Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson

and on the same subject an article on lucien freud and his women.

another new name for me: balthus

time to show off some recent purchases again.

whipup got me thinking merimekko a little while ago. and since i seem to shop nowhere else nowadays (and given that marimekko fabrics retail at £30+/m) i hotfooted it off to ebay.

i turned up a set of napkins in sarafan print from crate & barrell that were still bargainous even with shipping from the states:

and these fabulous limited edition marimekko-inspired screen prints by jane foster:

unfortunately what with all the recent shopping i can’t actually afford to frame them at the moment. but i’m hoping i might be able to wrangle that out of the budget for redecorating our downstairs rooms.

oh and before you ask, yes, if whipup told me to jump off a cliff i probably would if i believed there was some kind of artistic merit in it

and then i made an unexpected charity shop score. there was a whole set of 70s part-work knitting binders (the knitting collection by hamlyn), now whilst i fully appreciate the comedy value of reams of unredeemably awful knitting patterns, i just don’t have the shelf space (or the budget at £2.50 a volume – i think there were 8 in all). so i committed a cardinal sin (for a one-time-would-be-librarian) and split the set. i took just the first 2, useful, volumes:

vol 1:

• techniques
• knitting know-how
• finishings and trims
• children’s knitting cards
• adapting and designing

vol 2:

• folk knitting
• stitch and pattern library

good stuff

drawing on the right side of the brain was recommended to me, and i’ve just started to read it. there’s an awful lot of chat before she gets down to the meat, but i guess that’s trying to convince people who really don’t think they can draw.

i can draw – to a degree. i liked drawing at school and never found it anywhere near as hard as i did painting. i’m quite good at representational drawing, but i always find the resulting pictures rather bland. i’d like to be able to draw expressively and creatively.

i’m interested in what the author says about developing your understanding of line and space through drawing, and working your way up to colour work and painting. i think i got kinda half way through the change in perception she describes during my art classes at school, but not the full way, hence why i find painting so hard.

so here’s my “before” self portrait. it kinda looks like me, though madam didn’t recognise it was me until i took my glasses off she reckons it looks like me after i’ve had a shower cos i didn’t draw in all of my hair. my pencil kept breaking so i took that as a sign to finish, it took about 10 minutes. the features are all wonky cos i didn’t try particularly hard to get them in exactly the right places – mostly cos i didn’t have a rubber, so i didn’t want to draw guide lines. so the individual bits are quite a good representation, but their overall arrangement is all to pot. i could only find a 6b (though in general i prefer really soft pencils) so it’s a bit over-contrasty.

the blog is evolving. it started out as “making for madam”, it became “textile blog” not sure it needs a retag just yet, but i’m going to include my diy art school stuff cos it’s all relevant to my work, no matter how tangentially.