So I’ve been carrying on painting the Swansea Devil’s portrait today, in between loads of other things. One good thing about painting with acrylics is that it’s bitty, I can do a bit then go off and do something else while it’s drying. When I’m drawing or printmaking, I spend hours, even days working on a piece so it’s quite relaxing really to be doing an acrylic painting. After a chequered career, the Swansea Devil now lives at Swansea Museum. He likes visitors.
I did some sketches from the Swansea Devil recently, down at Swansea Museum. Today I drew him onto a piece of prepared MDF board and started painting in a Pop Art style. I like Pop Art and I think it suits him because he’s got that sort of look about him. The sculptor has hewn and painted the wood very simply and boldly.
I prepared the board with a couple of coats of acrylic gesso and I’m using Liquitex acrylic paints which I’ll build it up in thin glazes.
I love drawing and I really enjoyed doing these sketches; painting, to me, is a bit like colouring in, the artistry for me comes in the drawing and the concept.
I have a regular babysitting gig each week, with a small nephew and I try to get some scribbling done. Trouble is, sprogs are notoriously mobile, he doesn’t stop wriggling, crawling and moving, so he’s not the ideal model. Still, it’s good practice in speed drawing and one day – one day – I’ll get a decent drawing of him. Babies have very weird proportions – they’re little aliens really.
I was listening to Summar Ackery at a spoken word event at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery recently. She was doing a humorous but relevant piece about a life experience, when a chap refused to get intimate because she was unshaven. What an idiot! Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face! I did this drawing as I listened to her, using Daler Rowney pastels onto vintage paper.
Another drawing I did recently at a spoken word event at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, with Rufus Mufasa, David Pitt and Eleanor Shaw amongst others, using surrealist drawing techniques. I did this drawing while listening to one of the contributor’s telling the story of her experience of giving birth. Her words created very powerful and abstract imagery and I worked with Daler Rowney pastels onto vintage paper. It was a visceral experience and not one I’m used to as I normally work directly from life. It’s good to be pushed out of my comfort zone.
A few weeks ago I did some live drawing at a spoken word event at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, with Rufus Mufasa, David Pitt and Eleanor Shaw amongst others. I normally work directly from life, but this time I let my hands be influenced by the rhythm and meaning of the words and music and just drew. This is similar to surrealist drawing and really pushed me out of my comfort zone. I did this – almost – automatic drawing while listening to one of the contributor’s story about her nervous breakdown. Her words were graphically visual.
Husb and I popped out for a cuppa this morning, round the corner. I had a scribble. There was an extremely tall and thin woman in the coffee shop and it was weird drawing her because I had to keep checking the proportions of the sketch. But she really was that tall and thin. I used a ballpoint pen into my A6 bound sketchbook with a quirky factory print on the front.
I spent an hour sketching in the Zoology Museum at Swansea University this evening. There was this big skull high up on the wall, with HUGE horns. I have no idea what it is, I was so engrossed that I didn’t think to find out it’s name. I started with a quick warm-up sketch, using the blind continuous line technique, looking at the subject rather than the paper and keeping my pen on the paper at all times.
It was mounted high on the wall so I pulled a chair under it and drew it from below, an unusual angle and one that would give me a bit of a challenge. Well, that was an understatement! The thing is that our brains adjust what we see all the time. The brain often overrides the eyes, making us see what we think we see, not necessarily what’s there in front of us. Especially with some drastic foreshortening like I had here. It was tough to draw, I had to keep telling myself “draw what’s there, not what you think is there”.
Apart from the crazy foreshortening, I had trouble drawing the bit where the skull joins the horn so I did a little study of that bit, to analyse and understand it.
I’m currently artist in residence with the FIRE Laboratory in the Department of Bioscience at Swansea University. It’s great to have access to facilities like this little museum.
I work part-time for a national homelessness charity, just a few hours a week where I run fine art courses for people who use the service. Today I started an acrylics painting course. I like to jump straight in with something practical so I did a group abstract painting exercise. After a quick explanation of what ‘impasto’ is, I laid a canvas roll onto the table and everyone – there were six of us – grabbed a pot of Daler Rowney System 3 paint and, using either a palette knife or fingers (rubber gloves provided), splattered paint onto the canvas as we walked around the table.
After we’d all done one circuit, we changed our pots of colour and went round the table again, splattering as we went. And a few more times, building up random layers of colour. Finally, we put the paint down and spent a minute or so scraping and scratching through the paint layers, revealing the colours underneath.
Then we used some old window mounts to look through and work out the compositions we liked best. This led to a discussion about what makes good art – controversial – and I’d taken some examples of Jackson Pollock’s work to look at, to get a theoretical and historical perspective.
The Daler Rowney System 3 acrylic paint, mixed with screenprint medium, was kindly donated by Swansea Print Workshop. They let us have acrylic paints left over after their screenprint courses, which is great because they’re expensive quality paints. We worked in a room kindly lent by the National Waterfront Museum.
Husb and I regularly babysit one of our very young relatives and last week I took him on his first trip to the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery. There’s a fabulous exhibition from their archives at the moment – a wonderful and quirky selection of artwork.
I find babies very hard to draw. The proportions of their faces are really weird – they’re like little aliens. And they don’t stop wriggling. I tried my best, sketching quickly using the continuous line method. Maybe I should try when he’s asleep. Anyway, I took him round the exhibition, mostly I let him crawl – he was really quick on the polished floors. The bit he liked best though was when we went to the (excellent, new) cafe on the ground floor and he crawled over to the big window that looks out onto the street, pulled himself up and gave the window a good licking. I tried my best.
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