BirdBrain Designs

sketching

my return

by 13 Comments

It has been months since I have done a post. If you are reading this, thank you for staying with me. I’ve had time to think about the blog and what I want to do with it. For a time I thought it was done. Instagram is such  quick alternative and I’ve been keeping up there–so you can always use the button in the menu above to see what I’ve been up to. But the blog is for more extended writing and also a place where you can see what I’ve made and purchase if you want to. We’ve revamped the shop — but more on that in a few weeks. I’ll send out notification, so let me know if you want to be on the list.

I’ve also been sewing more of my own clothes and I want to share the wonderful indie patterns I’ve found and some of the things I’ve been making. More of that to come in September.

Right now I want to show you the new travel tote I made for my upcoming trip to Scandinavia. I was given a marvellous trove of designer leather in the spring and this is the first I have used any of it. This is not recycled leather, but surplus and I am delighted to ‘repurpose’. There will be some gorgeous colours and textures coming later. This is mocha waxed canvas and brown leather with a great Japanese cotton lining–lots of pockets and a wide crossbody strap. I look forward to slinging it over my shoulder, filled with all my travel essentials. 

And on the sketching front…we spent most of the summer at the lake where I was working on sketches of trees and water. Not easy. We did make a couple of trips to the nearby town of Bancroft where I had  chance to do some sketches of the old buildings. Here are two.

I’ll write again when I’m home from the trip–with some thoughts on the area I’ve wanted to visit forever, some sketches and some photos. Thanks again for sticking with me.

reset and inspiration on Lake Ontario

by Leave a Comment

This past weekend we spent a beautiful afternoon on the shore of Lake Ontario. We ate our lunch on the beach and I had time for a quick sketch of another tenacious tree. It’s been a while since we have been out to that gorgeous isolated expanse and the colours and textures of the day have remained with me.

I had taken an extended, unplanned break from the studio, leaving all leather and sewing firmly under wraps and was actually looking for a way back in. I have a list of projects but nothing inspired me to actually thread the machines and start. The colours of the day on the lake held the key. When we got home, I pulled out my box of remnant leather pieces and began building some pouches in the colours of the day–shoreline and sky. The small Strand collection of pouches is made of leather remnants with salvaged cotton linings–mostly from the Textile Museum sale. It feels good to make useful things of beauty from left overs. 

I find this size of pouch, approximately 7″ x 4.5″, very useful for travelling. My passport fits in comfortably and I like to keep different currencies separate and also to save receipts, tickets etc. I often take two or three along in my backpack. These pouches will be in the online store soon. Send me a note if you are interested.

sketching in Avignon june 2018

by Leave a Comment

Here are a few more sketches from my trip to France in June. After London we took the Eurostar directly to Avignon where we stayed for three and a half days before heading off to our sketching course in Provence. We stayed right in the centre of the old town. The weather was perfect and we wandered around the narrow streets trying to capture the views. Lots of perspective challenges.

an update and a scribbly sketch

by Leave a Comment

I sat in the window of a local cafe and sketched this scribbly fragment of a great old building. It’s sunny, but still very cold in my part of the world and it’s much nicer to sketch from the warmth of a cafe sipping a hot drink. I was fresh from a visit to the dentist and it felt good to let the freezing thaw out while I traced the lines of the limestone and brick. I haven’t been sketching very much for one reason and another–but I’ve taken on a small project which will have me sketching local buildings in the next few weeks. This is just a start–but with sun in the forecast for the next few days, I hope to post some more. 

back at the moodie cottage

by Leave a Comment

I’ve written about the Moodie Cottage before. In fact it is almost two years since I sketched it.  For that sketch I was sitting in my car. This week has been far too cold for that, so this was done from a photo taken in the bright winter sun yesterday. This is the back end of the house where I lived in the 1970’s, a lifetime ago now. Susanna Moodie settled in the main house in 1840, several more lifetimes ago. Her life here, 130 years earlier, was considerably harder than mine. The house is not giving up any secrets of her time or mine–but standing solid and elegant still almost two centuries later. 

back to sketching

by Leave a Comment

It is terrifically cold these days where I live. The CBC reported that today was the coldest day on this date since the early 1960’s. -18 C with a wind chill of -30C. It’s far to cold to sketch outside–but the light and shadows on the snow are so beautiful they are hard to resist. So, I headed out with my camera and then painted at home by the fire. I’m on a quest to paint all my favourite buildings in my city. As I sketch them I learn so much about their structure and design, about the architects who designed them and the owners who preserved them. Even though I have admired these structures for years, I learn so much more with a paint brush in hand.

end of the season

by Leave a Comment

It is always hard for me to close up the cottage. This year it has been harder as the hot and humid weather makes it seem more like July -the July we did not have this year.

One of my favourite things about the cottage is the screened-in porch. I love to lie on the old lounge under the yellow light and read as darkness falls. In September we are usually sitting around the wood stove but this past weekend I was on the porch and outside counting the stars in the clear dark sky. It was hard to leave. We will be back to put the final touches on the close-up, but the beds have been stripped and the porch stacked with canoes, so there will be no more quiet island nights with the sole yellow reading light until next year.

Here are some photos of the last boat ride, the winterized boathouse and a couple of sketches.

 

toronto visit

by Leave a Comment

I was in Toronto for a short while last week. I visited a darling new family member, headed out on the streetcar for some fabric and two new patterns at the Workroom, saw Dunkirk and did this quick sketch of the back of a building on the corner by the subway station.  We have been so fortunate to have such great weather, so I am trying to fit a sketch in whenever I can.

A Trip to Main Duck

by Leave a Comment

Last week we were lucky enough to make a trip to Main Duck Island. This is a 600 acre island in the middle of Lake Ontario, (so close to the American/Canadian border that my cell phone welcomed me to the US.) We made the trip with a small group of historians and birders and a film maker documenting the last lighthouses on Lake Ontario. It was a glorious September day, the lake calm and turquoise with little wind. The trip out on a commercial fish tug took almost two hours. We walked the 1.5 miles across the island to the lighthouse keepers’ house, abandoned now that the light is automated, and the stunning lighthouse. After lunch on the shore of the lake I opened my sketchbook to document the weathered house and the famous light, hoping to capture their elegance and tenacity. 

The island was once owned by John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State under President Eisenhower. However, in 1976 the Nature Conservancy of Canada carried out the negotiations to purchase from then owner, Robert Hart, and resold it to the Canadian Government. The island is now a National Park, a haven for birds and wildlife. We saw hundreds of Monarch Butterflies on their way south and many migrating birds. With its abundance of natural beauty, as well as excellent docking facilities and trails, it is truly a Canadian treasure.

pages from my French sketchbook

by 1 Comment

It’s been a week since I arrived home from my sketching trip in the south of France. I am gradually scanning my sketches and finishing the half-done ones. Here is the last sketch I did, one of my favourite streets in Limoux, narrow and winding as they all are, but this one with its own arch. It’s just off La Place de la Republique and on the way to the Vieux Pont, a well travelled route. I stood leaning against a wall and sketched the view, paint added later.

And here is the first sketch done the day after we arrived. Again a narrow, winding street but his time I had a bench to sit on. I was working on perspective the whole time I was there, so I hope you can see some improvement from this one to the top sketch. 🙂

I find that it is the small sketches, done quickly as I am sharing a cafe table or leaning against a wall that are the most memorable. This one in La Caunette, a tiny village with a great outdoor café.

I loved this red door alongside the town square in Camon.

A finally the view from the hills above the town of Puivert.