Photo's on my phone - 9th-24th/4/2024

 I love the idea of making a photo diary for my grandboy's, their mummy does a photo catch up every month on Facebook, so I'm copying her. 

It's also a reminder to myself that even though life is hard it's also full of love, laugh's and sunshine.

Photo's on my phone - 9th-24th/4/2024

I published my very first colouring book and we walked the dogs on the moor at Ilkerton. 

My Mother-in-law sent us some photo's including this one of Daisy Mae

 (Mummy of my grandboy's). 

The sun finally shone, so we went to the allotment

We walked the dogs at Lee bay and I took some photo's of stones, with the idea of a potential drawing, maybe a 0.03 pen.......

And I continued work on my Ilfracombe drawing, Ive nearly finished the sketches and couldn't wait to start the digital version.

Catch up - The last 6 months of 2021

Lots of drawings, all drawn with Posca acrylic pens.
I love the fact they are acrylic paint and intensity, but the nibs are too thick.

Lynton & Lynmouth Cliff Railway

My first attempt at the Valley of Rocks

I love these 2, the first is Crow Point, which is one of my favourite places. The second is Malmsmead the location of Lorna Doone and a few miles away from my front door.

Two Christmas card designs, the first is the Snowball path which leads to the top of the hill that I live on.

Two views of the pine trees at Wistlandpound reservoir, which used to be a favourite dog walk, until I got a puppy that I can't keep out of the water.

My first attempt at drawing Cloud Farm, which is in Doone Valley about a mile from Malmsmead.

In November we went on holiday with our babies and their babies. We had a few days in Fife, this is a drawing of Crail. 

The beach was covered in seaweed, which smelt of iodine which was very reminiscent of my favourite malt Talisker whiskey.

We stayed in a lodge at Lochearnhead, these two drawings were the view from the patio.

Maggies Blanket Book

 Repost form my website blog, posted in October 2021

I'm very proud to announce the publication of Magnus's Magnificent Crochet Blankets, which is available as a paper back on Amazon HERE

Magnus is my second grandson, his book as take over 4 years to complete, the book started off life 18 months before Magnus was born, its was originally going to be a book of crochet circles blankets, hence the reason why the blanket motifs start with a simple crochet circle.

I had made several of the blankets, but never really got started on the book, once Magnus was born I knew I needed to dedicate a book to him as I had for his big brother Bert.

It's taken me nearly 4 years to finish the blankets, plus 6 months writing patterns and a week of stress trying to get it accepted by Amazon's computerised review system (apparently one of the pages was a fraction of a mm too big).

The book contains 9 blanket patterns which were all photographed on some of our favourite local beaches on the days we looked after our boys.

Some of my favourite reject photo's of all the blankets.

It's not easy photographing two small boys, so I let them loose to play, get the blankets wet & cover them in sand. Dogs, dinosaurs & dump trucks also feature, it was a special moment in time recorded for the boys to remember in the future.

I'm very proud of this book, its very personal to me full of love and laughter.

I feel it is my magnum opus, at this moment in time I have no plans to write another crochet book and so might be my last.

The patterns are only available in the paperback book, when I have time I will add them to the Ravelry reference library, but I'm afraid they won't be available as single patterns.

Also the kindle version won't be available for some time, maybe next summer, Amazon publishing has changed their publishing programme and which means I will need to rewrite the whole book.

Three years later

 Morning

I am closing my website and so resurrecting this blog so I still have an on-line presence.

My website provider has doubled the cost of hosting my site, as it only generates a small income barely covering its cost I've been forced into saying "goodbye site".  

I started a new blog last year, but I can only find it on my phone, so here I am! I have 3 years catch up to do and a whole new redesign. I've done a little bit this morning, but now I need to do some drawing and visit one of my stockists.

As a taster this is what I am working on at present ........

It is an illustrated map of Ilfracombe harbour, if you look closely you can see Damien Hirst's Verity standing proud on the end of the harbour wall. It's a digital drawing based on my pen sketches that I have cut and pasted together to form an image.

Love Amanda

On being wrong June 2021

 I've always had my own level of perfection, if a colour was wrong in a blanket I would frog the whole thing rather than leave it imperfect, sometimes I'd frog 2 or 3 times until it was right. 
I don't think anyone else would of noticed that it was wrong, but I couldn't live with the mistake shouting at me every time I looked at it.

I've noticed the same is happening in my drawings. My "Cindy's Deck" panorama of Lynton is wrong, I don't like the tree's on Hollerday Hill, Countisbury isn't right and I'd like to redo it in black and white.

But....... maybe I'm wrong, maybe I should leave it as it is and move on to a new view of Lynton.

I've always believed you should never go backwards, even though that's exactly what I've done in the last few months. I've gone back 20+ years and started drawing and knitting again. Although the knitting is just as bad as its always been, 20 years life experience has changed the style, technique and level of professionalism of my art work. So its not really going back its moving forward with something that's been on hold for a long time.

The reason for this blog post is that I am working on my next panorama this time of Lynmouth, I've finished the first drawing and am over halfway to finishing the second. 

This morning I was really excited to lay them together to see the full effect, even though Im really happy with both drawing Im not happy with the way they fit together. 

I have several options, 

1 - Pretend they are 2 separate drawings

2 -  Redraw one of them completely 

3 - Just ignore the fact that the trees aren't big enough over the Bath, the slipway has a bump in it and the water in the harbour is flowing the wrong way

Normally I would scrap one and start again, but maybe I should leave them as they are and let the viewer either not notice the mistakes or think that they are intentional. 

When they are framed they will have a bigger gap between them and the mistakes might not be noticeable at all.

I think I need to leave them as they are and keep my fingers crossed that the 3rd drawing fits a lot better with the 1st.

Sketches of Lynmouth June 2021

I've been working on lots of sketches of Lynmouth in preparation of tackling another panorama.
I'm completely obsessed at the moment, all I want to do it draw.

I was awake at 3 am for no particular reason, so I'm giving myself the day off drawing complicated charts for my next crochet book, they'd only go wrong and I'd have to redo them and allowing myself to draw more pictures of Lynmouth instead.

The Tors & Rock House

Countisbury again!

The Rhenish

The Rising Sun

Rock House

The Bath

Lynton From Cindy's Deck May 2021

 

Something big is finished. Im really happy with most of it, but there a few things I have developed further, mainly my technique and symbolisim, I'd also like to do it in black and white.. The trees on Hollerday Hill are wrong and so is Countisbury.

I won't turn this into a print as I want to redo it at a later date, but I will sell the originals, message me if you are interested. They are Coloured pencil and acrylic pen on A3 paper.