A word from Alice - studio stories from Alice Draws the Line – Alice Draws The Line

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A word from Alice - studio stories from Alice Draws the Line

  • Brampton Bryan Christmas Open Studios 2023!

    by Alice Savery

    We are once again opening our studios for the first weekend in December for the Brampton Bryan Christmas Open Studios!

    This year there will be a trail of 5 studios plus the wonderful Aardvark Books open over that weekend. 

    10am-4pm and the village postcode is SY70DH.

    Posted in Christmas, Open studio

  • Sketching in pyjamas…

    by Alice Savery

    As I walked to the kettle I noticed how the kitchen light caught the flowers I had ready and waiting to take to my friend. 

    The lights shining on the flowers cast such a striking, clear shadow onto the floor. Before I even managed to finish making my tea I’d found two A3 sketchbooks and put them on the floor where the shadow fell. 

    Posted in Alice Draws The Line, flower studies, Follow the whispers

  • The Royal Mail Carriage

    by Alice Savery
    I did a craft fair at the Severn Valley Railway this weekend and it was held in the Engine Shed at the station at Highley. My stand had its back agains the carriage that King George travelled in, my chair by its wheels. I set up early and had time to have a wonder around before visitors arrived. My favourite exhibit was the Royal Mail carriage. 
    I love letters and letter writing, and handwriting and pens and stationery… I also like steam trains!

     

    Posted in Letter writing, poetry, Steam Train

  • Doing the things I like to do

    by Alice Savery
    I recently read how few weeks there are until the end of the year, and how it’s a good idea to make a plan if there are things you want to get done in a set time frame. So I thought about what I’d like to do between now and Christmas and I made a list!

    I thought about what I want to do each week and I wrote out a list. Having it on a piece of paper on my desk is helping me to actually do the things! 
    Posted in Artist’s Date, Sketchbook

  • Under the oak

    by Alice Savery
    This Oak tree made an amazing base to sit at, lean against, and look out through the branches. I really like looking out through a canopy, and especially if there is light behind, playing on the leaves. 
    Posted in Green Sketching, Outdoor sketching, Sketchbook, Sketching The Seasons, Vitamin Tree

  • Holiday cottage views

    by Alice Savery
    Our holiday cottage had decking in the garden with a lovely big table where you could take in the views and plenty of space for a sketchbook!
    This was a graphite sketch during the golden hour on one of the first evenings.
    Posted in Green Sketching, Outdoor sketching, Sketchbook, Sketching

  • Beach days

    by Alice Savery

    I challenged myself to do some speedy surfer sketches! There was a surf school and they were going through the different poses needed for surfing. 

    They didn’t stay still for any length of time and so working quickly was essential!

    Posted in Beach, People sketches, Surfing

  • A few days in Pembrokeshire

    by Alice Savery
    Back in August (2023) I had a lovely few days in Pembrokeshire. I thought I’d share some of the sketches that I did there. 
    This was one evening. The others decided to have an evening walk along the headland. I couldn’t resist the lure of the picnic bench and view to set up my watercolour pad and paint the view while they were stretching their legs. 
    Posted in Beach, Green Sketching, Seaside

  • Original Cut Flower pieces for Herefordshire Art Week

    by Alice Savery
    I thought I’d keep a record of the work that I put together for Herefordshire Art Week 2023 that was exhibited at Aardvark Books in Brampton Bryan. This is a series of my ‘cut flower’ pieces - with the species being individually painted by hand (drawn in ink and then coloured with watercolour) and then cut out, ever so slowly and carefully, using a scalpel.  
    Posted in Alice Draws The Line, Botanical Illustration, cut flowers, flower studies, Original drawings, Sunflowers, The Cut Flower Studio

  • Back to Borth beach

    by Alice Savery

    This extract hopefully shows some of the brush marks I was working with. The sky was amazing - blue but with streaks of white wispy clouds. Hard to achieve with watercolour without white or masking fluid, and so I added just the blue for the sky and left out spaces for the white clouds. 

    I was also working with a partially dry brush to try and create the white horses at the shoreline - I started to want to really play with this and develop it - but prolifically filling pages and stopping them blow away in the middle of a birthday picnic didn’t feel the right thing to do!

    Posted in Beach, Borth, Outdoor sketching, Sketchbook, Sketching

  • The Hellebores

    by Alice Savery
    I did three studies, three separate stems, and cut each of these out. Here they are in the garden - it was useful to look at them in pure natural light against other ones, to check my colours and scale. 
    Posted in cut flowers, Hellebore, The Cut Flower Studio

  • Brush lettering commission

    by Alice Savery

    I had the pleasure of creating a really enjoyable piece of brush lettering recently. A customer approached me with some words that they wanted written out to sit alongside two other artworks on a wall in their home. 

    They bought the other artworks to the studio so we could look at the pieces and the colours used and to work out how this piece - a poem, could sit with them. 

    We decided to pick out a blue and the grey that had been used in the other pieces and I mixed the colours throughout all the lettering.

    The piece related to the seaside and so these colours worked really well. Here are some extracts from it. 

    Posted in Brush Lettering, Commission