Recently, after watching a Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn dvd, I purchased a board book from Amazon. They are available in a couple of sizes and before I went away on the next stage of our SW Coastal Path walk I prepared the pages with a wash of brusho (sea colours) with some bubble wrap inserted between while it dried.
While we were away, in between walking, I managed to do a little bit of drawing and painting, mostly found objects from the path – shells, feathers and such. The mussel shells above were picked up at Constantine Bay, not far from Trevose Head. When I got home I added some Thrift, using photographs that I had taken earlier in the year when the cliffs are covered in this sweet wild flower. I am particularly interested in our coastal flora and enjoy looking up about the regional names and folklore of these plants.
I liked the idea of the board books as in the type I purchased there are only six double page spreads, but even so I can see that if I keep doing small observational type drawings it will still take me rather a long time to fill it up. Although ……… we do still have nearly four hundred miles to walk! What I would really like to do is take a sketchbook with me on the actual walk and make some quick landscape sketches or large sweeping big brush paintings – that really would be a wonderful thing to do!
Above is the book I purchased – there wasn’t a lot of choice. On the dvd that I mentioned before (Interpretations) it was suggested that a baby’s board book could be used, with gesso painted over the ‘pages’. I did this, and applied gesso maybe a little too thickly. I was also impatient, and keen to try this, so maybe letting the pages dry really thoroughly in between coats would have given me better results. I found that the pages stuck together in some places and the paint ‘lifted’. If I do use this book, (wouldn’t it be good for textured rock formations?) I intend to go with the gaps and maybe paste over with tissue paper or add some gel medium before painting. I do like the textures on the page and on the photo below some of it even looks like seaweed!
JOLLIETEXTILES 