Next Steps

Phew! Finally, my commission for Sky Arts TV channel’s UK-wide arts project, ART50, ended tonight with the broadcast of the visual arts films, including the one about my artwork, “Here Be Dragons”. And now I have to decide what my next creative steps will be. I liked working with giant woodblock and text and chine collé so I think I will develop some ideas that have been popping up in my head from out of the ether, I might develop a text piece in Welsh. I’ve been playing with my original on Photoshop, cutting, pasting and redefining segments to make a new image. I might bring this, or something similar, into the real world.

Dragon eye 2

And I want to pick up my figurative work as well. I haven’t done any formal work with nudes for well over a year but now I have some very definite ideas based around a particular model. Time to get back in the saddle and make some new art!

June 5
Andraste – The Warrior

So Excited!

I’m getting excited now. The Sky Arts TV project I started working on what seems like aeons ago …. about 9 months …. is finally being aired tomorrow, Tuesday March 26th, along with the other visual arts projects from 9pm.

I was commissioned to create a new flag for Britain – that’s opening up a can of wurms as I’m Welsh and we Welsh have never been represented on the Union flag. The film shows my creative process, how I researched and developed what eventually turned out to be a massive woodcut print. It’s called “Here Be Dragons” which not only reflects the dragon on the Welsh flag, but it’s also an ancient phrase that used to be written onto maps to mark “dangerous and unknown territory” which is where I feel we are in the UK now.

 

Here Be Dragons small

 

“Here Be Dragons” also works as a spoken word piece, read aloud and the colour is a combination of chine collé and specific inking. If you subscribe to Sky TV or NOW TV, please drop by tomorrow at 9 and have a look at it.

 

A Bit More Cosi

cosi fan 2

Here are a couple more drawings I did at the opera the other evening, Cosi Fan Tutte at The Taliesin on Swansea University’s Singleton campus. It was very dark so I could hardly see the paper, an A4 brown paper spiral bound sketchbook. I used white and sanguine conté crayon, turning the white on its side to block in large areas and then scribbling with the sanguine.

cosi fan 1

My giant woodcut “Here Be Dragons” is going to be featured on Sky Arts TV channel on Tuesday 26th March at 9pm. If you’re a Sky TV subscriber or if you have NOW TV you’ll be able to see a short film of me going through the creative process, with lots about Swansea and footage of Swansea Print Workshop too. It’s part of a whole week of arts programming showing how artists across the UK have responded creatively to Brexit.

finished

 

 

The Pit And The Uniform

It was a new one for me last night as I went with my Mam-in-Law to the opera. I’ve never been before and to be honest, being an ageing headbanger and rock chick, it would never have occurred to me to go except that Husb joined a choir recently and had the chance to perform in the chorus of Cosi Fan Tutti at the Taliesin. He has a lovely voice which he’s never gotten out in public before and he also looked rather spiffing in his Hussar uniform! Of course, I had a scribble.

cozi fan 1

It wasn’t easy scribbling into my little cloth-covered red notebook as it was dark and I was surprisingly engrossed in the opera. I enjoyed it far more than I expected. It was good fun and I was impressed by the quality and skill of the singing. And there was an orchestra! In a pit! I never even knew that Taliesin had a pit!

I drew with a ballpoint pen, very quickly, unable to see much on the paper so it was a surprise when I looked at them. I wouldn’t mind seeing more opera, but the tickets are terribly expensive and if it comes down to a choice between opera and metal, I know which one I’d buy tickets for. (That’s metal, by the way).

 

 

More En Plein Air

Glynn Vivian

 

Sometimes life gets in the way of art and it can be difficult to do something creative every day. If I’m working on a commission or developing an exhibition, it’s easy because I’m at it all the time, but in the in-between times like the past week or two, I find it hard to get motivated. Husb and I went to the Glynn Vivian art gallery this evening, with lovely young nephew, to hear the author Andrew Green give a talk about his new book, “Wales In 100 Objects“. Great stuff. I had a quick scribble. It was dark in the lecture room so I couldn’t quite see what I was doing. Never mind. It’s enough to put pen to paper and do a bit of a drawing every day at the moment.

 

Andrew-Green-Cymru-mewn-100-gwrthrych

En Plein Air

en plein air

Here I am a few months back sketching en plein air. The artwork is by Simon Dark. I had a fringe then, I think I might have one again.

A Crafty Afternoon

 

Herb bottle 1

I work a few hours a week for a charity that supports homeless people, teaching crafts and fine art. Today I had a crafty afternoon. I try to make the craft sessions relevant to people, making practical things that they can use in their new home when they get housed. We recycled plastic drinks bottles – around 1.5 litre capacity and, with gardener’s jute twine, we made macramé herb bottles that people can hang up in their kitchens. I bought a selection of supermarket living herbs – coriander, parsley and basil. Here’s one I did as a demonstration and here it is below as a snake-like work in progress.

macrame 1

Being the change

Cool en plein air drawings from Swansea-based artist Patti McJones via Being the change

Swansea Jack

Carl Gough performs “Swansea Jack”

Husb and I spent a lovely couple of hours at a performance of “Swansea Jack”, researched, written and performed by the talented storyteller Carl Gough. We people from Swansea are nicknamed “Jacks”, supposedly after the heroic black Labrador dog who saved many people from drowning in the 1930s. Of course, I had a quick scribble, in my little red cloth covered sketchbook. I used a ballpoint pen, I love them for quick sketches because they flow so easily.

Quick Sketch

Here’s a quick sketch I did at an event the other night, a talk on women’s political action across Europe, one of the International Women’s Day events.