sketchbook

I've been keeping a little sketchbook with surface pattern ideas.

the paper is awful for painting, perhaps better used for drawing, 

but I love the scale of it and the pretty coptic stitching on the spine,

so I'm determined to fill it up this year.

I'm not one to keep a sketchbook with any regularity, 

preferring to simply dive in an make work and see what happens.

However, keeping a sketchbook is a great way to paint or draw 

something every day, especially when I can't devote 

as much time as I'd like to painting.

 

Sometimes the work-life balance skews a little more toward life,

and that means less time for painting.

I find this a great way to keep working in some manner or fashion

and that makes me and my brushes very happy.

2 0 1 7

Happy New Year!

I've been experimenting with portraits and pattern.

Diminutive paintings with little borders.

More is more. Pattern on pattern. Layer upon layer.

I made several lists - as I always do - of people I'd like to paint.

Plans, though, are made to be changed.

I began with some ladies of fashion and then jumped to 

women naturalists and gardeners of which Vita Sackville-West 

is the first. However, I've side stepped and started Virginia Woolf,

so I have no idea where it will all end up but that's fine by me.

It's a year for doing new things.

that is for sure.