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

In the early days of Alice Draws the Line, I would get up, sit at my little desk in the sitting room with a big mug of tea (earl grey usually) and write a blog post. First thing, still in my pyjamas. It started the day off well, made me feel intentional about developing my little business. A positive boost before I did anything else.

I can’t work out if it is just something I did occasionally or very regularly, or quite how often. What I do remember is that I liked doing it.

Yesterday I delivered eight poems to the Oriel Davies Gallery in Newtown, that I had written out in Brush Lettering.

I thought it might be of interest to talk through my process from the start to this point of this project as there has been so much that I have learnt.

Kate Morgan-Clare at the gallery approached me to ask if this was a project that I would be interested in before Christmas. They wanted eight poems written out to honour and elevate them as a celebration of their creation. The poems had been written by participants that took part in creative writing workshops with Emma Beynon - a writer and creative facilitator and Oriel Davies. The workshops explored a sense of place and that is what the exhibition of these poems is called. It will be running from the 5th to the 26th February 2022.

In early January I visited Kate at the gallery to discuss the project fully and to look at the space. 

'It started with a New Year's resolution...'

Someone asked me how Alice Draws the Line began recently and this was my response. And it's true, in 2008 I made a New Year's resolution to do a drawing a day in a sketchbook. I missed a few days but I did it, a directly observed sketch for the year.

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

- 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).