I have no updates yet on my materials or tests for small scale works at the moment (had to wait for pay day to order Golden medium) so I thought I would share my favourite photos of the end of season garden. I can't really describe in words why these two photos give me so much joy; they should, and are, fails on every level: the photos are almost accidental, and the plants have gone to seed which gardeners don't approve of at all. But, the colours, the beauty, the atmosphere, the weird depth of field - and, you have to ask, why would anyone want to take a photo of this, never mind love it beyond all carefully composed and thought-out photos? Phones are brilliant for capturing all the stuff you wouldn't normally see: spontaneity, wabi sabi, unplanned snaps of the eternal optimism of plants that against all the odds they will prevail in a messy section of the garden. These picture a spirit world which I love.
On Monday morning I was at work drawing and cutting scrolls for armchairs from card. It's quite nice cardboard and I was able to bring the spares left over home - they would have been binned otherwise. I reckon I can cut 4 little boards from them for work to submit to the On a Small Scale exhibition, saving the gallery having to post some to me. I need to run a test first; I want to laminate wood veneers onto them. I'm not sure how the mix of materials will work together but I don't see a problem if they are clamped under weights, and allowed to set slowly until nice and flat. They should meet the requirements of being no more than 2mm thick, measuring 21 x 15 cm in any orientation. Mine will be in portrait format as usual. Above are previous gouache paintings on wood veneers from 2015; I am thinking a cross between these and the drawings from one of my sketchbooks pictured below is where I want to be. I like to work with systems crossing other systems, and I think these would look handsome with space between the linear outlines filled with colour in bands so the wood grain can flow underneath.
My invitation from the Open Eye Gallery in Edinburgh to submit work for their annual On a Small Scale exhibition arrived this week. Schemes and plots for working on a larger scale than usual have been hatching in my brain, but now I am turning my attention to what would work well on the smaller postcard dimensions required for the show. I love taking part in the exhibition, this year I am going to have to be organised about it and make decisions early, list and order any materials I need, and plan the logistics ahead of time because I am so busy at work.
I put together a collage of some of the ideas floating around in my mind to help nail them down, so hopefully from this melange of sea-monsters, a beautiful cross-hatched Morandi drawing, glaciers, stars, navigation charts, comets and finned objects, something will emerge. As an indirect result of the Edinburgh Festival it has been such a hectic summer that I had to take a month-long break from my blogs as there simply was not the time to work and continue as normal. Two sets of house guests, the garden in full production, day job gone crazy, plus commitments nearly every evening for weeks and weekends on end have left me with a lot of catching-up to do. A back-dated post I didn't get around to at the time plus this synopsis should pretty much cover it, though ... Of all the wonderful fruits and veg the garden has provided us with this year, it's probably a bit strange that what interests me most is the weird stuff: Top row: Nasturtiums in curly tangles with strong tendrils and seeds Bolted lettuce 'That's shallot' (dad joke) - wow, but these shallots are tasty Middle row: Bolted rocket plants Bolted calibrese - delightful Voynich weirdity Sexy savoy Bottom row: Who knew rocket flowers were so delicate and pretty Ugly beetroot, utterly delicious baked (we did have round ones as well) A corner of the garden with things gone mad in pots The Edinburgh Assembly Rooms in George Street were turned over for festival events, so 695 chairs they didn't require for that time were sent to us for recovering. I am proud to say I sewed up every chair back except for about 20!
Top row: The chairs arrive at our workshops and begin to get stripped, these are just a few - the rest are in containers Middle row: There is a passageway through to the tools as recovering begins, work in progress draped in polythene, seats without their backs lined up Bottom row: Proud to say these are all my own work: sewing, fitting and assembling the chairs A container bursting with finished chairs The Assembly Room showing our chairs - isn't it grand? The team completed the job in record time well ahead of schedule - hard work, fast, neat and efficient. Quality. That's all for now, hopefully normal blogging will resume as the calm of autumn approaches. |
Welcome to my work journal - a weekly update on drawings, work in progress, doodles and day-dreaming.
I changed the website address a few months ago, so some older links on previous posts are broken. If you click one of those and it takes you to a strange page, simply replace the .co.uk after the heatherelizawalker. with weebly.com and it will work again. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
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As well as the work you see here, I illustrate under the name of Binky McKee (my mother's maiden name was McKee, Binky was every single one of my great grandmother's many cats!)
If you would like to visit my Binky website, please click the picture above. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Dissolving PeopleA symbol on the footpath outside a local primary school gradually disappearing as the image breaks up and wears away until eventually it is obliterated by leaves and barely discernible. Photographed at intervals of several months between February 2021 and November 2022, oldest at the top.
(My shoes look so new in the first pic, and note the transition to new phone in the last photo). <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
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April 2024
(Sorry the archives don't nest!)
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A 2013 work book, still very much in use Please note all images on this website are ©Heather Eliza Walker 2013 - 2020, and may not be used or reproduced without prior consent. |