September 2024 | sketches and submissions

It’s halfway through October and I am only now writing down what happened in September! The past few weeks have been crazy for me with travel, shop and market prep, art submissions and a wedding. Apart from that, I don’t remember much else I did, but I think that might be because I didn’t do much - not in terms of art-making, at least. I think I made more progress with my fantasy novel writing, though :)

St Weonard's Church sketches

After posting an Etsy order (thank you!!!) we decided to have a look at the village’s old church. It had lots of interesting historic features and nooks and crannies! I decided to sketch it a little bit to break my no-drawing streak. Though, as you can see, I wasn’t able to finish the drawing of the whole church as I got too tired and ran out of time (even now I have yet to finish this drawing!!)

A simple theme for September in my journals, using downloadable stickers from Planned By Jysla. I was sooo happy when these popped up in her shop update, since she’s in Australia and postage will likely cost the earth!

Moon calendar.

Journalling calendars.

h.Art week

With the start of September comes the yearly Herefordshire Art Week! Galleries, studios, churches, estates, hotels and private houses all over the county open up to showcase the amazing art and craft work made by local artists.

We ‘h.Art hunted’ during this week, going to as many places as we could, looking for inspiration (and perhaps to indulge in a piece or two). We went to Ross-on-Wye, Hereford, Ledbury, Broadway, Brockhampton…and saw some beautiful things!

Instead of writing about it here, I’m going to make h.Art into its own blog post. I have lots of photos, videos and bits and bobs, and learned a lot about how to look at my own art-making. So look out for that post! :)

The penultimate Green Zeen 1 bundle was sent out to its new owner, meaning there is only ONE left! I’m so grateful to all those who were interested enough in my and Rosemary’s work to buy a pack. Thank you! I can’t wait to start working on the third Green Zeen and, hopefully, work with more lovely artists to make extra goodies! If you are at all interested in being part of the next zine, be sure to follow @thegreenzeen on Instagram to be notified when I start the project!

Zine Cuisine

My incredibly generous friend was kind enough to take on some of my zines and stickers for a zine fair down in Bournemouth. I sent them down to be a part of her super cool collective table B)

It’s great to see this kind of market pop up in Bournemouth! There was never one like it during my time at uni, but hopefully more will be held to give students a nice opportunity (especially the Zine Society!).

Clemintine Anthology submission

A new online anthology popped up on Instagram and I decided to submit to it! Their first issue surrounded the theme ‘Orange’, so I gave myself time to think up a response.

In the end, I decided to create a landscape using tones of orange and harsh shadows (inspired by pieces I saw during h.Art) to emphasise the arrival of autumn. I wasn’t entirely sure what kind of landscape to use, though, so I got to experimenting.

I needed to swatch my art supplies in two new sketchbooks I had anyway, to decide which one to use next as my current sketchbook is almost (finally) done with. They both had very different types of paper, so I wanted to see how well different mediums would sit on them. To experiment with the theme of ‘Orange’, I painted a landscape in each one with watercolour and gouache.

It helped me determine which sketchbook would be best to use next, but I wasn’t happy with the pieces I’d made, so was a little stuck for the submission piece! So, I left it for a while longer.

I found my subject piece when on a walk with my dog. We’re surrounded by fields and they were all being harvested at the time. From a high vantage point I looked down at the spawling fields and found one with huge hay bales haphazardly stewn about it. The surrounding landscape was perfect too. I took a photo for reference, then got to work.

I changed my stragety a little bit after seeing how the sketchbook pieces came out. I decided to go back to the Stockton Bury piece I finished at the start of August, of some decorative jugs among shrubbery. I had used a negative-space technique on that one to build up the image, but I decided I would only use the beginning stages of the technique, where I put down blobs of watercolour in the general area a subject might be.

So, I built up this landscape piece with the technique, being as loose as possible but making sure it was still clear what the subject was. Then, with a dip pen and orange ink, I cleaned up the piece by outlining everything and adding detail where necessary.

This was very much a ‘trust the process’ piece, as I kinda hated it at the start, but the orange linework really bought it together. I came to like the final piece.

I sent the scan off (a day before the deadline, no less) and they accepted the submission! I’m really pleased they like it and look forward to seeing it with everyone else's pieces.

Sketches I found in one of the sketchbooks - from when I was trying to get myself drawing regularly...!

The end of September and start of October kind of merged together for me. Projects went over onto the next month - including a new sticker sheet design I’ve been working on for From the Witch’s Scullery! For now, I’ll add a sneak peek of some of the illustrations I made during these weeks. I'll show the full sticker sheet in next month's blog!

Upcoming

Lots of preparation is going into markets From the Witch’s Scullery will be selling at in October. We have 3 so far: an online Facebook market, Spellbound in Cardiff, and Magic in the Market in Newport (as of writing this blog, the first two have already happened!). Magic in the Market will be on the 27th of October in Newport Market (Upstairs), Newport, Wales. We’re looking forward to it!

Thank you for reading my September blog post! Not too much to show. I am definitely in a lull with my art-making/creativity in general. I’m concentrating a whole lot more on writing my fantasy books, and am considering using the upcoming NaNoWriMo challenge in November to get me writing everyday towards finishing the first draft!

If you’ve read this all the way through, consider supporting me and my work by going over to my Etsy shop and having a browse if you like zines, stickers and prints mostly based around nature and travelling. You will also find my pet portrait commissions there! letsgetartyshop.etsy.com <3