The Online Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers have been running a workshop on sketchbooks. About a year ago I took the decsion to keep a sketchbook rather than just mount the bits that "worked" in a folder. I paint a lot in natural dye which are very watery so I needed something very heavy duty and bought my self a RKB Fat PAd with 300g/m2 or 140lb NOT water colour paper which was the heaviest I could get. It has been a discipline but I have enjoyed using it and have justt filled all the pages although some are real disasters! However I bought 2 more but regret not buying one of the Fat pads again as I liked it the best but it was very expensive ( £25 or so ) However I still felt I was not quite getting there with my sketchbook there were lots of different images but not one that had been fully developed. So I was pleased to join in the Online wsd workshop. One can drop in and out and it is really interesting watching how other people develop their ideas. The suggestion was that we should use cityscape but my eye was caught by a picture on the front page of the Guardian showing Porthcawl Lighthouse in South Wales almost submerged by a very high sea. This was about two weeks ago. The picture on the right above was the first one I did from the image using natural dye paints and pastels. The one to the left ( don't ask Google put them in that order why I dont know!) is the second one also in natural dyes. The one underneath is painted using indigo and my own gallotannic ink,

Google won't let me add any more images so onto my next post with the rest