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| Cross Farm Inktense Pencil sketch by Teresa Newham |
For this year's #HertsOpenStudios demonstrations, I was mostly working in Inktense Pencil, making sketches from photos on my iPad. Backlit on the screen, photos have a wonderful vibrancy which is often lost when they're printed out.
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| the Sunflower sketch taking shape © Teresa Newham |
It was a good opportunity to work up some of this summer's photos into something a little more - I'd been wondering whether the Cross Farm picture might make a good print, for example - and to experiment with different pencil techniques.
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| Sunflower Inktense Pencil sketch by Teresa Newham |
The beauty of these pencils is that they are easily set aside when visitors arrive - a must for an Open Studios event - and can be taken up again without losing your thread; I started the dahlias one afternoon and finished them three days later at the next session.
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| various stages of the Dahlias sketch © Teresa Newham |
A wide variety of colours can be made with just a few of the pencils, and I enjoyed straying from my usual palette and having some fun with them. I particularly loved the contrast in the photo of the dahlias - the leaves really were that colour!
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| Dahlias Inktense Pencil sketch by Teresa Newham |
Some of the sketches were done more quickly than others, depending on who came in while I was making them; and the Hitchin Lavender picture took only an afternoon, because I wanted to get on with something else at the following session . . .
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| the lavender sketch, emerging © Teresa Newham |
I was tempted to make more sketches, but I'd used up all the remaining leaves of watercolour paper in the book; and my spare paper was well buried in the studio beneath the exhibits. I didn't fancy trying to dig it out!
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| Hitchin Lavender Inktense Pencil sketch by Teresa Newham |
With Christmas not that far away, I decided to jolly up some plain gift tags, taking care not to get ink on the general public. It was by far the smallest piece of lino I'd ever worked with, but perfect for demonstrating the technique in a small space.
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| my smallest demo ever (!) . . . © Teresa Newham |
A huge thanks to all our lovely visitors who made this year's #HertsOpenStudios such a great fune, and to Sue Wookey for sharing a studio with me!
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| . . . resulted in these! © Teresa Newham |
The colours on the dahlias are glorious, and I love the little gift tags!
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