I went to a Botanical Illustration work shop recently; it was all about contrasts. There were some gorgeous dark hellebores contrasting with pale snowdrops. I chose just one hellebore and two snowdrops in the hope that I could actually finish something within the 3 days as I work quite slowly as I use colour pencil. It turned out that we were all using coloured pencil on the course and it was really interesting to see how others use the same medium. It was a very relaxing weekend, but at the end of each day I was very tired. I was concentrating hard for three days and was very happy with the result.
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| Hellebore and snowdrops in colour pencil |
I treated myself to a new book last month and this is the result:
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| Edward's Menagerie |
I love the book, the patterns are really easy to follow and the animals very cute. I did get my first rabbit wrong and it turned out alarmingly large, but I figured out what I had done wrong and its now a better size. The only extra thing I found I needed was a block of sticky notes and a pen so I could keep track of where I was. Being dyslexic, its quite easy for me to get lost.
The blanket they are sitting on is a work in progress. Its a costal ripple blanket from Attic 24 and its very relaxing to do.
I did however make the Engineer a friend to go in his shed, (when its finished!); its an Aardvark, well more of a Shedvark and will eventually have a Dr Who scarf.
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| Shedvark with hat |
The engineer is a happy bunny at the moment as he has just bought himself a big axe, or as my Grannie would say, a "gert big axe", so that chopping our fire wood can be a little easier.
He was given the Norwegian Book of Wood Chopping for Christmas and read it from cover to cover. He could already chop wood, but now he can chop it the Norwegian way! We are stacking the wood so it can season for next winter.
When bringing logs indoors for burning we have to be a little careful; we often get sleepy wasps who wake up when they are in the warmth of the house and begin to buzz around. The Engineer also found a hibernating butterfly in the log stack once.
