The Art of Family

My family around the world light a candle at 7 p.m. on Christmas Eve and toast family and friends. It's a moment that brings us all together across the continents. It's a joy to see all the photos on our family circular email on Christmas Day.  Makes us feel closer together instead of spread over 5 continents! My seasonal wish is for peace in 2016 to you all

© Anne Jenkins 2015 http://annejenkinsart.com   http://artstrolls.com

The Art of Simple Things

I wrote the piece I have wanted to write for a few weeks but am holding back on posting it while I wait for my emotions to settle. It is not good to publish a rant. SO I sat with a blank mind this morning and couldn't even decide what to sketch while I had my morning cuppa.

I decided to follow some way better sketchers than me and sketch my travel kit. The kit is fascinating to me ... it has changed but remained the same over the couple of years since I got in to this habit.

I started with just a medium sized travel palette. Then I got a really small palette which I love. I've had some watercolour pencils for a long time but never warmed to them. Then a friend gave me a couple of watercolour crayons and mentioned they had a richer colour tone to them. They didn't grab my imagination.

So the pencils and the crayons languished in a drawer in the mess that is my studio for a year or more. I took them out a couple of months ago for some reason and thought, "hmmm, why not give them another go?"

So I did and then I noticed how it changes a sketch. There's a different texture to all three, so you can complete a sketch with a multitude of lines, blends, thickness or depth. I am still learning how to use them. It's always a trial and error process with me. I never took instruction well.

And that to me is one of the great joys of art. New ideas or methods continually present themselves. It is intriguing to learn about them, to try them - perhaps reject them, put them away and then for no apparent reason, return to them.

So the world goes round.