A Linocut Course: Hunting the Wild Megalith

A few years back I walked across the South Wales Neolithic landscape with Welsh pre-historian Dewi Bowen as he researched his latest book, “Hunting The Wild Megalith“, following the trail of Y Twrch Trwyth (The Boar Hunt) from the book of Welsh legend, The Mabinogion. The path of the Boar Hunt coincides with most of the major prehistoric stone monuments in this ancient and mythological land.

I’m running a weekend linocut course at the end of February in Swansea Print Workshop which includes a short film by Melvyn Williams of my creative exploits as Dewi and I hunted the Wild Megalith. Click on this link to find out more about the weekend course …

The Process Of The Portrait:1

I carried on carving my little lino block portrait of one of the life models I work with at Swansea Print Workshop. I’ve done her hair and the outline of the main lines of her face, now I have to decide how I’m going to cut the rest. Lots of things I could do. Decisions…

Sketchbook Archives: 54

Going back to February 2015 for these people pictures, mostly drawn in my sketchbooks, although the bottom left is on a piece of vintage paper that I marbled before drawing with charcoal. The sketches on the top left were done in minutes, those at centre left, done in seconds – really speedy. I love looking through my sketchbook archives, but you know what? I’ve drawn probably thousands of people, but I don’t make use of these sketches, I don’t work them up into compositions. Perhaps this is something I should do.

#Caturday

It’s #Caturday Saturday and here’s a new quick sketch of Sparta Puss, just a couple of minutes so no details of her lovely Tortoiseshell markings. I struggled with her tail, I kept checking but that’s the way it was positioned, looks weird to me on the drawing.

For The Hour

This was the final pose for the final hour at the recent life drawing session at Swansea Print Workshop. I’d familiarised myself with the model’s face with a series of quick sketches ranging from 5 to 30 minutes. Then I had an hour to play with this pose. I did a 20 minute sketch (top left) then I decided I wanted to change my drawing style and do something more sculptural which took up the last 40 minutes. I think there’s scope to turn this into a linocut – watch this space…

Drawn with a graphite block onto a heavyweight vintage paper (no watermark).

Focus And Concentration

The middle poses in my last life drawing session, 15 minutes each, are when I start to focus and concentrate. I’ve done the warm ups to get the gist of her face, so now I’m really looking at the structure, proportions and details.

Portrait Drawing: Week 9

Last week was the 9th session since I started back at life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop after a long break (see here) and here are the warm-up sketches. I’m aiming to improve my portrait drawing over the next year. The first is a 5 minute sketch, the second a 10 minute, using a graphite block onto a good quality but cheap cartridge paper. Working with an unfamiliar model, it was interesting to draw a face partially obscured by an arm.

Scribbleheads

Chilling out the other evening, I started scribbling some little imaginary heads into my A6 Indigo-bound sketchbook. I rarely draw from my imagination, but it’s something I want to do more of as it stops me being too precious with what I draw.

Scribbling At Home

Just chilling out yesterday evening and I grabbed my little A6 Indigo-bound sketchbook and did some quick scribbling. Nice. Relaxing. Enjoyed. Sometimes art is very hard for me, most of the time in fact, but now and again it’s a gentle and quiet thing to do.

The Piano Players

Husb and I went to a neighbour’s party a couple of days into the New Year, it was lovely. There was lots of live music and our hostess played the piano with her granddaughter and provided song-sheets for guests to sing along. Great fun. Lots of traditional carols and some rousing classics sung with gusto like Bohemian Rhapsody, I Will Survive, and Summer Loving 😀 Of course, I had to have a scribble.