Last night was my 11th life drawing session since I started back at Swansea Print Workshop after a long break (see here), I’m aiming to improve my portrait drawing over the next year. I was a bit late so I missed the first 2 short poses and went straight into a 10 minute pose. I used a graphite block onto a sheet of cheap but good quality cartridge paper.
I carved a few small vinyl blocks today, based on my field drawings a few years back when I travelled around South Wales with pre-historian Dewi Bowen and film-maker Melvyn Williams. Dewi was researching his book, “Hunting the Wild Megalith“. I used cornflour sprinkled onto the blocks today, to get an idea of the carving before I do some proof prints.
I’ll be running a weekend course based on “Hunting The Wild Megalith” on February 28th and March 1st at Swansea Print Workshop. Please click here to find out more.
This is one of the longer poses I drew at a recent life drawing session. I really like the angular approach I took, it helped me to analyse the face of a model I hadn’t worked with before. I think this one shows a lot of promise to take forward as a linocut.
Working with a new model at last week’s life drawing session, and most of my time was spent analysing and measuring and trying to get things right. She has fantastic hair.
I did a first proof of my new linocut portrait this week. I did as much carving as I thought necessary, following my decision to almost treat the flesh like a geographical feature (see here), and decided to print one to see what I had. I’m not 100% happy with it but I think I’m on the right track and looking forward to continuing to work with this model.
On the left, the lino print, printed onto Liber Charta paper with Cranfield Caligo Safewash ink. On the right, the lino block (natural grey lino backed with hessian).
It’s #Caturday Saturday again and here are some sketchbook scribbles from April 2015, when Sparta Puss was a sprightly 6 year-old.
Last night was my 10th life drawing session since I started back at Swansea Print Workshop after a long break (see here) and here are the warm-up sketches. I’m aiming to improve my portrait drawing over the next year. There are two 5 minute sketches then a 15 minute one. I used a graphite block onto a sheet of Zercoll paper. I hadn’t worked with this model before, she has magnificent red hair, so I got out my Derwent Inktense blocks and my reservoir brushes to add some colour.
I’ve FINALLY printed my Mari Lwyd 2026 lino block. It’s been cut and waiting for some weeks but life got in the way. Here she is, the first proof and the inked block.
There are a lot of artists I really love, and two of those I love most are Suzanne Valadon and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. I saw a painting called “The Hangover” recently for the first time and it’s a portrait of Suzanne by Henri. Wonderful. Two of my favourite artists in one artwork! Here’s a link to the original. I wanted to draw from it, so I did this 10 minute sketch this evening, in graphite onto a heavy Khadi textured paper. I’m a strong believer in learning from the greats. The composition is surprisingly simple, you don’t need to go overboard to create something so wonderful.
I had to make some decisions today on how I would represent the skin in my portrait. I had cut around the main line drawing, I’ll refine it later, but the question then is do I carve out the main area of skin or not? The model has darker skin so I didn’t want to use a technique that would make her skin look white. I thought of a life drawing lesson I had way back when I was in Swansea Art College, back in the 1970s. My wonderful lecturer, Glenys Cour, asked us to look at the body as if it was a geographical feature and then draw contour lines over it, to show the rises and falls. So I got myself a pencil and drew onto my lino portrait and then cut the lines. I won’t know if it will have worked until I get to print it, which should be in the next few days.
scribblah 