Newsletter from My Studio

Yes! May is here! Top 9 highlights of the month

May 01, 2024

Hi friends!

May is normally delightful here in South Yorkshire and I hope it will be a wonderful one this year again. I have quite a lot of exciting commissioned work in the pipeline for May, including a big project with the home of the Wesleys in Epworth. May is also my birthday month so we’ll try to do something special and maybe eat some cake.

This month for my newsletter, I’m sharing my top 9 highlights of the past few weeks with a few photos and a video.

The bluebells in our local woods. If you didn’t catch it, I’ve sketched this a lot, see that here.

All the local blooms. The tulips, the lilacs, even the humble dandelions. They are all gorgeous inspiration to draw and I’m now looking into how they can provide pigments to create my own watercolours and pastels.

This Georgian House Sweet Shop in Bakewell. I would have stayed in there for years. Why are nostalgic shops so comforting? The counters, the choice, the charm.

Being on artist Sue Prince’s organic farm and talking pigments and folktales with her in her studio. We share a love for Bayeux tapestry and earthy colours. I must go back soon.

Watching the boys getting creative in my studio one sunny morning of the Easter break, still in their pjs. I just stood there at the door and took in the sweetness of the moment.
6. A Toulouse-Lautrec-inspired drawing session which brought me right back to Paris and deep desire to go visit my sister there. A day later, we booked our trains.

Learning from Monet using watercolour pastels and finding inspiration in a local garden.

Yesterday, I joined a local primary school class to talk about my work and how the same location can be drawn with very different colours, depending on the weather. I painted a calm day scene (did this the day before) and then I did a little demo of how we could draw a seascape in the storm. We got to imagine we were the waves and the windy rain with our arms and bodies and we made fun stormy noises with our voices. Then they painted a postcard each, on a calm day or a stormy day, their choice. I’m so grateful for this opportunity to see their little minds at work. They had such imaginative narratives to tell me. So many young artists!

I received these paints in the post from my friend Erin in the USA. They are made from soil and pigments and watercolour media (water, acacia gum, honey, vegetable glycerin and clove oil. So fascinating! I made a swatch of each of them and drew today’s MAY sketchbook spread with them. Very exciting!
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Other LITTLE TREASURES

Today all 5 of us went to the woods and each of us had a butterfly land on our head. It was sort of magical!
Seeing little seedlings grow, including madder which will take 4-5 years before I can use its roots. And reading about seeds in the Seed Saving Project.
As mentioned above, it was a delight to meet Derbyshire-based Sue Prince during our camping trip. All five of us loved seeing her organic farm (the boys played in the garden with her grandsons) and her renovated barn turned into gallery. Her work was especially interesting to me as she uses egg tempera, inspired by the discoveries she made on a trip to Sweden a few years back. She uses pigments bought from the London shop Cornellison. This name is coming up quite a lot so I think I’ll be heading there next time I’m in London.
Mike made sushi for the first time. It was yum!
I made French galettes on a special pan we bought months ago. It was ok but I’ll look forward to trying again.
Seeing all sorts of birds in our garden, more on that in my previous post.
Continuing my weekly journals has been really joyful, though I got unusually frustrated with my spread last week, it continues to be a lovely opportunity to reflect and get creative.
Thanks again for reading and for your support, whether you’re new here or an old faithful friend. Hope you have a lovely month of May.
Helen xx