Mad Hatter's Arty Tea Party

Eat me cakes, Chedi macaroons, & tarts.

 Spring 2012, I read about a Mad Hatter's Tea Party arranged by illustrator Lynn Chapman (Lynn's blog is here). I was so inspired by the drawings the group produced I decided to arrange my own tea party, which I held last weekend.

Planning started this January, whilst I was home in UK, and saw me making a dormouse, which inspired us all at the tea, as our drawings below show.

3 dormouses or is that dormice?

In a UK charity shop, I bought a silver tiered cake stand, which conveniently screwed apart so I could pack it easily. At the tea, I added tarts (custard not jam) and cakes I iced with "eat me". Some macaroons from the Chedi hotel were added later. I attempted to captured them all in the sketch at the top of this post. The other thing I did in the UK was to get material for my Hatter's hat and planned how to make it, with a great suggestion from mum.

Homemade hat and roses

In Muscat, I made my hat, paper roses - painting some white ones red, but the scones were bought at a local deli.
 
My flat is small so it was a small but select group of us who participated. Unfortunately one lady got lost and never arrived.

I for one had great fun and think the others did too.

The group shot thanks to the magic of a self-timer - just

Hidden Beauty. Festival Face No.7

Hidden Beauty. Ink. 36x26cm ©Sue Pownall 2013

On 21st November I made the first guide pencil marks on this drawing and it has been lurking ever since.
From starting it, I've ...

  finished Festival Face #6, you can see her here,

drawn and donated a drawing for a charity exhibition,

had a commission to do,

arranged & attended 2 sketching events,

had a stall for my art at a winter fair,

produced 2 illustrations for The Story Shack,

and spent 3 weeks on holiday in UK.

I guess that's enough reasons for it to have taken so long. 

Chinese New Year: the year of the snake

Year of the snake © Sue Pownall 2013

Just for fun, a drawing to celebrate the Chinese New Year, which since Sunday is the year of the snake.

Reference photo from BBC Nature site.
Chinese followers- I apologise for the bad calligraphy.


Last year's Chinese New Year's drawing can be viewed here: Year of the dragon

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Over on my site, you can see my first drawing of 2013, a commission, in Gallery 1 (just click the link).

Dreads & tats

Gaby, Charcoal A3© Sue Pownall 2013

Whilst in the UK I went to 2 more life drawing classes. As with drawing Terry I took charcoal to draw with as I'd had such fun before. In the 2nd class, I also tried using watercolours directly without under-drawing. I think as a side-effect of drawing portaits for my Festival Faces series, with both models I ended up drawing portraits during the long poses. Gaby was so pleased with my drawing of her that she took a photo of it. Below are other drawings of Gaby.

Gaby reclining. A3 Direct painting with Payne's Grey watercolour

Gaby A3 watercolour.

The day before I left UK, I got to draw Rachel and her tattoos again. I drew her before in September 2011 and you can see those drawings here. With the first long pose I drew the charcoal portrait below, which I think is a fair likeness. Then did the rough full body drawing. Can you tell I was pre-occupied with what I had to do before my flight the next morning?

Rachel Charcoal A3 © Sue Pownall 2013

Rachel in charcoal A3

Finally,  I drew another portrait of Rachel as a concerted effort to focus and relax.

Portrait in sepia pencil on A3

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Please note: I am switching over to blogging through my site, www.suepownallartist.co.uk/blog-art-of-a-nomad and plan to stop duplicating posts here. May I suggest you adjust your RSS feeds and readers to follow there?