Cover to Cover - a sketchbook project

A group of open studio artists met up on the 3rd November for the launch of Cover to Cover 2015 and to collect our sketchbooks. Co-ordinated and organised by Isabel Carmona-Andreu Cover to Cover is a sketchbook project for West Berkshire and North Hampshire Open Studios 2015.

It's a sketchbook exchange project that is designed to help us to push our creativity - the aim is to develop how we explore themes that interest us as individuals, and as artists, and how we can seek contribution to our ideas from other artists.

We were allocated a group (maximum of 8) and met our fellow members. Each of us received a sketchbook containing our details and our chosen theme. Then we work on that theme (over the the next three weeks) before exchanging it with a pre-assigned group member for them to carry on working to our subject. Choice of media up to individual artists, but must work to the theme of the sketchbook.

I had decided upon a Hedgerow Hodge-podge. A sketchbook for a seasonal exploration of the plants found in the hedgerow and field margins on the Wiltshire/Berkshire borders, as I'd like to carry on with the ideas developing in my seasonal sketchbooks.

Early summer sketchbooks . . .

Mid summer

Sketching in the summer months is one of my favourite things, as it allows me to wander off . . . and spend quiet time looking and listening.

Late summer

I'm really interested to see how others interpret this subject matter.

Cover to Cover a sketchbook project

As a participant in Cover to Cover I spent Monday last at Winton Windmill, sketching.

A good reason to leave The Shed on a beautiful bright, but cold, day.

Cover to Cover is an Open Studios project that will explore the creativity and inspiration of artists taking part in Newbury Open Studios 2014. Painters, jewellers, textile artists, potters, sculptors, video or cake artists come together and show how work develops from our sketch books or doodles into a finished piece.

Going up stairs. Narrow and very steep, like a ships ladder. Working in this environment must have had its interesting moments . . .

As someone sketches the view I sketch the window.

We're in amongst the display,

and I have this delightful fella looking over my shoulder . . .

Surrounded by text . . .

information for visitors (of course) but it creates a shadow narrative of the space, and it's enabled me to build various scenarios for book works.

Bearing in mind that this is still a working mill, the sack hoist is a tad wormy considering the weight of a full sack.

Going down . . .

A few facts about Wilton Windmill

built . . . 1821

number of years in operation . . . approx. 100

number of years unused and derelict . . . approx. 50

start of renovations . . . 1971

first milling after renovations . . . 1976

Storm in a Teacup

The view from The Shed window reminds me that daylight is running out . . . 

I've spent the day working on a small painting (I prefer daylight when working in mixed media as I find it difficult to judge colour in electric light) and anyway it is time now to put this to one side and leave it to brew for a day or two while I think about the next stage . . .

Stages it's progressed through today

Meanwhile, ideas for print are developing in my sketchbook. I like to keep these images as simple as possible, I don't want the image to be too 'fixed', I'd rather work out the detail when cutting my block.

No matter how hard I try to I just can't keep text out . . . but perhaps that's not surprising as I'm working on a book idea at the same time as exploring linocut ideas.

The Old Operating Theatre

Last September I visited the 300-year old Herb Garret, hidden away at the top of a narrow and steep spiral staircase in St Thomas's Church in Southwark . . . . And found the Old Operating Theatre.

This was a women's operating theatre and it was built into one end of the roof space in 1822 because there wasn't enough room in the hospital next door. At first glance this placement seems rather strange. But it makes more sense when it is realised that the wards of the South Wing of St. Thomas's Hospital were built around St. Thomas's Church. It was also approximately at the same level as the women's surgical ward which helped with the movement of patients into the theatre. The majority of cases were for amputations or superficial complaints because without anaesthetics or antiseptic conditions, it was too dangerous to do internal operations. Uuurrrrrggghh!

Placing the Theatre in the Herb Garret of the Church allowed for a separation from the ward and gave a separate entrance to students. The 1815 Apothecary's Act required apprentice apothecaries to attend at public hospitals, this meant that hordes of students poured in to watch operations. Before 1822, women were operated on in the ward - possibly causing a certain amount of distress to all the women concerned!

Anyhow, images and thoughts generated by the O.O.T. have stayed with me and a book has been brewing (I admit, at a leisurely pace) all this time.

While there I'd made sketches and noted ideas - but I didn't really know then what I wanted to say about it. After all I'd gone there expressly to visit the herb garret.

I drew a plan of the theatre, made a series of photocopies and played around with shapes and ideas. I found myself drawn to the many and various approaches to medicine. The history of medicine is really quite terrifying, some techniques seem quite barbaric to us now. 

Bloodletting, purging, blistering, the use of leeches . . . . and scant knowledge about hygiene. 

I don't know about you, but, I harbour the suspicion that some of our current theories and techniques will cause future generations to cringe. However . . .

This project was turning into a book, it was during the planning stages I started to place text about different medical approaches onto separate pages.

So we see: Heroic Medicine, Faith Healing, Barber Surgeons, Herbalism, and the Scientific Method.

And for quickness I carved a block from MDF, so that I could get some colour down.

Big revelation - MDF is so easy to carve, it prints really nicely, is cheap to buy and doesn't warp. 

How good is that.

This is where I'm at now. 

I've printed a series of O.O.T. plans for text placement and to make prototypes - should be finished this week - da-dah!

Downtown Auckland

What a way to start a holiday, a 12 hour sleep in a marshmallow bed at a swanky hotel right in the middle of town.


Dig the spiral staircase.

The city was slow to wake up and we had it to ourselves first thing in the morning. Sky tower the obligatory 1st stop.









Of course the guys in the orange 'jump suits' are about 20, who else leaps of off tall buildings?!**


Well apart from superwoman here!


If you look hard you can just make out the toes of my shoes.








I don't know how, but I managed to persuade C into the Auckland City Library for the Shades of Grey exhibition, about the life of Sir George Grey, explorer, politician AND Book lover.

For an army officer he had some very fine sketch books.


He was also a collector of books, this Rossdhu Book of Hours from the 1460's


A copy of Blake's Europe and America, and extremely rarely bound together in one volume, plates etched and printed by William Blake.


An 18th century Ethiopian manuscript, handwritten on paper and illustrated with small water colours.


And a great little exhibition of local photographs and postcards from 1890's to about the 1980's





















And then into Auckland Art Gallery. Some really powerful portraits, late 19th and early 20th century by Charles Goldie and Gottfried Lindauer.












Plus an exhibition of work by contemporary New Zealand artists.

I now feel I should have looked harder, but my impression at the time was that contemporary art (from most western countries) shares common sensibilities, so apart from a personal preference for individual pieces, the work could have been form anywhere and I could be in any one of many fine national galleries.

Window displays . . . .









The ugly sisters


Cinderella and her prince





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