the previous week and seemed to have sprouted out of the pavement in the most unlikely place, right outside one of the main university buildings. It seemed like it needed recording. Trouble was, the Oxford Road is very busy and the only place where I could get a decent view, without being in everyone's way, was right at the kerbside. So I set up my tiny stool, about two feet from the passing traffic.
I'm glad I was only there a couple of hours, as my face was nicely level with the exhaust of passing buses. Yum, diesel: my favourite.
I was about half way through the sketch, when the wind got up. It kept gusting at me and trying to grab my sketchbook (it is a bit like a sail...). Once it succeeded, but I managed to snatch it back, just before the traffic ate my work. The wind blew over my pencil case too, twice, scattering pencils into the kerb. I was really pleased to be done in the end.
I packed everything up and then finished my walk down the road to the university quad, by which time I figured I had earned some lunch. Then I sat on a bench, much more sheltered from the wind, and enjoyed a far less challenging afternoon of weather. No buses in sight either. That's better.
The robins are back and busy with nestlings. It's the time of year for finding broken shells of beautiful robin's egg blue in the garden. For "daring fledglings who test their wings too soon" Guardian Patrol fairies will come to the rescue with "stretchers of twigs and last year's spiders' webs", according to (who else) Dr. Flora Fauna of (what else?)
The Illustrated Fairy Gazettes, Spring edition.
There is a beautiful Saskatoon Berry tree in my parents' back yard and a nest with robins nearby. They have taken to nesting over the back door and come back every year. Here is one of them, part of a demo piece from my watercolour classes.
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| Robin, watercolour, Frances Tyrrell ©2016 |
"A blessed and enchanted Spring to fairies everywhere"
The end of April marks the end of the teaching period at the University of Manchester, so each of the academics I have been shadowing for my residency has been doing final lectures in their modules, preparing their students for end of year exams. As this also means that my chance to sit in on lectures has therefore come to an end, I wanted to make sure I sketched what was left.
So, both last Tuesday and Wednesday, I sketched a 2-hour session, filling up another book. I have had so much practise now at speed-painting people, I have got more and more confident at just diving in. Most of the work I am doing at the moment involves 'drawing' with paint, only using line-tools after some watercolour is down, to pull things into focus and define details where necessary.
My added confidence proved very handy on Wednesday as, to add an extra frisson of pressure to the lecture, I also had a professional film-maker there, recording me in action. Earlier this year, we put in a bid to the university, asking for some money to make a film about the project, both to show at the July exhibition and at various subsequent academic presentations. We just found out a couple of weeks ago that we got all the money (hurrah!), but of course, we now have a very short time to get all the necessary filming done, not to mention all the time it will take to edit things together.
Anyway, we have now made a start. And luckily nothing went embarrassingly wrong with the sketches from the session!
As well as footage of me in action, we are going to be filming interviews with lots of the other academics who have been involved, getting the sociological perspective on the value and interest of the work. We began though, with a quick interview with me after the Wednesday morning lecture had finished, talking about how I choose what to include in the sketches, how I decide where to place things on the page, the degree to which I incorporate the verbal content of the lecture etc.
Here's how the sketchbook looks as one continuous piece:
Food illustrations are great! I enjoy awing over the huge collection of illustrated recipes on ‘They Draw And Cook‘, and love it if one of my recipes gets published there, or even featured! But even without a recipe or an end result in mind, food just never gets boring as a subject to draw!
The post Journal pages of a foodie-artist appeared first on Make Awesome Art.
By: Koosje Koene,
on 4/25/2016
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Welcome to Draw Tip Tuesday!
When you don’t know what to draw… Then, what to draw?
The things you like most are actually a lot of fun to draw. The subject will be familiar to draw, and enjoyable.
I love food related art, and I love good coffee, so today I just pick a few favourite styles of coffee, and draw those. Adding banners to use as ‘titles’ for each item is a great way to unify the elements in your illustration. For these coffees, I can write the ingredients and even the measurements next to it, and then it becomes an illustrated recipe!
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One of my favourite “go-tos”, to draw in my art journal is coffee. What’s yours?
The post Draw Tip Tuesday – Illustration ideas appeared first on Make Awesome Art.
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on 4/22/2016
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via www.marianablackillustration.com
Day 4: Baby Armadillo
It's not that I have so much free time on my hands that I have to join a Drawing A Day challenge (cue hysterical laughter here) -- it's that I really really need to draw a lot of animals for these books I'm illustrating, so when the opportunity came up to join #The100DayProject on Instagram, I immediately grabbed at it. Forcing myself to get started on those animals, particularly ones that are in some way related to the panda bear and elephant habitats.
To read the rest of the post, please click here: 100 Days of Animals.
We are so lucky to have the excellent Cafe#9 just 5 minutes walk away from our house. It's only small but it has such a lovely atmosphere. Very bohemian, very relaxed, very friendly.
Any regular readers will know though, that what makes it even more perfect, is the music. I have been spending more and more evenings there, sketching the performances and, recently was invited to take part in a couple of recording sessions.
This was of course, rather exciting. Jonny, owner of the café, thought it would be fun to record albums for up and coming bands who he is impressed with. Having watched me paint and draw my way through so many gigs, he commissioned me to sit in on the recording sessions with my sketchbook.
The idea was for me to just do what I normally do, but the extra challenge was for me to create a piece of artwork which could be used as an album cover. I might once have found this a little daunting but, having sketched so many events during my residency, knowing with each that the results would need to work, being part of a larger piece of artwork, I felt pretty brave about the idea.
All these sketches are from those sessions. The first session was with Liam Walker, with session musicians making up the band. The second one was recording Gregory S. Davies above. He was again performing with the local session musicians: the person below on the piano, Finn, is also on a guitar at the top, the glockenspiel at the bottom and playing the red double-base. Talented fella!
We haven't actually had any finished CDs out the other end yet. The illustrations are with the designer. I'll show you when they're done.
By: Koosje Koene,
on 4/18/2016
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Welcome to draw Tip Tuesday!
Here’s today’s tip: always carry a sketchbook with you, and use it. You will create a treasure of memories for yourself, capturing things photos or videos could never do.
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So – use your journal and make awesome art.
The post Draw Tip Tuesday: How To Make Your Drawings Count appeared first on Make Awesome Art.
It’s 2 years ago Danny and I opened the Sketchbook Skool doors and offered our first Kourse, called ‘Beginning’.
Every single day I feel blessed because of the wonderful Kommunity of artists (students and Fakulty) that Sketchbook Skool came to be. They are so supportive amongst each other, super creative and just an awesome bunch of inspiring people from all over the world! And what amazes me that it is both already and only 2 years ago we started this. Time is relative, I guess. And you know what happens with it, when you’re having fun. And that is just what Sketchbook Skool is all about: fun.
That’s why a brand new Kourse is starting on April 15. It’s called ‘Polishing’ and it has 6 amazing and inspiring teachers in it, who will show a wide variety of making art, keeping a sketchbook and an art habit. Don’t miss out! Sign up now by clicking here!
The post Cake, anyone? appeared first on Make Awesome Art.
Welcome to Draw Tip Tuesday!
Today’s draw tip isn’t mine, and it’s also a bit different from what you may be used to.
By popular demand, here is the video I made for Sketchbook Skool with my dad showing his fabulous invention: the Watercolor Watch!
To make your own watercolor watch, here’s the manual my dad made for you:
Don’t miss out on other great stuff happening in Sketchbook Skool: sign up for a Kourse over at www.sketchbookskool.com
The post Watercolor Watch: Draw Tip Tuesday appeared first on Make Awesome Art.
Sometimes the hours go so fast – before I know it, the day is already coming to an end, even though the work hasn’t. It’s easy to complain about being busy and not getting the chance to draw because of it. However, there are always moments throughout the day that offer great sketching opportunities. Like when you’re on the phone, or when you’re waiting for the computer to calculate or restart.
The two drawings below are quite random sketches, at random times. I will keep doing these kinds of drawings and they will add up to a story taking place in my studio over time.
The post Drawing the mondaine things in life appeared first on Make Awesome Art.
Yesterday, I was at the Morgan Centre again, looking for things to sketch. There was nothing specific going on, so I thought I would spend the day in the Learning Centre, capturing the way people use the space and drawing students at work. It seemed logical to begin with the reception area, so I got myself a chair and started to get out my kit.
"Can I help you?" called a woman from a few yards away, across the foyer. I explained about being Artist-in-Residence and what I wanted to do, but there was a worrying pause. She came out from behind her counter. "I'm sorry, but you need to apply in advance to get permission to do anything of that nature." I showed her a sketchbook and my university ID, but it was no good. Best laid plans...
On the way back, I was stopped in my tracks by the glorious display of daffodils outside University Place, so I stopped to do a quick painting of that instead. It was reasonably mild, but the stone wall I was perched on was cold on my bum.
By the time I was done, I was well ready to get back indoors, so I returned to my desk to think of a new plan for the rest of the day. I made a cup of tea to warm myself up, then it hit me - I hadn't yet sketched the kitchen area.
It's a little hub at the centre of the open-plan work space. It has all the essentials but, like many communal kitchens, it can be rather unloved. All the better for sketching!
It wasn't actually too bad but, as I sat painting, lots of people came and went, fixing drinks, and almost every one commented on what a contentious space the kitchen had become. "That's a very political painting," said one academic and gave me the story. As is often the case, one (female) member of staff had been keeping it clean, but then she left and chaos reigned. Things got so bad that a stiffly worded email about washing up after yourself was sent out to all the department. That email must have been a bit scary, as it has obviously done the trick, for now at least, because the sink was empty: just one teaspoon!
Interestingly, this sketch demonstrates rather well the difference in outcome between my using watercolour before any drawing (the sink and stuff on the side) and my sketching a few guidelines first, then painting (dishwasher). There's a loss of accuracy and detail when you splosh paint in first, but the dishwasher is definitely less exciting.
I only got half the kitchen painted before home time. There's still the opposite side, with the fridge and the bin. One PHD student asked me if I had opened the fridge. I hadn't. "It smells really bad," he said. "More like a bin than a fridge. I'm not sure I fancy using it any more." Okay, maybe that email wasn't so effective after all. Never mind, it's all good stuff as far as I'm concerned. The more 'story' the better. I might have to draw the contents of the fridge next time. If I can bare it!
I'm rather glad now, I was turned away from the Learning Centre.
I should have taken this photo in the kitchen itself, rather than back at home, but I suddenly realised it was quarter past five: just enough time to scrabble all my stuff together and still make my train. Just made it!
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