A Bit More Chine Collé

I printed up another lino block portrait with chine collé, this time with just a small fragment to highlight the moon; my last post showed a lino print with much more chine collé. I like to use shiny metallic foils, mostly from sweet (candy) wrappings. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer confectionery companies are using foils these days, switching to shiny crinkly plastic, which really isn’t suitable. Luckily there’s an old-fashioned sweet shop in Swansea Market that still sells foiled sweets and chocolates so I can get my foils there. Husb is happy…I don’t really like sweets and chocolate much, so he gets to eat them.

Using Chine Collé

This is one of my most recent series of linocuts, based on original portrait drawings. I had printed her before in black and white and yesterday, at a marathon printing session at Swansea Print Workshop, I printed her with some chine collé using gold and pink foils, black litho/relief ink by Cranfield and Hosho paper. Here’s the original without chine collé…

Blocks Ready To Print!

I spent the afternoon at Swansea Print Workshop, printing 12 portrait lino blocks onto some rather nice Japanese Hosho paper. Here are the blocks ready to go…

Sketchbook Archives: 65

Ten years ago, the July weather was mixed and I was on the beach for some of it. But it was still cool enough to enjoy some indoor events. There was quite a fashion for public storytelling back then, so I had a bit of a scribble as I listened. The sessions took place in the old courthouse attached to the old police station in Swansea, which now has a magnificent stained glass window. You can see that I’ve drawn a bit of it in the third sketch.

Life Drawing: A Face In Profile

Here’s the last pose from the recent life drawing session at Swansea Print Workshop, an hour long. I decided to go for a portrait because I really like faces in profile. I worked with Caran D’Ache NeoPastels onto vintage paper prepared with some left-over acrylic paint in a dusty pale blue. I don’t like working directly onto white and the paint, applied with a squeegee, is often mottled and interesting in its own right. This is a pretty good likeness, I’m pleased with it.

Life Drawing: The Ghostly Face

I prepared some vintage paper with a bluish acrylic paint, applied with a squeegee for my recent life drawing session and as I was sketching the model, I noticed that the uneven distribution of the paint was suggesting a ghostly face. I decided to stop drawing our model’s own face, I’ll go back to this and work up a face that is suggested by the different tones and shapes in the paint. This is similar to the way that some Surrealists worked in the past. I drew with Caran D’Ache Neopastels.

Life Drawing: Changing Medium

I changed the medium I use at last night’s life drawing session at Swansea Print Workshop. I’ve been using conté crayons but I switched to Caran d’Ache Neopastels. They’re so soft and buttery, gorgeous to use. I also changed the paper, preparing some vintage paper with a pale blue acrylic ground, which really complemented the pastels. These are 2 ten minute poses. I cropped the figure on the left as I don’t want to risk being censured for publishing a nude. There’s a much more prudish attitude to art than there was back in the heady early days of MySpace. Remember that?

Life Drawing: Over Compensating

This model has very large eyes and I’m struggling to get the proportions of her face right. This was the final drawing I did at last week’s life drawing session and although I think I got the eyes reasonably OK, I over-compensated by making the mouth and jawline bigger. I was drawing what I thought should be there not what was actually there!

Analysing…

I’m working with a new model at life drawing group, this is only the second session I’ve drawn her and I’m struggling to get a good likeness. I’m trying to analyse her features, but it’s not working out too well. She has exceptionally large eyes and I keep thinking my measurements are wrong. I’ll get there eventually and then I’ll wonder why I ever had a problem, but some faces are like that, very hard to draw at first.

Drawn in conté crayons onto heavyweight paper prepared with a green acrylic ground.

Sleepy Heat

The last of my life drawings from the other week when the heatwave was at it’s worst. The final pose for our model was a nice comfy lying-down one on some soft cushions. He had a bit of a doze, which is fine because he went above and beyond the call of duty by modelling during a heatwave. Life modelling isn’t easy in normal circumstances. I used white and sanguine conté crayons onto vintage paper prepared with an acryic ground in various greens.