One of the great paintings generated over the weekend. If any of you have tried your hand at life or still life drawing and are not natural artists you will know the fear of trying. Particularly in a group. There is always someone better you, not that it is a competition, but we naturally feel undermined when someone is better than us - as a general rule.      My Experimental Textiles course  experimentaltextiles.com was written to teach the skills required to help students with their confidence and to start to develop their own style. The exercises and course work that the group work through over the nine weekends will encourage this. Having the end of year show at Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch at the NEC at the end of March gives them a bit of impetus to produce some excellent work if it is needed.  I was very pleased with efforts of the group this weekend, they are now starting to make friends with each other and support each other. I set up the main still li

A new style of graffiti - lots of sketchy black lines rather than one thick line. Laziza, David and I spent yesterday afternoon and evening mooching about Melbourne centre. They showed me this lane full of wonderful graffiti - one of many I was told. The work is pretty stunning and shows several different styles.  Even the refuse bins are covered.   This is the lovely Laziza who has been looking after me so well since I arrived in this fair country. There were some interesting black and white designs. Great to take sections from.  A very complicated doodle.     Some of the graffiti also used collage . . . I have loads more images from Federation Square but I will leave them for tomorrow - I think these are enough for today. Enjoy . .  x

 my charcoal drawing of a section of the still life Drawing is the backbone of all creative work - and something I do very rarely unless I am made to. I never find the time to do something that is so important and should really be practiced weekly if not daily!!!!! I am very ashamed to say I only draw once a year - at the Textile Study Group summer school. textilestudygroup.co.uk I always promise my self I will do more, I have all the kit I could ever need, I just don't make the time. Projects like The Sketchbook Challenge (see link on the left of this blog) are very helpful in addressing this. Do any of you get together to make yourselves draw? There were three tutors teaching on the five day summer school. Rosemary Campbell, Alison King and Bobby Britnell. I was on Alison King's course. The title of our course was Meaningful Territory. Alison had set up a stunning black and white still life down the room and our first exercise was to take a section and draw it in char