Feeling hopeful and positive for the first time in a long while following the general election here in the UK on 4 July. After 14 years of chaos and decline, we finally have some grown ups in charge again. Hallejulah. I made a limited edition of these rubber stamped prints to celebrate the change the government – there’s a small handful left now in my online shop if you’d like one as a memento… UPDATE: Many thanks to everyone who bought a print – the edition of 24 is now sold out.
A belated catch-up
July’s theme for my daily drawings - pattern. Pretty fiddly working at this small scale (watercolour pencils possibly weren’t the ideal medium)
A mixed bag of birds for my August daily drawings… my favourites are the simplest ones done quickly, it’s easy to overwork a drawing at this small scale.
September’s daily drawings with my inktense pencils were of pot plants… really fun to draw.
October daily drawings - some of the delicious food I ate on holiday. I’m not in the habit of photographing my meals so it was hard to remember to collect reference as I went.
November daily drawings - I decided to challenge myself to draw something that I’m not interested in… transport. Turns out there’s a reason you tend to draw things that interest you - it’s a lot more fun.
December’s drawings were of some of the odd bits and pieces who share my studio space. An eclectic bunch, but they all remind me of something and they brighten my (admittedly cluttered) work space.
I’m afraid I’ve neglected this blog for quite some time, but I just wanted to belatedly wrap up my year of daily drawings, getting to know my inherited Inktense pencils. With extended thanks to, and fond memories of my friend Kate Johnson who originally owned the pencils and very kindly passed them onto me. They are a wonderful reminder of her creative inspiration, and she is much missed.
I’m certainly less intimidated by the pencils than I was at the start of 2023, and I now have a much clearer idea of how to combine their wet and dry qualities. Limiting the drawings to weekdays makes the challenge a lot more do-able. And I’m convinced that the discipline of starting a work day with a drawing is a good one - even if I don’t feel like it one day, it’s always enjoyable, and I feel like I’ve achieved something before reaching for the on switch on my computer.
Check out my Instagram feed @corinne_welch_ for a slightly more reliable update on what I’ve been up to recently…
Daily drawings – June
A month of drawing flowers from my garden. This brought back fond memories of my garden residency in 2021 (already feels a lifetime ago). Halfway through the year, and I feel much more comfortable with the inktense pencils now, and a lot more familiar with the colour range. Still plenty of potential to explore though…
Guernsey sketches
A wonderful week camping in Guernsey in mid-June - lovely to be by the sea in the sunshine from dawn til dusk, and squeezing in a few sketches here and there…
STILL workshops
I’ve really enjoyed taking part in a few online STILL Flower Drawing workshops over the past few weeks. A great opportunity to spend an hour in the evening drawing plants, inspired by really inspiring artists… watercolour painting with Moira Frith, coloured pencil drawing with Claudia Lowry, and charcoal drawing with Molly Martin. A real treat.
Daily Drawings - May
May was a colourful month for my daily drawing challenge, learning how to use my inktense pencils. The collective noun for a group of butterflies is a kaleidoscope, which seems appropriate.
In Bruges
Windmaill gingerbread mould from Bruges Folk Museum
Birds gingerbread mould from Bruges Folk Museum
Postbox in Bruges
Tourists in the main square
Lovely few days away in Bruges in early May (escaping all the royal coronation silliness). Lots of walking (and cheese and chocolate) and a chance to draw in my sketchbook. Just the ticket.
Daily Drawings – April
A month of trees. Very much back in my comfort zone as I’ve had a busy month with work and needed a more familiar subject matter for swift daily drawings. I was thinking that the range of greens was a bit limited, but then - after completing the final drawing - I found four extra greens hiding in my pencil case. Doh. Better late than never.
Museum drawings
Recent sketchbook drawings from museum artefacts (using Koi brush pens and Inktense pencils). Some drawings were done in situ (Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and Bristol Museum and Art Gallery) and some from online collections (Pitt Rivers and the Britich Museum).
Daily dog drawings
Who knew? Dogs are much more fun to draw than people. My daily drawings for March. This was a good subject matter for learning how to mix the wet and dry properties of the inktense pencils. A limited colour range though… mostly browns and greys, apart from the odd pink tongue!
The irresistible lure of leftovers
Having fun stitching into circles punched out of my colour palette sheet for my daily drawings… as always, I’m baffled by my preference for working with the bits headed for the bin. I think it’s the random nature of the mark making and the transformation that comes from using punched shapes that is so appealing. Decisions taken out of my hands – the opposite of the control of my work as a graphic designer!
A patchwork of memories
International Women's Day seems an appropriate day to post this... my entry for this year's World Book Night submission on the theme of memory.
A painting I’ve made of of a small blanket made by my mum before I was born, using scraps of dress and curtain fabric which held memories for her. I vividly remember this blanket from my childhood, and was always fascinated by the bold patterns and colours (an early influence perhaps?) A 1970's patchwork of layered memories of two generations of women.
ABC collage session
Really great online collage session in mid-February led by @catherine_cartright_artist for ABC. Catherine put together packs of papers for everyone, and we all snipped and glued away, making collages on the theme of ‘pairs’. Very interesting to hear how she uses collage in her work with trauma-based community groups. On a much less meaningful level, I made a small book of funny faces. What I love so much about collage is not having a plan, so the end result is always a surprise. Many thanks Catherine for an excellent way to spend 45 minutes on a Wednesday evening.
2023 daily drawings
I inherited a beautiful set of inktense pencils last year... I wasn’t entirely sure how to use them. So I’ve set myself a new daily drawing challenge for this year - learning to use the pencils with a new theme each month.
Feeding my inner colour geek. Before I started, I made a record of all the colours in my sketchbook - how they look dry, dipped in water and with water added. This looks like a laborious task but I absolutely loved it. It’s proved to be really useful - at first glance many of the pencil colours look the same, so this catalogue makes it really easy to make a quick selection to get started on a drawing.
In January I started with vintage vases... a bit of a mixed bag, but I’ve already learnt a lot about how the pencils work (water soluble then waterproof when dry)...
February was faces. Way out of my comfort zone here… I’m much more at home with plants and animals. They are a bit hit and miss, but I’ve learnt about how to get more subtle shades of colour, building it up in layers. Nostrils and various skin tones are a work in progress though. I enjoyed seeing characters emerging each day, and I am starting to appreciate the potential of the pencils…
Another food journey
From potatoes to Edinburgh to Black Forest Gateau to Taiwan. My artwork is most definitely better travelled than I will ever be!
I was asked back in the summer by Bristol paper artist Linda Toigo to make my favourite dish out of paper for an exhibition she was putting on in Taiwan. In an unusual diversion from my usual book making, I made a papier-mâché slice of Black Forest gateau. It sits inside a vintage cutlery case (maybe similar to a bookcover?!) and I made a spoon and Sheffield dessert fork to fit the empty mouldings in the case. For such an international exhibition, I wanted to choose a typically European dish displayed in a traditionally British setting – reflecting my own national identity as a British European.
The exhibition has now opened at Soulangh Cultural Park in Taiwan. 24 artists responded to a call to "Bring a Dish" and created food made of paper – they will be on display in the Food Room for the next year. Many thanks to Linda for inviting me to take part in such a fun project...
POTATO
A new book I’ve made is currently being exhibited in the ‘Pattern:Books’ exhibition at the Upright Gallery in Edinburgh… Artist bookmakers were invited to submit artworks for the annual artist book exhibition held every December. The brief was to celebrate pattern in artist book form. Over 80 handmade books are on display from 35 artists in an exhibition co-curated with Edinburgh based artist book maker and tutor Susie Wilson.
The book POTATO is a digitally printed edition of potato prints and backdrawn monoprints. Started as an experiment in making printed repeat patterns with carved potatoes at my kitchen table, I then drew the carved potatoes as backdrawn monoprints. It’s fun to see the book travelling up to Edinburgh to be exhibited, and then making it onto the cover of Art Mag at the beginning of December. An exciting journey for a handful of humble potatoes.
The Hand of Friendship
I am pleased to be able share some exciting news – an embroidered scroll I submitted to the Bodleian earlier this summer in response to a call-out has been awarded Second Prize! It will also be displayed as part of their exhibition ‘Beyond the Pale’ at the Old Bodleian Library in Oxford from 17 Sept – 6 November, and then be accepted into their permanent collection. I am over the moon!
The original call-out from the Bodleian Bibliographical Press in April was inviting artwork submissions that ‘respond to, and engage with, black shapes on the printed page’. I was intrigued by the subject matter, and thought immediately of heavily redacted government documents reluctantly released after Freedom of Information requests. I had been appalled by the recent announcement by the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, that the UK intended to start forcibly deporting refugees and asylum seekers to Rwanda. I decided to channel my anger into an artwork as a response to this shocking immigration policy.
I found a transcript of Priti Patel’s announcement online, and printed it out. After just a few minutes of highlighting words from the main body of the speech, I realised that a hidden – more truthful – message could be revealed through a reverse redaction. A printed redaction would have blocked out most of the text of the speech, but I wanted there to remain a sense of the wording in its original form to underline the incredulity that these were the actual words spoken by the Home Secretary. I decided upon embroidery as my chosen medium as I have an interest in ‘subversive stitch’ – using a traditionally domestic craft as an unexpected means of protest. I also felt that the dedication required for such a time-consuming method of working matched my strength of feeling about this important issue.
I chose to partially obscure much of the speech with lines of embroidered tally marks. These represented the thousands of individuals who faced deportation under this cruel scheme. I also wanted to reflect the dehumanising way that people can be reduced to target numbers when discussing immigration. I typeset and printed out a section of the original speech onto calico and then began the task of highlighting words by stitching the redaction in tally marks. The embroidery took around six weeks to complete – stitching most evenings after work. It proved to be a cathartic response to the some of the rage I was feeling about the injustice of this unethical policy.
I decided to make the final embroidery into a scroll – a format which highlighted the performative nature of the announcement… delivered, with some fanfare, in Rwanda as an illustration of the conspicuously ‘tough approach’ that the government wanted to be seen to be pursuing. Whilst I was completing the piece, the first planned deportation flight was halted after a last-minute intervention by the European Court of Human Rights. Although, at the time of writing, no flights have yet left the UK, relief is short-lived as the new Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, has reiterated her intention to continue with this inhumane scheme.
It has been proven that the threat of deportation is very damaging to the mental health of vulnerable migrants already here in the UK, but has certainly not been a deterrent to those subsequently arriving in the hope of claiming asylum. The scheme is prohibitively costly, and appears to exist primarily as a piece of populist theatre to placate the right wing press. It angers and saddens me to see our country reduced to this, and I know that this is not who we are.
I am happy to share my prize with Asylum Welcome, a charity I have worked closely with since 2005, whose amazing work with asylum seekers and refugees in Oxford very much provided the original inspiration for the artwork.
Kate Semple workshop
The original collage created in the online workshop
Mid-century vessels
Collage of leftovers
In mid-June I took part in an online workshop with Kate Semple, organised by STILL Flower Drawing. It was a wonderful hour of creative messiness. We made patterned papers to create a still life collage of vases. I loved working at a fast speed - it stopped me over-thinking things, and the final collage has a more spontaneous feel as a result. As always with collage, I’m more interested in the bits that are left behind afterwards, so have gone on to create some more smaller collages in my sketchbook.
Week 6 – ink
A rubbing and a drawing of the same leaves
Collage of enlarged photocopy or original drawing
Strange plant matter found in the street
Grape hyacinth seedheads
Pine cone found on the street
My final week of 30 days of daily drawings. These were drawings using Indian ink and some of my plant inks made last year. I really enjoyed completing a drawing every day, and I may not keep it up in terms of theming each week, but I’ll definitely continue filling up this sketchbook.