Category Archives: squirrels

back home after my UK holiday

I have returned from my one month holiday in England and Scotland. I had a wonderful holiday and filled two and half Moleskine watercolour sketchbooks (13 x 19cm).

Squirrel meet watercolour pencil, watercolour pencil meet squirrel.

(Thanks to Mum & Jules for your patience while I waited to line up this photo)

I took my usual sketching equipment and put pencil to paper as many times a day as I could. I have so many tales to tell. However, I have not even started scanning my sketchbook pages and this will be done over the next few weeks. While on holiday I instagrammed (alissaduke1) a sketch daily if you would like to have a glimpse of some of them.

This week’s blog is just a little taste of things to come.

I felt that GREEN was the colour of my holiday (although when I look through my sketchbooks, it does not feature heavily). Specifically Grass Green (Faber Castell) ! I used this pencil so often in the UK – the grass was SO green and the trees are a different shade.

My other main green colour was Pine Green . The colours that I use in Australia, but did not use as much in the UK were Earth Green, Olive Green and also Light Yellow Ochre.

We walked through quite a few parks and looked out many train windows onto the green countryside. Although the UK was going into autumn, the trees had only just began to change and only some leaves had fallen.

More to come…

New Greeting cards

Leave a Reply

I am very excited that I have SIX new greeting cards available for purchase. They are printed from my watercolour pencil drawings.

There are TWO new Christmas cards to join the four that I already have . These two Christmas images were drawn in the last two month, specifically for these Christmas cards. They were drawn on A4 watercolour paper . I tried to think of colourful Christmas themes that fit within my drawing style. I love to draw food and smaller objects. These two were great fun.

fungi – drawn from fungi on small branches collected in Toowoomba

Squirrel – Drawn from one of many photographs I took of squirrels in Kensington Gardens in London.

Drawn from old keys that I have collected over the years,

Old Law books on the shelves at work.

I have been working on this project for about two months. Four of the drawings are from my sketchbooks over the last few years. It took a long time to decide which drawings would look good on cards and appeal to other people. Just because a drawing looks good, doesn’t mean that it will make a good card.

The excitement of taking delivery and unpacking my new cards

Once again, my local printers Print Together, have reproduced the subtle colours and lines of watercolour pencils. The cards were delivered last Wednesday and I have spent the last few days, putting envelopes inside them and sealing each one in a cellobag. Yesterday I started to take photographs of the cards to put up on my Etsy online store. It was a lovely sunny day, so I went to the park.

They are now available for purchase from my Etsy online store for $AUD 5.50.

counting down to travel and MRBW

2 Replies

The countdown is really on to two BIG events for me. Melbourne Rare Book Week in two weeks and UK holiday in three weeks.

Here is an update.

HOLIDAY

Three weeks to go ’til we leave on holidays to the UK – here is this weeks envelope to Mum. I a not at prolific this year and have forgotten to scan them before I send them !. Here are lots from last holiday three years ago to the UK.

MELBOURNE RARE BOOK WEEK – PART 1 – Sketching

As I have described previously I am going to be sketching the events of Melbourne Rare Book Week. They will be quick sketches in pen, maybe adding a splash of colour. I plan to combine these with some sketches of the buildings or room they are held in to provide context, interest and colour. Yesterday I spent time at the beautiful State Library of Victoria (after dropping some of my greeting cards off at Readings bookshop – they reordered ! Hooray. But that’s another story) .

Five talks are being held there in two different rooms at State Library of Victoria. I could only gain access to one room yesterday – The Red Rotunda. I sketched from two angles – both sketches are very heavy handed, but they give an idea of the room. I may go back and redo these.

MELBOURNE RARE BOOK WEEK – PART 2 – Exhibition

The other part of my involvement in Melbourne Rare Book Week is my exhibition “You Can’t Draw in Books?” at Melbourne City Library. Yesterday I met with one of the Library staff to look at the practicalities of the display. We tried to find display stands to suit the various book sizes and see how they would look in the different areas of the library.

Life is very busy and exciting !

travel countdown drawings

2 Replies

In six weeks my mother & I will be on a plane to England.

Once a week I write a letter to her (a real letter, on paper, in an envelope, in the post) and draw something related to our holiday. It is a way of building the excitement and also being aware of how the weeks are flying by,

Last holiday, three years ago, I drew on the envelopes that I mailed each week in a ten week countdown . This year I have only managed one original drawing on an envelope.

This year, life is a lot busier, so I am using the drawings from one of my other projects, which neatly fits into the holiday. My exhibition for Melbourne Rare Book Week title “You Can’t Draw in Books?” involves me drawing in old (about to be discarded) books, illustrating the words on one of the open pages. One of the books is an old A-Z London Street directory . I am drawing images of iconic images of London or something that reflects the place on the page.

I then cut and paste my final saved and drawn image into an envelope to mail to my mother. That means that this year she is not getting ‘an original’ on the envelope – but still gets a surprise each week !

I have completed (or started) five drawings on pages so far and identified another few pages with potential, including Regents Park (draw a squirrel) , Kew Gardens (a flower) , Battersea (Power station), Greenwich ( something to do with time OR the Cutty Sark ), Hampton Court (the palace) ….