First few sketches of 2013

This sketch was the first of the year and it was done on the 1st of January.

Two random ones...

Today was my first outing of the year with the Dublin sketchers. We went to the National Art Gallery so here is the sketches from today. The one on the left is a statue- Girl reading by Patrick Macdowell. The one on the right is one of the walls in the cafe of the gallery.

 


















The next sketch is from a painting- Le Corsage Noir (the black corsage) by Berthe Merisot.

The Gallery is going to be doing some refurbishments over the next 3 years. They have a room at the poster with posters explaining what they are hoping to do. There is also a wooden model of the gallery. Here is a drawing of the model- the perspective is a bit off though. 

Dog pin

Today I attended a jewellery workshop at the Irish Design Shop. The two teachers Claire and Laura have a book that has lots of different outlines of things like animals, trees, leaves, cars and people. It comes with a cd so you can print out a particular image. They use these templates to give to people for their first project to get people used to piercing and also an introduction to soldering. I chose the dog above. I cut the shape with a piercing saw, filed and cleaned it, soldered a pin to the back then spray-painted it blue. 

Jewellery

The crafts council run a jewellery skills course which I am hoping to get onto this year. I am planning on attending a few weekend jewellery courses between now and when the interviews take place in June so that I can have the best chance of getting a place. I have tried twice before to get onto the course so I am hoping that it is third time lucky. I attended a workshop last weekend and I made the pendant shown below. It did take longer than planned to make this pendant but I think that was partially because I was out of practise. The design isn't based on anything specific although the teacher did think that it reminded her of ribs and someone else said it looked like a fish.  

The stone used here is malachite. Sorry for poor quality of photo- it is something I need to improve at.