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Finished Faking, More Baking

I finished faking Friday’s faux Hockney, that’s about 4 hours in all. I’m not a painter, I much prefer drawing and printmaking. If I’m honest, to me, painting is like colouring in. I know painters will be outraged, but once I’ve done the drawing, that’s the creative bit over for me. But, doing these weekly paintings has been good practice and kept me occupied through the pandemic.

I also made a couple of rhubarb crumbles. I’m taking the big crumble to family for their tea and the smaller one is for Husb. He takes no prisoners when it comes to crumble.

The rhubarb in the garden is HUGE! It’s like a rhubarb jungle out there.

Why not join in with Ed Sumner’s Cheese and Wine Painting Club on Friday lunchtimes. It’s free or a donation if you can afford it. Next week is Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire.

Still Faking, Finished Baking

I carried on with the painting I started yesterday, a fake of David Hockney’s “Going Up Garroway Hill” that was the subject of Ed Sumner’s Friday lunchtime Cheese and Wine Painting Club on Facebook. It’s been good discipline for me to do this weekly challenge throughout the pandemic. It’s been really great the amount of things that have sprung up across the world during lockdown. Painting isn’t something I normally do much of so it’s been useful to learn and improve my techniques and also studying famous painters and analysing how they do their work. There’s probably another hour or two before it’s finished – although I could keep on refining it all week, but I won’t.

And today I baked a classic Madeira cake. I read many years ago that the mark of a good Madeira is a crack across the top. It has that, so I’m pleased. I’m baking for a family funeral on Monday, so won’t get a chance to taste it until then.

Half Faked And Half Baked

It’s faking Friday again and the subject of this week’s painting session with the Cheese and Wine Painting Club over on Facebook was David Hockney’s “Going Up Garrowby Hill”. I’m about halfway through, I’ve got an hour or two left to work on it, there’s a lot of patterning. I’m using Liquitex heavy body acrylics.

And then I did some baking …. these Chelsea Buns are halfway there, just need baking off now.

Next week at The Cheese and Wine Painting Club, we’re doing Turner’s “The Fighting Temeraire”. It’s free or a donation if you can afford to. It’s family friendly and suitable for beginners.

Lampost And Cake

I was queueing outside the pharmacy in the Uplands are of the city and spotted this chap across the road leaning up against the lampost, gazing at his mobile phone. He was queueing outside the other pharmacy.

Then I made a poached pear and chocolate cake to take to my niece. I hope she remembers things like this when she’s choosing my nursing home.

Creative Exercises

I’m working away on a pretty big work of art inspired by my experience of the pandemic lockdown, but that’s now a process – the original inspiration has come and gone, the ideas have been worked out and now it’s just cutting and printing blocks and sewing stuff together. It’s not particularly creative now. It’s just work. So I still need to keep creativity going.

I’ve been meaning to experiment with collage for a while. I’ve got a load of hand coloured vintage papers in my plans chest so I got some of them out and laid them at random, first onto a sheet of white paper and then onto one I’d coloured with my home made walnut ink. Randomness was embraced by the Surrealists to ignite imagination and keep creativity alive, and collage and frottage were two of the techniques they used. I don’t know if anything will come from these, but it doesn’t matter. It’s good to get creative without a plan to produce a final work. I didn’t stick the pieces down so I’ll keep rearranging them until something grabs me.

The Strange Tree

Yesterday the weather was lovely, warm and sunny not like today which is pouring down. Anyway just 24 hours ago Husb and I went for a walk in Penllegare Woods. We hadn’t been since before lockdown started. I saw this strange contorted tree so stopped to sketch it. I used Daler Rowney medium sticks of willow charcoal into a Khadi sketchbook.

Family Visit 2020

Now that we’re having some easing of lockdown in Wales, it’s possible to visit family again, as long as we’re outdoors and wearing masks and so on…. Luckily we’re having a pretty good summer and there’s plenty of outdoor spaces. The 19th century terraced housing tends to have back gardens and in the 20th century, housing development in the area was influenced by the Garden City idea so there’s lots of green space for both public tenants and private owner occupiers. Husb and I visited our cousins and sat in their gorgeous garden, chatting with our masks on and moving further apart to drink our tea. It’s strange not being able to hug family, but these strange times will pass.

Collage And Crumble

Earlier this week when I was thinking about white ravens, I thought I’d maybe try and develop some imagery using collage. So I rooted around in my plans chest and found some vintage papers and printmaking rejects that I had randomly coloured with oil and soft pastels. They’re a good starting point.

And I made rhubarb crumble, There’s tons growing in the garden. I’ve made rhubarb chutney, rhubarb gin and I bottled some in syrup. Oh and a bottle of rhubarb cordial – or laxative as I accurately call it.

Another Faking Friday

Another Friday lunchtime session with the Cheese and Wine Painting Club on Facebook, doing a copy of a classic painting in an hour and a half. I’ve never been into painting so I decided to learn how to do it during the lockdown. I’m learning a lot about technique and also about not being too precious, to work quickly and not get bogged down in detail. It’s how I tend to do my drawings but it’s the opposite of printmaking, which is usually a painstaking process.

The lunchtime sessions are headed up by the painter Ed Sumner. They’re fun, what we need during a pandemic, they’re free or donations if you can afford to and the next one is a David Hockney.

A White Raven Emerges

Inspiration can be a slow process for me. I heard a poem performed by Welsh artist and rapper Rufus Mufasa back last year which featured a raven and it’s been buried somewhere inside and emerged a few days ago. As a female raven, as a manifestation of the ancient Welsh goddess Brânwen and now, today, as a white raven. None of this is being consciously directed by me, I’m just getting on with it and seeing where it leads me. I had a go drawing her on my Samsung Galaxy tablet today, with a free drawing app called Markers, which is the only drawing app I’ve ever used. In this format she’s come out as quite feisty, almost perky, which is nothing like the tragic history of Brânwen. I’ll try developing her in different media and see what happens.

This is the drawing I did originally at Rufus’ performance, it was a spontaneous reaction and the raven is just starting to emerge.

And a couple of days ago I drew this one in HB pencil.

I’m getting an urge to try this out in collage next, something I rarely do, but this white raven has really gripped me all of a sudden and I’m going to go with the flow.

There’s a podcast called the Celtic Myth Podshow which tells the story of ancient Celtic myths, episode by episode, including the one about Brânwen – check it out here, it’s good.

And please do check out Rufus Mufasa, she’s amazing. She’s here on SoundCloud.

Now – where’s my Pritt stick?

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