After a long days stitching I decided to take myself to the local park for a bit of relaxtion. Of course my sketchbook came along, but I did forget my paintbox. These sketches were done with some water-soluble pencils that I did remember to take.
The egrets were most obliging, standing so still waiting for their dinner
Black Cormorants, a Great Egret, along with a Grey Heron
These birds were roosting near to the small Shinto shrine which is situated on a small island in the upper pool, or Kami-ike (which roughly translated means the Shrine pond).
Pencil sketch with colour added after I got home.
leonieandrews 
Hi Leonie, I love the spontaneity of your sketches onto pages of text. Are you thinking of translating any of these into embroidery or stitch? The use of positive and negative space, the freehand sketching and the detail in the text makes for a lovely composition. Glad you are enjoying getting out and about.
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Thanks Julie, it’s good to hear from you. At this stage I hadn’t thought of using them, but immediately I can see the possibility. What is certainly coming into my work is the question of positive and negative space. It’s been quite striking to me how it has come to the fore, particularly the idea of making shaped works, rather than only regularly formatted pieces.
As you would be only too well aware, there’s only so much time available on a residency, so the question is how to capture the ideas now and accept that many of them will not be realised for some time to come.
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oh those egrets are fabulous!
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Thanks Mo, they were extremely cooperative, unlike many other models!
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Beautiful, spontaneous, so lovely
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Thank you Rosie. I think I was in the moment.
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These drawings are wonderful, spontaneous but still beautifully composed. The background text is the perfect vehicle for them. Looking forward to more!
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I am enjoying working in this book. The paper is excellent, even for being nearly 60 years old , as far as we can tell.
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Gosh, just shows how good Japanese papers are!
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Beautiful sketches! I always like the combination of drawings with text. And so much of your (always interesting) work combines text and image to great effect.
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