I collect lots of different things. None of them necessarily valuable – just precious to me. Keys are one of my ‘things’. I can’t resist them – the older and rustier the better!

I have some found in a junk shop. They were already framed behind glass but I replaced the old fabric they were mounted on with a fragment of one of my quilts and the display case now hangs in my kitchen.

I’ve made a number of drawings and paintings of some of these keys in the past but I decided they’d serve me better in other ways so I’ve torn them out of an old sketchbook and pasted them into my course sketchbook. Nothing wrong with a bit of cannibalization!

In the photo above you can see one of my painted keys collaged to the page on the left alongside one of the antique keys I worked from. The two keys on the right are on a sheet of paper that has only been glued on two sides. This has formed a ‘pocket’ where I intend to keep photos and other relevant bits and pieces that I haven’t used so far. The rows of tiny keys were drawn using childrens’ plastic stencils – it’s handy having a grandchild you can borrow from!

I made the little outlines with a fine liner pen and decided to fill some of the larger shapes. It’s good to vary the scale of the keys I think. The tiny ones act like a border or frame to enclose the large ones. Looking at the open page now I think it would be improved if I continue the row of small keys across to the right hand page – it will create a visual connection from one page to the next. The beauty of working in a sketchbook is that you can take time to reflect on what you’ve done and go back to add more at any time.

I’m not done with the keys yet but I have unfinished business with my salmon corkscrew!

He’s looking pretty fierce here. No doubt you’ll notice I’ve added some colour when Module 1 is all supposed to be about black and white! What are rules about if not to be broken!

I hope you’ll check back in a day or two to see where that’s going. You can probably tell even at this early stage in the course that I am deviating slightly from the samples we use to illustrate the workbook. I want to show that a sketchbook can be a very personal thing if you choose objects that have some meaning to you. It’s perfectly OK to work with any source of inspiration that appeals to you. Our examples are suggestions – not hard and fast rules but although I’m varying the items I choose to work with I am using the same techniques and art mediums we include in the course, I’ve just run ahead with the colour ‘cause I know what Module 2 has in store and I’m impatient!

Talk to you again soon.

Bye for now,
Linda