Category Archives: Original Designs

These are pieces of art that are entirely from my own creativity.

The Studio’s Wonderwall

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I’m not sure what came over me… One evening I decided that my cupboard doors in the Studio were looking a little tired and cluttered. Up to that moment, there was a collection of five year’s worth of samples, colour charts and reference material covering the doors. It took a day to strip off all the double-sided tape. I’d only discovered dual tack tape half way through… The blank canvas looked, well, very blank and very white. Thus formed the idea for my very own wonderwall:

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Arts in Worship: Prayer Tiles

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As regular readers may remember, I’m going to be artist-in-residence at this year’s inaugural Bishop’s School of Prayer, 9th-13th May at Launde Abbey in Leicestershire. There are three full days, the afternoons of which will feature workshops led by the day’s teachers, myself and the musician-in-residence. I’ve been prepping some potential workshop projects, and here are a couple of experiments that have made the grade:

There are still spaces available for the course, with both residential spaces and day passes. I do hope you will join Bishop Martyn and the other teachers and leaders for what is essentially a three-day conference on prayer.

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Card Craft: Celtic Birthday Drypoint

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Just before I cleared the decks in preparation for the arrival of a laser cutter that I have been impatiently waiting for (for two and a half years!), I cranked out a few more drypoint prints for cards more suitable for those not into the floral elements on my previous ones.

celtic drypoint birthday card

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Psst… want to see my etchings? Drypoint on a budget

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I’ve been experimenting with drypoint printing technique – I had to search out my college notes to review the technique I first learnt there. I’m developing drypoint on a budget, so no special press or acrylic plates. Drypoint for the uninitiated is where a design is etched into a suitable material (typically perspex) before filling the resulting grooves with ink, wiping off the excess and then printing onto paper. Further prints can be taken by reinking the plate and repeating the printing process until the burrs from the etching flatten and the ink no longer stays in the grooves.

Here are four individual prints of my first go, printed on different papers. Technically, I don’t think drypoint prints are normally coloured after printing but I have used a light touch with some coloured pencils to augment the final card.

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Bible Journaling: three more examples

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So February turned out to be a bit quiet on the daily bible journaling. I managed three days. Well, it was a short month. Here are two…

The above were drawn freehand, with a couple of stencil flourishes. I’ve started pencilling outlines first after finding this, though taking a little longer, gave better outcomes. I still enjoy designing with more fonts than I can draw, so for my next verse, Psalm 8:1, I created a digital version first and traced it onto my Bible margin for colouring.As a quick experiment, I’ve saved the digital image as a PDF and you can download it below if you’d like to add it to your own Bible. If there’s interest, I’ll be sure to pop up some more printables in the future (that’s the experiment bit).

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Bible Journaling: a few more examples

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I’m still on a mission to journal in my Bible(s) at least once a day. And I’m still missing my own goalposts 50% of the time… Here are a few more examples from the times I did manage to sit down do some bible journaling. I’ve tried a few more ways of putting down backgrounds, experimenting with text styles and even allowing stamps and a bit of illustration to creep in.

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Altered Art: Etched Brush Pots

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Happy New Year! I have a new year intention (I don’t do resolutions, too much pressure) to have a studio clear out and tidy up. As a first step, I decided to replace my water pots for use in classes. Inexpensive Ikea smoked glasses caught my eye – stable and weighty, perfect! Of course, I couldn’t just leave them unadorned…

A little work on some typography, vinyl cutting on my Silhouette and a generous dollop of Armor Etch and my etched brush pots are complete. One features a caution symbol and ‘contains paint’, specifically targeted at one of my studio guests who can mistake her glass of water for the painty water pot. Another has the steps required for cleaning a brush. The third has all the words I could find in the thesaurus connected with cleaning a brush. And the fourth has phrases playing around with the whole brush pot concept, such as ‘clean brush, cloudy water’ and ‘colours in suspense’.

Bearing this in mind, tidying the studio is going to take forever if at each point I have an idea I then implement, making a mess in the process…

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Tangle Patterns: Arrers #4

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My pen has been busy on paper, and there are three more patterns on their way using block arrows as their basis. These do depart from the zentangle ‘rules’ about tangle patterns, but I still reckon they are worth using. I am slightly biased though… Here’s the next tangle pattern in my series:

Arrers 4 tangle pattern

This is a BOGOF design – two motifs are melded together. Either would work on their own as a repeating pattern with no problem. I’ve drawn the sample en pointe as I think it looks better.

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