About an hour ago, twilight was coming on and Husb and I needed a bit of a walk. It’s a warm evening so we strolled to a nearby small park. More of a public gardens really, and I sat on a bench and had a quick scribble. The dark was coming down so I worked quickly, squinting my eyes to capture the light and shade in front of me. I worked with a ballpoint pen and HB pencil.
I scribbled this in Waterstone’s café the other day. I liked the signage on the wall and the chap taking tea beneath it. I started to draw his companion, but they upped and left. How rude!
Here’s another quick scribble from my visit to Waterstone’s café the other day. I like to use the continuous line method of sketching when there’s some depth to whatever’s in front of me. I find it’s the best technique to help draw perspective and proportion in a hurry.
Before Covid, remember that far back? It seems like ages to me. Anyway, before Covid I used to go regularly to the little café upstairs in Waterstones bookshop in Swansea. I’d have a little pot of tea and scribble for a while. I could look down into the street and get some great perspectives. The other people in the café mostly seem to go there after they’ve bought a book downstairs, to make a start reading it. That’s good for me because they’re usually too absorbed to realise that I’m scribbling them.
Back to October 2014 for this #Caturday Archive. I was still having fun with digital drawing, using a free Markers app on my Samsung Tablet Note 8. SpartaPuss the Naughty Tortie was about 5 years old here. She had her back to me but was interested in what I was doing, you can tell by her ears.
After the mess I made of my last pair of legs (a drawing, not actually my gams), I sketched out the next pair in pencil, instead of going straight in with a ballpoint pen. I’ll sleep on it and when I’m happy with the pencilling, I’ll work it up in ink. These legs are part of practice I’m doing to develop some ideas I have for lino prints.
May 2014 and I was well into my digital drawing phase. I had a Samsung Galaxy Note 8 with a free “Markers” app and I really took to it. “Markers” is the only drawing app that I’ve liked and it was so convenient tucking a NotePad into my bag instead of the usual overload of sketchbooks, drawing materials and a drawing board.
Sometimes you put a lot of effort into something, stand back in satisfaction when it’s finished and…it sucks! It’s wrong! That’s what happened when I tried drawing the foot on the right a few days after drawing the one on the left. Maybe I should have done them at the same time.
My childhood seemed to be full of wet Sunday afternoons, back in the days of the dinosaurs before the Internet or Cable TV, when few working class people had phones or cars so there wasn’t much to do except loll around the house. I used to help our Mam with her baking, she’d often bake enough to last a few days. Tasty but cheap fare – jam tarts, Teisen Lap (Welsh Plate Cake), fruit tarts, boiled fruit cake, Welsh Cakes. Pastry was made with lard, or hard margarine, or both, never butter (way too expensive). Cakes too were made with hard margarine; tarts and crumbles filled with seasonal or foraged fruits. These cheap but tasty treats helped to bulk out our meagre diet.
Today it poured down. Our glorious summer is well and truly over. So I baked. I made a Tarte Tatin for Husb and a gluten-free, dairy-free spiced apple cake for me. My digestive system has become more sensitive as I get older, so I’m learning a lot of new recipes.
I carried on playing with some Derwent Aquatone watercolour sticks that I was given a while back. I did a blend of Prussian Blue, Ultramarine and Light Blue a couple of weeks ago and today worked in some Spectrum Orange and Middle Chrome. The cat shapes are from a stencil I cut of our little Bill the rescue cat.
I’m used to using watercolour paints that dissolve when they’re wet, even after they’ve dried on the paper. These ones don’t which has implications for how I continue to use them. But for the time being, I’m just experimenting.
scribblah 