Sunday 30 March 2014

Posy - Pussy Willow, Cherry Blossom, Moss...

Happy Mothers Day..!

This is the posy I gave to my wonderful mum today...




















































...from my seasonal colour sample notebook XXX







Sunday 16 March 2014

Selvedge Spring Fair

I'm delighted to be exhibiting in a few weeks at Selvedge magazine's Spring Fair in Chelsea Town Hall, London on 4th and 5th of April !!!



























I'll be showing a Spring Fair edition of the Spider Chrysanth wall panel!
not to mention a few familiar faces...
Hope to see you there!! 
For more information go to Selvedge Magazine.

!!STOP PRESS!! 

I have a few free tickets to give away - so if you're interested in visiting, please email me at sam@sampickard.co.uk ASAP!

Monday 10 March 2014

Colour from the season - Winter Yellows!!

Two sunny days in a row here in North Devon! I've been decorating, painting walls not paper but I did update a few yellows from past notebook pages (February/March) and thought I'd share their cheery colours...

Forsythia...


Elegant Spiketail...




















Encrusted with Lichen - Damson Blossom buds...





































Dandelion - and yes the bees are definitely out and about..!!















































Gorgeous and Furry - Pussy willow!

















































Dancing Daffodils (have you noticed how many Ladybirds are already out and about this year!)...

































Today, wandering lonely as a cloud(!) chanced across these wild ones - What a happy sight...



















...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.

Saturday 1 March 2014

Colour sampling - Chrysanthemum print


From experience I know the only way to develop new work is to make a start, get the ideas out of my head and onto paper, fabric, or wherever, accept that much of this early work may not be be brilliant and keep going.

At last, after colour sampling trials this week (huge sigh of relief!), I'm finally getting somewhere.

First samples: I printed the colours I'd sampled from the real Chrysanthemum flower back into the printed flower - as in my original notebook page, with interesting results...






















Then I printed colour squares behind the flower as on my notebook pages. The white seriously mis-printed but you get the idea. To give an idea of scale the squares are 25cms...





































Now a change of line colour. Here the flower outline is leaf green, the infill is dusky petal orange. Subtle, and reminiscent of Art Nouveau?





































I decided to simplify. Do I have to fit every colour in just because nature manages to!
Here I've printed only one colour in the petals and the leaf green. I also introduced a shadow. Inspired (as I often am) by the work of Patrick Caulfield, I thought a hard edge shadow would be achievable and dramatic.




















I nearly always use unbleached linen (partly as a positive environmental choice and partly because I really love it) therefore in all the above samples I'd adjusted the colours to take into account this underlying base colour and keep as near as possible to the colours in the plant. However I did (lastly) trial print this sample onto bleached linen in Chrysanthemum bud dusky pink.





































...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.