Art and Design by Sacha Allen

I am a Designer, Maker, Artist and Illustrator. I live to create and express. Also to love.xxx Purchase my creations at http://www.etsy.com/shop/afropumpkin

[sachaallenartisan]

Birthday card i made for my Dad’s 60th last month.

Acrylic ink and paint on hot pressed watercolour paper 300gsm.

[sachaallenartisan]

Progress shots of embroidery sampling on white and navy in cotton and bamboo wool. My local haberdasher had a big sale and I wanted to stock up on non floss types of yarns and test them out for upcoming projects.

I really liked the way they caught the morning light as I tried to arrange them into a continuous rainbow, and it is so therapeutic to just stitch away without worrying about a design. I loved the way the moods changed as i worked my way through the rainbow and each hue altered the balances. They looked and felt so nice once I was done I had to frame them - in the one colour that doesn’t appear in the sample, duck egg blue!

A4 framed embroideries on Navy wool and White cotton drill. August 2017

[sachaallenartisan]

Monochrome spliney lines series, black ink on A3 watercolour paper.

Subconscious thought action painting, no planning just go!

From top to bottom:

Vortice 1

Vortice 2

Corpuscle

Seastorm

Minora Majora

Witches and Wizards weave (WWW) 6 x 5

The Curiousness of your Potential Kiss

Eye eye Horus, Isis Cries.

[sachaallenartisan]

Markmaking and colour testers!

Watercolour layers that worked better in quarters, chop chop!

Watercolour Droplets.

Muddying Cyan, reconstituted watery gouache mixed with browns to change the hue.

[sachaallenartisan]

Because a little goes a long way, what I like to do with new materials is make some basic line art using the leftovers and testing them out by reconstituting dried up gouache and filling them in to practise handling them and messing around. no fear of making mistakes and I can be free, usually left with something that looks nice and colourful anyway! really love the stained glass looking ones!

Gouache outlines and watercolour and gouache fills on 300 gsm coldpressed paper. Black ink too.

[sachaallenartisan]

Spamming you all with some Gouache testers!

Top photo is colour comparison between my really old Reeves gouache i’ve never used and Winsor and Newton Artist’s gouache, the basic colours are the same but the velvet finish and handle differ, W&N are glorious!! A little goes a long way and the pigments are finer and aren’t bulked out with chalk. I also have some Schminke Akademie gouache in the process colours and 2 browns. 

Just having fun testing them all out on some cold pressed 300gsm watercolour paper.

[sachaallenartisan]

October Drops!

On the very first day of the month...

Okay. So I've been frantically clearing my obligations for the past few months so I can start new work, and stocking up on lots of new materials that I'm dying to try out. I really wasn't trying to leave my flat this weekend and I got up this morning after completing my watercolour palette selection this week ready to unwrap and start. Not even half way through the top row I notice the Winsor orange red shade is actually a duplicate of the Winsor orange that came with set. The new pans even have the colours written of the side so it's easier to replace. You cannot tell until you have completely unwrapped them, so the wrong colour is in the orange red shade. So I go into Cass and luckily the flagship is the one nearest me and I explain and ask for a replacement. The guy opens 2 more to realise there is a problem with the batch. I'm happy to get a replacement from either of the 2 stores in Central London so he calls and explains to 2 stores and it turns out the same thing is apparent with the whole colour line. I dunno if Winsor and Newton made a mistake or are trying to palm off one colour as another. There is a mix of old stock and new in the full range and one of the blues I bought individually didn't come with a paper label you can see on my chart. But whatever, my well thought out balance is off and the closest replacement is a series 4 which is more expensive. But they gave it to me for free and let me keep the orange imposter for bringing it to their attention! So yay! Typical, all I wanna do is paint and I get drawn into a mini drama / possible pigment conspiracy!! 

2 first testers on cold pressed paper from the colours on my palette! Super intense and vibrant yay! And I love making the masked taped edges. Gotta create some colour and mixing charts next. The pigments collect in the grain and are absorbed really well! So much technique to grasp of pure watercolour before wilding out with mixed media!

Basic marks and testing the pigments on cold press paper. The colours are really vibrant and the marks are a little fuzzy upon drying. I need to sample some hot pressed too. I think this paper may take gouache and acrylic inks crisper.

I had to do hearts for my in palette guide!

Simple yet time consuming pigment charts on various less grained papers. Boring, but looks cute! I have to set aside some serious time for colour mixing too...

[sachaallenartisan]

I'm so excited with my new Windsor and Newton watercolour palette! I just realised I've never bought one since the one I was gifted at 15 which is VERY old. I've always made my own temporary ones using tubes and broken bits of pastels and shavings, so they are tailored to my projects. This palette is so lux and was 65% off, and there is space to add 13 more half pans if you forego brush space, I'm glad the colour selection is slightly different from what I expected - I can always add the metallic pigments based on cadmiums and cobalts, I have multiples of them already! Amazing, 20 years age difference between the 2 palettes, great quality materials really do last! Artist’s used palettes are works of art in themselves, I gorged myself checking them out on instagram and just saturating myself in colour in general. Itching to start colour charting and mapping out my full range of hues!!

[sachaallenartisan]

The latest embroidered hearts for my love heritage cushion. I haven’t worked on it for ages! It started off as a sampler for me to practise some skills as I was teaching my students too. I got stuck on satin stitch! And I was really just enjoying creating colour combinations.

These latest hearts i’ve been varying the thread thickness, splitting and mixing them to create gradients  and allowing the base fabric to show through.

These ones have names:

Action Bubble heart

Gradient Heartbreak; which coincidentally I finished the morning of the Pulse nightclub shooting which hurt me deeply as a bisexual woman.

Pastel leopard heart

I may give all the others official names!

[sachaallenartisan]

Intimacy

A series of 15 minute poses one rainy weekend in a typical British summer!!

 A3 watercolour on paper.

[sachaallenartisan]

My Etsy shop is now restocked with a vast selection for the holiday season. I have decided to showcase a mixture of styles as well as examples of previous stock so if something doesn’t take your fancy you can request a custom order as long as I have the leather!

https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/afropumpkin

All items are designed and made by me, by hand, here in London, UK

Treat yourself to a wearable piece of art this season.

[sachaallenartisan]

Monochromatic Twins Triptych, mixed media on A3 paper 2014-2015.

I finally finished this after a research and writing break, the final piece has been sitting half complete on my drawing board for a year.

Faceless and shifting planes of pattern as the twins layer up. I rarely make black and white pieces of work so this was really fun!

[sachaallenartisan]

“That’s not the colour I am nude”, A2 mixed media on paper 2013.

I realised I only posted a single image of this piece on mu blog way back when and today I felt like reposting it after everything that has been going on in the world and the effects of misogynoir has hit critical level for me recently.

Being a black woman hurts too much some days.

[sachaallenartisan]

Plinth. Mixed media on Paper A1.

[sachaallenartisan]

Patchwork 'Vexagons' baby blanket, 70cm x 94cm . Made with the final hexagons of vintage denim I have, thick quilting and backed in navy cotton. I wish i'd known how gorgeously this would quilt up as I now want to make a full sized blanket. It's gonna take ages to source some more denim as it turns out my source got deported last year.

I didn't even want to square off the edges, it's sooooo lovely!

[sachaallenartisan]

'I Love Clouds!', mixed media on cartridge paper A2, April 2014.

A piece I made in between the 2nd and 3rd illustrations of the triptych that served to cover up my portrait of my Twin Flame, it felt he was watching over me all day in  my work space!!!

Really fun to do and I just enjoyed the process.

[sachaallenartisan]

'Out of the Pink / The Cartography of Love', mixed media of cartridge paper, June 2014. The third and final part of my triptych.

I flattened my cheekbones somewhat so i may tweak it. I really love the pattern and intensity of colour in this piece.

Now the weight of these is lifted I can start producing all the other ideas that have been boiling away these past few years.