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While flipping through my sketchbooks in search of something else I came across this rough drawing… it seemed appropriate for February 14th. I’m not sure what these creatures are but they look a little bit like some sort of larval insect. Larvae are entitled to find love too!
Also, thanks very much to Jesse who has sent me another ‘you make my day’ award. I’m very flattered because I’m a big fan of all of Jesse’s work and am in awe of her prolificacy!
As with the ‘make my day’ sent to me by Amy at Whistlepea Knits last week I’d like to point you in the direction of the ‘inspired and inspiring’ links over there on the left… so many talented people making amazing things!
Blog posting time has been curtailed recently by the relatively sudden decision to move to Amsterdam. Amsterdam is a wonderful city (or so we’ve felt on the many visits we’ve made there over the past ten years) and, to me, one of the most interesting & beautiful I’ve experienced. So when the opportunity presented itself we leapt at it!
Over the next few weeks most of my time will be taken up with packing and frantically trying to finish off various client projects before I find myself PC-less as it’s boxed and shipped. As there won’t be much time to pursue my own current projects I’ll take the opportunity to post about various bits and pieces I come across as I pack up – some may even be decidedly historical (and very dusty) as I haul boxes down from the attic to unpack, sort and repack.
Earlier in the year I set myself the ‘challenge’ of completing a colour exercise a day for 60 days (I wrote about this elsewhere so won’t bore you with the details). In celebration of my imminent move to the Netherlands here are eight of the sixty exercises which include various shades of a good Dutch orange.
Further to yesterday’s post and the mention of my recent excessive doodling of treeforms (v. treedling) here are some scans from my current sketchbook pages. Now all I need to do is take these scribblings and apply them to something more… concrete. This is the part of the creative process I often find to be ‘easier said than done’…
I’m currently reading “The Secret Life of Trees“ and as a result I seem to have treeforms on the brain. My sketchbook pages are filling up with tree-like doodles - some of which I’ll post next time…
In the meantime here is a thank-you card made for a friend who has recently been very helpful and generous with her time.
I made a very similar card for someone else a couple of weeks ago (cf: trees on the brain!). I hope the card recipients don’t mind the similarities – what can I say, I’m a one-trick pony!
Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle…
For the past while I’ve been collecting our ‘mixed card & paper’ recycling into colour-coded piles with the intention of making simple colour-field collages – here are some of the results. Although unintentional I like the fact that they also act as ‘journal entries’ of a sort – a map of post sent and received, cups of tea enjoyed, meals eaten, yarn used-up, journeys made, exhibitions & gigs attended etc. I guess there is an irony in that too, as they’re also a record of our lives as consumers…
“In nature nothing is wasted. Every output is an input for something else. It is increasingly argued that our consumer society must find an equivalent system, and fast. That means embracing the ‘four Rs’: reducing, reusing, repairing and recycling. By changing the way we think about the lifespan of materials, many experts believe we can completely alter the way we manage rubbish. We can achieve a seismic shift from the consume-and-chuck-it impulses of contemporary life to finding new ways of extracting every last breath from each item, delaying the moment of final disposal as long as possible.”
The above is an excerpt from Leo Hickman’s excellent book “A Good Life” (Although the detailed ‘Directories’ at the end of each chapter are very UK-centric I think it’s a worthwhile read wherever you are. It’s a great book for raising awareness of the many and complex issues we all face with regards to ‘living ethically’ in the world today).
