painting a canvas for the first time in years!

I haven’t painted anything on a large scale since college (A-Level art). I had these old canvases lying around and felt an urge to start a large project. This painting was started in December and I just spent the odd hour or two on it whenever I had time. It was nice to have something to pick up and down over the last few months in between busy deadlines, it was a welcome break but a way to still be creative. I feel inspired and encouraged to do more large paintings. I find them very intimidating.

I was inspired by old vintage quilts and folk art but just sort of started by drawing all my favourite things. I did plan the painting on my iPad. I was too anxious to tackle the blank canvas on its own. I used holbien acryla gouache and neocolor pastels :)

You can see the orangey underpainting and my very rough colour plan on my iPad! A few of the squares I ended up just painting over because I didn't like them. Like that comet in the top left. I made a little TikTok of the process if you want to see it in action! 

It was so nice to have a project to slowly chip away at in moments of calm. I have another canvas that I would love to do another quilt inspired painting on! I also really want to photograph this one well enough to make prints but that might take some figuring out! Anyway! Here’s some pics and close ups etc!!

01. November Sketchbook Scribbles

Happy November! I wanted to go a bit more in-depth (if you came here from my newsletter thank you and if not, you can sign up here if you’d like!) about my thoughts and feelings around sketchbooks and sketchbook pressure! I’m not sure if I made this up but I feel so much pressure to make my sketchbook beautiful and cohesive. I see so many wonderful illustrators that seem to have such polished sketchbooks, I don’t understand how they do it. It’s almost scared me off using my sketchbooks, which is not fun at all.

I want my sketchbook to be a place where I can experiment and have fun! I’m sure a lot of people will already know of Fran Meneses and her ‘ugly’ sketchbooks, but I found this concept super inspiring and have been trying to implement this kind of thought process in my own work!

So now I’m going to bite the bullet and share some of my own sketchbook work here, as a form of exposure therapy maybe 😂. There’s some messy sketches and a couple little gouache paintings. I’ll be interested to see how it changes next month, I’m going to try really hard to be less afraid of making ‘bad’ art. (There’s no such thing of course but it’s all subjective isn’t it.)

I’m not sure if any of my ramblings made sense or related to anyone but I’m happy to have created a place to share some less finished pieces and have a goal to share some every month here and/or in the Newsletter!

A x