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

I had a really lovely moment during the Easter weekend, where I was able to visit my parents and sit in their garden. 

I collected some spring time blooms from their garden and sat at the garden table with my sketchbook, in the sun and drew them - just like old times.

It made me remember just how much I love to do this - see something, collect it (where possible) and sit and study it with my pen and paints. 

There have been so many lovely sightings on my walks near the studio recently. I often share these on my Instagram stories but I enjoy them so much...

The end of the month is upon us and so that means the end of Joanne Hawker’s Instagram prompts for the month are also ending. The last few I’ve covered here. Next year I hope to do the whole month over on Instagram too. So the final four prompts were; - Favourite - Reel - Range - Looking forward So, first up, Favourite

I stood in the lane and grinned last week. I had spotted my first sycamore leaf of the year. In the hedgerow was a great display of sycamore buds through to opened new leaves and flowers. Here are some photographs of some of the stages. Although it was sunny which was encouraging the leaves to open,

I've been really enjoying working through these prompts - it's a nice exercise to encourage reflection and time to ponder what each one means to me.

So this week I'm covering the following prompts - 

- Silver Linings

- Hands on

- Job/s

- Wrapped and packaged

- Starting point

I am working on 'seasonal special' mug editions, created to tie in with the flora at that time of year and only being available in a limited print run. The Hellebores have arrived as the first seasonal release, and there are just a few of each (enamel and China) - once these are gone I'm going to leave them until when they bloom again here.

- From the archives

Just recently I've had a lovely time looking back through old sketchbooks. Here are some pages from the sketchbook I used during my Art Foundation year (2001-2002). Line drawings and black ink were a favourite back then too, but at the time I was doing more mixed media illustration and was working towards a large textile piece with all the lines drawn with a sewing machine (freehand embroidery). 

Hello! The second March meet the maker blog post. Today I'm going to cover the posts that have happened since I was last here as I haven't been posting on Instagram this year. 

So, we have 5 prompts today - 

- Newest make

- Work in progress

- Learning curve

- Small detail

- Portrait.

Here we go!

#MarchMeetTheMaker is an excellent project set up by Joanne Hawker, a creative who lives in Somerset. Each March she shares prompts for fellow make...

It's a few weeks away still, but February 14th is on the horizon.  I know people have a huge range of views on this day. Some love it, some hate it...

At the end of 2019, in the lovely between times of Christmas and New Year I reflected on 2019 and dreamt up a list of things I might like to do in 2020 to develop the business. 

On the list included moving to a studio, saying goodbye to Shrewsbury and moving further south, having some professional photographs done at the studio, and many workshops. Sadly the latter didn't happen but they will keep and run again one day. I was also keep to blog more which I have managed... although I do acknowledge I'd let the bar fall pretty low so I had a good place to start!

I thought I'd write you a little hello this Christmas. I'd love to hand write everyone a card but that just isn't practical. Here is a means to do it another way - I've hand written a Christmas card and filmed it as I went. Here you can watch the YouTube video or read the text via images or in the text in this blog post. Happy Christmas from Alice Draws the Line.