Tightly Packed

I went up to Aberdare on Saturday to a “Cost of Living” rally where Mick Lynch, General Secretary of the RMT Union was one of the speakers. I did a warm-up sketch to get started, working with the cramped conditions, peeking between tightly-packed shoulders to get a look at the speakers at the front.

The Upper-Lip-Hamster.

Went to a 60th birthday party – going to a lot of these recently – and people were wearing fake moustaches. It was weird seeing normally clean-shaven mates with upper-lip-hamsters 😀 Of course, I had to have a scribble! I used a ballpoint pen into my A5 leather-bound sketchbook.

Exhibition Time!

The drawings I did at the Swansea Fringe at the back end of 2022 are now being exhibited in one of Swansea’s live music venues, The Bunkhouse. It opened tonight, work by 5 artists in the downstairs bar. The top two rows in the photo are my sketches, the two bottom rows are drawings byContinue reading “Exhibition Time!”

Pictures For An Exhibition.

I did a whole load of drawings at Crowleys Rock Bar in the Swansea Fringe back before Christmas and they’re going to be in an exhibition at another rock music venue, The Bunkhouse, in Swansea! Cool! The drawings are in my sketchbook which I don’t want to dismember, so I scanned and printed a selectionContinue reading “Pictures For An Exhibition.”

It May Be Finished!

I think this little painting may be just about finished. I’ll sleep on it, but I don’t think I’ll be doing much more, maybe a little softening on the arm. I’ve never done anything like this before, working directly from a sketch and splashing paint randomly in layers, scattering rice into pools of watery pigment,Continue reading “It May Be Finished!”

Going Psychedelic!

I’ve swirled a final watery paint layer onto my two girls – this time in Pthalo Blue (red shade) from Liquitex, tipping the canvas so the paint ran across randomly. I dabbed at parts with a paper kitchen towel to reveal the yellows, reds and oranges beneath and threw more rice onto it, forming aContinue reading “Going Psychedelic!”

Layering Transparency.

After laying down a translucent ground of Indian Yellow acrylic paint (Liquitex Heavy Body), I brushed some watered down transparent Naphthol Red (a hot, bright red) and tipped the canvas so it formed runs and drips across the yellow areas. As an experiment I threw some grains of rice across it to see what wouldContinue reading “Layering Transparency.”

The Start Of A Painting.

I did a sketch at a fundraising event last week and I like it so much that I’m going to have a bash at making a painting from it. I don’t normally paint from sketches, although I often develop printmaking projects from my sketchbooks, so I’m going to have to approach this in a veryContinue reading “The Start Of A Painting.”

Rough and Irritating.

I’m working on my niece’s eyes and I’m now finding it difficult because the canvas is rough and it’s hard to control my brushstrokes. I only re-started painting again, after a 4 decade break, at the beginning of lockdown in Spring 2020, and I’d forgotten how irritating canvas can be. But it’s a challenge andContinue reading “Rough and Irritating.”

Getting Down To The Details.

I’ve been working on a painted portrait of my great-niece for a while now. I pick it up and put it down and leave it for a while. I’ve gone through many stages of underpainting and now I’ve started working on the fine details. Still a fair amount of work to do, but I thinkContinue reading “Getting Down To The Details.”