DRAWING PRACTICE FROM A COUNTRY DIARY Since our outing to the village fete on Saturday, I have been feeling very tired, and after I'd compled my necessary domestic tasks, there was nothing left in the energy bank for studio time. After a few days of this I was beginning to feel a bit…
DRAW AWESOME ALBUM PART 4 - END PAPERS, COVER BOARDS AND TITLES End papers These are the papers which line the inside of the cover and back the first and last pages of the book. The pages of this book are 12 x 12 inches and I needed large enough paper. My hubby…
DRAW AWESOME ALBUM PART 3Â - EMBELLISHING THE FORE-EDGES The addition of the hinges does add some thickness to the bound edges of the pages. The stack of fore-edges is therefore slightly thinner than the binding. This doesn't matter, but having this bit of leeway, I decided to go a bit bonkers and…
DRAW AWESOME ALBUM PART 2 - HIDDEN HINGE BINDING The Hidden Hinge method There are several ways of doing this, but I chose to make separate "hinges" from 1 1/2-in wide strips of card which I then scored and folded down the centre. These strips were inserted into the open edge of each…
DRAW AWESOME ALBUM PART 1 - PREPARING THE PAGES Background Throughout last year I took part in the online drawing course "DrawAwesome" presented by Phil Davies. I came across his ad on YouTube with a link to a free tutorial, and I was hooked. He is an amazing teacher and very early in…
MASK AND SPRAY This is a technique which I think I am right in saying that I invented myself. I've never seen anyone else do this. It is a method of spray-painting a background and using cut out shapes as masks. The shapes prevent the sprayed ink touching the paper underneath. Turning the…
KITCHEN PAPER MOP-UP SHEETS Following on from my recent post about scratch papers, it seemed a logical progression to do one about my gorgeous kitchen paper mop-up sheets. I make scratch papers by applying excess paint or ink onto paper with a brush or stamp, or perhaps a stencil, to clean them off…
MARK MAKING ON THE ABSTRACT WATERCOLOUR MINI-ALBUM Shoshi's gone marking mad! I had soooo much fun with this latest project. It wasn't a lengthy project - I could do a page or two per session and just bung stuff down and see what happened. Quite different from my recent highly disciplined projects. Nice…
ABSTRACT WATERCOLOUR AND MINI ORIGAMI ALBUMS Shoshi the Loose Woman! After doing so much highly detailed work recently, I have felt the urge to go loose and splash a bit of paint around. One's gotta loosen up a bit once in a while! This is by way of an interlude before I begin…
NEW BOOKS Today Amazon delivered some new books for me. I have long been fascinated by the little brown "Wooden Books" on a variety of subjects, mostly esoteric. A lot of people complain about the format of these books, saying they are too small and the diagrams are hard to understand at this…
