This is the third and final page of portrait drawings I did recently with a new model at Swansea Print Workshop‘s weekly life drawing group. I did these in the final hour of the session, she kept to one pose so I was able to really look and analyse what I was seeing and try and be accurate on the page. I’ll be choosing one of these to develop into a linocut print, not sure which one yet though.
Here’s the middle set of drawings I did with the new model, 2 x 15mins and a half-hour pose. I scribbled some notes while I analysed the sketches, to learn for the next one. Accurate drawing depends on accurate analysis, seeing what’s there, not what I think is there. Her eyes are very wide-spaced and quite large. She’s lying down in the bottom left, that’s why her face looks a little bit squished.
I’m into week 5 of my return to life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop after a long, long gap (see here). I’ve set myself a goal to improve my portrait drawing over the next year. Here are my warm-up sketches with a new model, two x 5 minutes and one x 10 minutes. I’m using a graphite block onto a cheap cartridge paper for the warm-ups.
Today was brilliant. Today made me feel like all these years of plugging away at my arts practice is worthwhile. Today I won a prize at The Workers Gallery Open (in Ynyshir) and the GSA 9to90 Open (in Swansea). The Workers Gallery has awarded me a voucher for art materials and a gallery show towards the end of 2026, for my linocut “Mari Madarch Abertawe” (above).
I won First Prize in the Alan Curtis portrait category of the GS Artists annual Open, my work was chosen by the man himself. He’s a football legend. I’m very flattered. It’s the first time I’ve taken a cartoony approach to portraiture, obviously made an impact. GSA has awarded me a voucher for art materials as well, so I think I’ll be spending them on lino blocks as I am planning a lot of lino printing in the New Year.
When I start a sketching session, I usually do a few quick warm-up sketches, to get in the groove. Here are some from Thursday and Friday at Swansea Fringe, at Elysium. I generally do these on cheaper cartridge paper with graphite, and I don’t normally use colour on these. Their purpose is to get up to speed, not to produce anything particularly polished.
I was one of the “Live” sketchers at this year’s Swansea Fringe, and here’s one of the musicians at Elysium on the first night, in a band called Whilbur. I used graphite onto a thick vintage paper (not watermarked), a water reservoir brush and Derwent Inktense blocks. That violin was REALLY HARD to draw.
“Live” sketching at this year’s Swansea Fringe, and here’s one of the Rainyday Rainbow musicians at Elysium on the first night. He looked a bit like a cartoon character in real life, I thought, so I drew him like that. I used graphite onto a thick vintage paper (not watermarked), a water reservoir brush and a Derwent Inktense block.
I did a lot of “live” sketching at this year’s Swansea Fringe, it’s the fourth year I’ve done it and I love it. I get to go to any venue I want, see any act I want and scribble them with official approval. It’s great. Here’s Tokomololo at Tŷ Tawe. I drew him in graphite onto a thick vintage paper (not watermarked) and I used a water reservoir brush and a Derwent Inktense block to do the background. Great act, really enjoyed. And I got to sit down in the warm and dry off because the rain between venues was torrential!
I took a break from Swansea Fringe scribbling on Saturday and joined Husb and some friends for lunch at Swansea Market. There are some really good food places there and you can take it to a central food court to eat it. We had some gorgeous Greek food from Iokasti’s Kitchen. Of course, I had to have a scribble!
I was doing a lot of digital drawings of the 5-year old SpartaPuss back in December 2014. I was using a free Markers app on my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 tablet. I really enjoyed it for some time, it was very convenient, it slipped into a small bag, no faff.
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