This horrible lurgi has lasted so long that I’ve missed three weekly life drawing sessions at Swansea Print Workshop. I’ve been cataloguing old work and coming across stuff I’d forgotten about. I went through a phase of drawing with oil pastels into A3 canvas pads, mainly because I’d been given canvas pads for a present. Here’s one from about 5 years ago. I was surprised that I was using such decorative backgrounds. I still have quite a few canvas sheets left – I think I’ll dig them out and use them – when this darned lurgi lets me get back to work!
Wobbly Lurgi Man
29 JanI finally went to the doctor today because my lurgi just wasn’t shifting. I had to wait a while so I got stuck in, drawing the chap opposite me in the waiting room. Unfortunately, it was boiling in there and that set off my hideous hacking cough, which made the drawing very wonky. I had to keep putting it down to go out into the corridor where it was cooler and my cough calmed down a bit.
Turns out it isn’t seasonal flu, but a bacterial infection that snuck into my lungs when my immune system was successfully fighting off a viral throat infection, which is what I first went down with almost a fortnight ago. I’ve been hanging on thinking it’ll go, as viral infections do, but it was just getting worse. Anyway, I’ve started on antibiotics this evening and I’m already feeling better with hardly any cough. Hopefully I’ll be back doing some non-wonky art in a day or two. Sparta’s getting into posing with my sketchbook now.
Return Of The Lurgi
27 JanOoooffff! Just when you think it can’t get any worse, it does with a vengeance. Serves my own right for being complacent and thinking I was well enough to go off playing in the snow instead of nursing the rotten chest infection I had. The next day I was well and truly poleaxed and I’ve been in bed for the last 4 days. I haven’t been able to blog or draw, reading hasn’t been easy because my eyes hurt so much and my body feels like I’ve been used as a doormat by a Woolly Mammoth. I haven’t been as ill as this for 25 years and that was a rotten chest infection too.
But thanks to the marvels of the Internet, my enforced bedrest was relieved by watching art documentaries on YouTube, first some on Paleolithic cave art, which is a passion of mine and then the entire BBC series with Nigel Spivey, How Art Made The World. If you haven’t see it, believe me, it’s brilliant.
I saw some paleolithic art close up when I visited Pakistan a few years back. The bus driver stopped on a mountain road next to some rocks which were smothered with ‘petroglyphs’, pictures of animal and the occasional human carved into the rockface. I drew some into my travel sketchbook and when I came back, I carved some of them into lino and printed them up.
I’ve been a bit bonkers about paleolithic art since.
Egg’n’Chips Old School
23 JanThat darned lurgi is still hanging on but I was well enough to get down to the studio and the print workshop today …… IN THE SNOW……!!!! YAAYY at last, everywhere else in Britain has had snow and now it’s our turn. Husb fancied chips for lunch so we went to the Windsor Cafe, an old school chippie with a caff attached and I had double egg and chips. I’d put a nutritious, healthy casserole in the slow cooker for our evening meal, so lunchtime I loaded up on the carbs, fat and cholesterol. MMMMMMM YUM!
Here’s an elderly chap sitting at a nearby table. He had a good nosh too. Drawn with a Pentel Vpen into my blue silk jewelled rather over-the-top A6 sketchbook 🙂
Now we’re off out into the snow for the opening of the new exhibition at The Brunswick. With cake mmmmmm.
Kara Seaman’s lovely collagrams in North Wales 🙂
Pollards
20 JanI went for a stomp about in the twilight, still freezing, and came across this row of pollarded trees near the Guildhall with a half moon with a frosted ring hanging in the sky above a bright planet. The practice of pollarding is often criticised because it makes the trees look ugly but it dates from medieval times when trees were pollarded for livestock food or for fence posts. Nowadays, it’s usually to keep them to a reasonable height in an urban environment. I like the look of them, especially in winter without their leaves.
Cold Scribbling
19 JanHusb and I trekked up Constitution Hill a couple of hours ago so I could go and draw in the twilight in Rosehill Quarry. The Hill is extremely steep and cobbled, cycling races are held on it, and we had a good workout. The Quarry was still covered in snow. I find it useful to draw when it’s really cold because it forces me to be very quick and capture the essence, or an impression, of what’s there instead of labouring to do a topographical landscape drawing, which has always been my problem with trying out landscapes in the past.
I drew this into my 15cm square handmade Khadi paper sketchbook with compressed charcoal, conte crayon and white oil pastel over a grey ink wash. Now we’re off to a restaurant and a party. Still some life left in the old dogs yet 😀