The Cup spilleth over sketchbook page

In amidth of all the exhibition chaos (the new opening date is now the 23rd April!) I almost missed the announcement of a new challenge theme on the Sketchbook Challenge site. As you may remember I'm making a page in my sketchbook for each monthly theme and then go on and translate that page in some way into a Journal Quilt for the project of the Contemporary Quilt group. I love being able to combine things!

And this month I needed the challenge even more as it made me return to my studio and get down to some serious arting, which is my remedy for virtually everything that goes wrong. My studio is also my refuse from the big, bad world and being there is almost guaranteed to increase my physical and mental well being.

The theme this month is: Spilling Over and to me the old saying: the cup spilleth over was the first thing that came to mind while brainstorming. And the word cup made me grab the catalogue of the 1851 National Exhibition of which I am the happy owner. It's a vintage book and quite a bit of money was spend in order to obtain it so I don't ever cut into it but instead scan in what I need and use it like that. I found a most magnificent cup (made by Minton) picturing a river god and his lady love. I produced a watery landscape in my sketchbook (using watercolour pencils) to accompany the river god and placed the cup in transparency form in front of it. Then I started to think about what might be spilling over from my cup. The words were cut from a wide variety of magazines and glued down to almost look like a fountain, some spilling as far as the ground. Finally I used my Dymo writer to put the text: The Cup spilleth over, along the side in a vertical line.

Now working on the Journal Quilt which I'll show you here as soon as it's done!