Prepping

There comes a point where you have to stop doing source material – drawings and photos and so on- and start choosing and preparing your source images for developing into artworks. I’m planning on doing some silk screen prints from some of the images gathered through the past three months or so in the Waun Wen area of the city and the first stage is to look through the huge amount of photos that photographer Melvyn Williams has taken, as he’s been shadowing me on my Sunday drawing walks.

And then I’m putting them through an Adobe Photoshop “Cut Out” filter to make them a bit more abstract. It helps me to get an idea of how they might start looking in the silk screen process. I’ve loads more to look at and play with ….

Part of the Home and Hinterland community arts project in partnership with Swansea University’s Taliesin Arts Centre.

A Chance To Own One Of My Artworks

I have some small screenprints for sale, inspired by my drawings of the antique taxidermy collection at Swansea Museum. I have given these vintage artifacts a modern twist by combining them with images of rubbish – old fruit nets, bubble wrap and plastic – highlighting the problem of human pollution and how it affects wildlife.

To buy my work on the Swansea Print Workshop site please click the image to the left.

20 percent of the cost of each screenprint sold goes to support Swansea Print Workshop, which receives no public funding.

Masked On The Bus

I didn’t go on public transport for ages because of the pandemic, but as the lockdown lifted I started using the bus occasionally to get to Waun Wen for my community arts project. I had to have a scribble of course. Usually there are not many people on the bus and so far everyone I’ve seen has worn a mask.

Part of the Home and Hinterland community arts project in partnership with Swansea University’s Taliesin Arts Centre.

A Chance To Own One Of My Artworks

I have some small screenprints for sale, inspired by my drawings of the antique taxidermy collection at Swansea Museum. I have given these vintage artifacts a modern twist by combining them with images of rubbish – old fruit nets, bubble wrap and plastic – highlighting the problem of human pollution and how it affects wildlife.

To buy my work on the Swansea Print Workshop site please click the image to the left.

20 percent of the cost of each screenprint sold goes to support Swansea Print Workshop, which receives no public funding.

Getting There

Sometimes I walk up to Waun Wen, I live within walking distance, but it’s uphill most of the way – easier on the way back. Sometimes I cadge a lift. And then sometimes I get a bus, but not often because I’m being cautious about the pandemic. Here’s a quick sketch at the central bus station. It’s very futuristic, quite sci-fi.

Part of the Home and Hinterland community arts project in partnership with Swansea University’s Taliesin Arts Centre.

A Chance To Own One Of My Artworks

I have some small screenprints for sale, inspired by my drawings of the antique taxidermy collection at Swansea Museum. I have given these vintage artifacts a modern twist by combining them with images of rubbish – old fruit nets, bubble wrap and plastic – highlighting the problem of human pollution and how it affects wildlife.

To buy my work on the Swansea Print Workshop site please click the image to the left.

20 percent of the cost of each screenprint sold goes to support Swansea Print Workshop, which receives no public funding.

From The Top

Another little quickie sketch from my walks around Waun Wen in Swansea. This is from the last street before the next area starts and I’m standing (in the freezing cold) at the top of some very, very steep steps looking over to the other side of Waun Wen. The area is built on two hills on either side of a valley. I guess that years ago the River Burlais might have run down the valley (it’s underground now), but these days the area is cut through by a dual carriageway, a rotten bit of town planning in my opinion. But that’s what you get when petrol heads are put in charge of these things. Never mind, it’s still lovely.

Part of the Home and Hinterland community arts project in partnership with Swansea University’s Taliesin Arts Centre.

A Chance To Own One Of My Artworks

I have some small screenprints for sale, inspired by my drawings of the antique taxidermy collection at Swansea Museum. I have given these vintage artifacts a modern twist by combining them with images of rubbish – old fruit nets, bubble wrap and plastic – highlighting the problem of human pollution and how it affects wildlife.

To buy my work on the Swansea Print Workshop site please click the image to the left.

20 percent of the cost of each screenprint sold goes to support Swansea Print Workshop, which receives no public funding.

Shadows On The Steps

Here’s another little sketch from my regular Sunday walks around the Waun Wen area of the city. There’s a lovely little set of old stone steps at the end of a picturesque terrace, unfortunately sometimes used by miscreants. We stopped for a while and I had a scribble. The bright, low winter sunshine stretched our shadows.

Part of the Home and Hinterland community arts project in partnership with Swansea University’s Taliesin Arts Centre

A Chance To Own One Of My Artworks

I have some small screenprints for sale, inspired by my drawings of the antique taxidermy collection at Swansea Museum. I have given these vintage artifacts a modern twist by combining them with images of rubbish – old fruit nets, bubble wrap and plastic – highlighting the problem of human pollution and how it affects wildlife.

To buy my work on the Swansea Print Workshop site please click the image to the left.

20 percent of the cost of each screenprint sold goes to support Swansea Print Workshop, which receives no public funding.

Blue Prints In The Park

I spent a happy afternoon in Waun Wen today, making sunprints (cyanotypes) with plants in the park. Thanks to the lovely people who came along and joined in. The weather was grim earlier but the sun came out just as we started. The blue colour on the prints will deepen over a couple of days. This is the earliest form of photography and was invented in 1842 by the Astronomer Royal, John Herschel and the technique was used to produce the very first photography book by the botanist Anna Atkins in 1843.

Part of the Home and Hinterland community arts project in partnership with Swansea University’s Taliesin Arts Centre.

A Chance To Own One Of My Artworks

I have some small screenprints for sale, inspired by my drawings of the antique taxidermy collection at Swansea Museum. I have given these vintage artifacts a modern twist by combining them with images of rubbish – old fruit nets, bubble wrap and plastic – highlighting the problem of human pollution and how it affects wildlife.

To buy my work on the Swansea Print Workshop site please click the image to the left.

20 percent of the cost of each screenprint sold goes to support Swansea Print Workshop, which receives no public funding.

The Woodland Walk

Walking around the Waun Wen area of the city with my little sketchbook, I’ve found a few places I didn’t know before, even though I’ve known this area all my life. At the top of the new-ish Cwmfelin housing estate, on the site of the old tin-plate works, is a pleasant woodland walk, quiet, with fabulous views and, despite being so close to the city, a main road and a railway line, the sound of birdsong was overwhelming. Lovely.

Part of the Home and Hinterland community arts project in partnership with Swansea University’s Taliesin Arts Centre

A Chance To Own One Of My Artworks

I have some small screenprints for sale, inspired by my drawings of the antique taxidermy collection at Swansea Museum. I have given these vintage artifacts a modern twist by combining them with images of rubbish – old fruit nets, bubble wrap and plastic – highlighting the problem of human pollution and how it affects wildlife.

To buy my work on the Swansea Print Workshop site please click the image to the left.

20 percent of the cost of each screenprint sold goes to support Swansea Print Workshop, which receives no public funding.

Street Metal!

I love street metal. I’ve really got a thing about manhole, stopcock and drain covers. I walk around the streets looking down and cooing when I spot a particularly fine example. People look at me funny. They’re fascinating – they’re portals to a world of water buried beneath our feet. Here are some from Waun Wen. I was there this morning, it was very cold, and I did some graphite rubbings onto Hosho paper. I took a rubbing of some pavement as well, very nice texture too.

I’m working in the Waun Wen area of the city until the end of February, part of the Home and Hinterland community arts project in partnership with Swansea University’s Taliesin Arts Centre.

A Chance To Own One Of My Artworks

I have some small screenprints for sale, inspired by my drawings of the antique taxidermy collection at Swansea Museum. I have given these vintage artifacts a modern twist by combining them with images of rubbish – old fruit nets, bubble wrap and plastic – highlighting the problem of human pollution and how it affects wildlife.

To buy my work on the Swansea Print Workshop site please click the image to the left.

20 percent of the cost of each screenprint sold goes to support Swansea Print Workshop, which receives no public funding.

Wonkiness On The Street

Last Sunday was my ninth walk through the Waun Wen area of the city, sketching as I go. I spend an hour just focussing on what I see and sketching. Sometimes the scribbles are just a few minutes, sometimes a view needs longer to be looked at and analysed before I start to draw. This took a while because the wonky lightpost just didn’t look right – but it doesn’t look right in real life anyway because it’s wonky! I don’t know what happened to make it so wonky. It seems to be pretty solid. That series of curves behind it were a bit of a challenge too, to get them in proportion.

Walk Waun Wen, Talk Waun Wen is part of the Home and Hinterland art project in partnership with Swansea University’s Taliesin Arts Centre.

A Chance To Own One Of My Artworks

I have some small screenprints for sale, inspired by my drawings of the antique taxidermy collection at Swansea Museum. I have given these vintage artifacts a modern twist by combining them with images of rubbish – old fruit nets, bubble wrap and plastic – highlighting the problem of human pollution and how it affects wildlife.

To buy my work on the Swansea Print Workshop site please click the image to the left.

20 percent of the cost of each screenprint sold goes to support Swansea Print Workshop, which receives no public funding.

What’s In A Name? Ghosts Of The Past.

What’s in a name? That’s the beginning of a quote by William Shakespeare. It’s a question I’ve thought a lot about in recent weeks as I’ve been working on a community arts project in the Waun Wen area of the city. It’s an area that’s gone through a lot of changes over the past 3 centuries and at the moment it’s a 21st century cityscape, with Victorian terraces scrambling up the hills, punctuated by modern social housing estates and areas of unspoilt greenery, bisected by a large busy dual carriageway.

Buried beneath is an Industrial Revolution townscape, poisoned ground – the remains of metal works and spoil tips – a quarry and many culverted and diverted underground waterways.

And under that, a pre-industrial bucolic landscape of rolling hills, streams and brooks, meadows and mills. Very little of that remains, except in the place names, which echo as ghosts of the past in people’s everyday speech. I’ve found that many of the local residents hadn’t realised that these reflect the area’s buried history. The names are in the image above, they’re beautiful in both languages. Some are very specific, for instance “Caepistyll – The Field with a Spouted Waterfall”, but I’m not sure what exactly a spouted waterfall is. I was told it’s a waterfall that seems to flow upwards in certain conditions, but that sounds odd to me. Any geographers out there?

As I walk around following these place names, I imagine what it must have looked like before the brutality of the Industrial Revolution and 20th century urban sprawl.

Walk Waun Wen, Talk Waun Wen is part of the Home and Hinterland art project in partnership with Swansea University’s Taliesin Arts Centre.

A Chance To Own One Of My Artworks

I have some small screenprints for sale, inspired by my drawings of the antique taxidermy collection at Swansea Museum. I have given these vintage artifacts a modern twist by combining them with images of rubbish – old fruit nets, bubble wrap and plastic – highlighting the problem of human pollution and how it affects wildlife.

To buy my work on the Swansea Print Workshop site please click the image to the left.

20 percent of the cost of each screenprint sold goes to support Swansea Print Workshop, which receives no public funding.