Changes

Hello!

How has your summer been?

After a drizzly August, we’ve been hit with a scorching heatwave in the UK which has felt a bit disarming - especially as I was just starting to get in the mood for Autumn. I love the heat but my productivity does plummet. However we have such long winters so I’m enjoying and trying to make the most of it.

This year has gone so fast - overwhelmingly so- which induces a kind of panic in me and I fret over whether I’ve achieved anything that significant since January.

I’m trying to be kind to myself and am reflecting on 2023 as mostly a positive and exciting year. My partner has left his teaching job and various friends and family members are retraining or going back to college. The future is uncertain but the sense of change in the air has been inspiring.

Propelled by this I’ve signed up for a course on making graphic novels/comics - I’ll update more on this in further posts! Carrying on in this learning vein I plan to also:

• Sign up for a creative writing or poetry course

• Sign up for life drawing classes

• Book in some solo travelling - I need to get out of my comfort zone!

Some of these plans will stretch into next year - so some exciting things to look forward to!

I had a chilled holiday in Wales. I didn’t put any pressure on myself to draw and in the end I didn’t make much at all - but that was fine. Instead I wound down, read a ton of books and walked many cliff tops navigating cows and extreme wind. It rained and the weather was pretty gloomy but it was always beautiful and the rapidly changing skies were particularly stunning. The most I had to think about was what I was going to eat for my next meal and that’s all you really want on a holiday.

I came home to a mountain of work -I even had to do a bit on the train. But I can’t complain as summer can sometimes be painfully quiet for freelance illustration.

The other day I cracked open a 15 year old bottle of black ink which I’d had since my student days at Norwich School of Art. It still delivered!

Once a medium starts to feel laboured and over-worked I like to refresh and switch it up - but it does mean I dart around a lot. I have a ridiculous amount of scraps - parts of drawings and experiments - nothing ever feeling fully finished….but I suppose they make good decoration for this newsletter! I sometimes wish I was one of those people that dedicated themselves to finessing a single technique - but I just can’t do it.

Nowadays I alternate between watercolours, inks and gouache - each of them serving their own purpose in line with my moods and flights of fancy.

For years I’ve stored away paintings in my head. Half of them aren’t realised and when I translate them to watercolour it can often take a frustrating amount of attempts to figure them out. By then my excitement has died and the painting is often abandoned. Working with a brush and ink feels much more immediate. I can put an idea quickly on paper and it’s not trapped in my mind for the next few years.

I’ve enjoyed painting in this crusty old Daler Rowney sketchbook. I initially didn’t like the paper but it’s perfect for inking - a bit absorbent with some texture. Alongside my own work I’ve been studying and interpreting old paintings and found photographs. The drawing on the right is a copy of Johann Jacob Scheuchzer’s Physica Sacra Creation of the Universe, 1731. It’s such a wild image! Early Sci-fi at it’s best.

The ink I was using dried to a bit of a sheen so I ordered some of the Kuretake Black Ink 60 which is supposedly a favourite with manga artists. It’s quite matte and so far very nice to use. It seems to be waterproof as well!

I’ve been going back through some of my paintings (some of them very old indeed) - and reworking them in ink - I like how the ink creates this graphic language - everything becomes a bit more cohesive and starts to exist in the same world.

Anyway, by the time I write my next newsletter I’m sure this heatwave will be long gone and Autumn will be setting in. It’s fast becoming my favourite season.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the last few weeks of summer!

Catch up soon,

Ellie