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

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. 

As regular readers will know, I seem to have an interest in experimenting with working at a larger scale.

Last week I took a big piece of paper out into the parkland near the studio and sketched using one of my homemade feather quills.

Look at all these pigeons I spotted in Barmouth yesterday. All on the railway bridge.

We hadn't parked for long enough for me to sketch them there and then, and so today I drew four from the photographs I took instead.

I started with black ink - mixing it with water for the initial layer. Later adding colour pencils, white dry pastel, silver ink and charcoal pencil as well as black and grey brush pens.

Last week I had a really inspiring phone conversation and afterwards I decided to go for a walk and keep mulling over the goodness as I went. 

It was bitterly cold but bright and the sun was catching a huge swathe of snowdrops that I passed. 

Well, I almost managed to pass them, but not before crouching down to photograph them!