Here’s another sketch I did at Swansea’s mayor-making ceremony yesterday. I worked quickly onto a tinted heavyweight vintage paper with conté crayons in black, white and sanguine and also used a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen, size B.
Making The Mayor
Had a really busy day today but managed to do lots of scribbling. Husb and I were invited to the mayor-making ceremony at Swansea’s Guildhall (a beautiful building, but that’s another story). It was very formal in some ways, but also warm and friendly. The inauguration happened in the council chamber, an imposing room full of wooden panels and columns and artworks by Frank Brangwyn up around the ceiling. I did this sketch into my A6 sketchbook using a ballpoint pen. I’m not too keen on drawing interiors and architecture, I prefer to draw people, but they were too far away to draw them with any detail.
More Voyeurism
Carrying on with the theme of yesterday’s blog post of the artist as voyeur, I did some “Walk And Draw” in the park today as I was walking home, hastily scribbling away into my little A6 sketchbook with a ballpoint pen. Trouble is, the park was full of much younger people who walk a lot faster and I had to rush to keep up which made my drawings even more scribbly than normal. But I like it.
The Artist As Voyeur
I often draw in the street, lurking in doorways or sitting surreptitiously on benches in public spaces, scribbling away. Sometimes I take photos and work from them later. I took some from a second floor window and transferred the drawings to polycarbonate blocks, which I carved then printed. I like these figures from such an acute angle.
Fast Woman
A thought provoking and beautifully drawn artblog from Patti McJones via Fast Woman
Variations On A Theme
There’s often a temptation to keep doing something new, to keep chasing novelty, when you’re an artist. But really there’s nothing wrong with returning to the same subject or even the same drawing again and again to explore different ways of developing it.
I started this series with a very small ink drawing (bottom), then did a much larger drawing in graphite and finally a mixed-media piece in acrylic, graphite and oil-bars.
Reflections from the first ‘What is Water?’ event
A fascinating SciArt project just getting underway in Swansea
Ideas Gratefully Received
Husb and I went to an event this evening hosted by Urban Foundry about “We Make Good Happen” featuring its founder Matt Callanan who set up a kindness project to bring people together to do good for other people. He became well known for leaving ten pound notes in public with a note asking the finder to use the tenner to do some good. It’s become a very big movement in the UK. At the end of the session, some of us found a tenner taped to the underneath of our chairs, a tenner to be used to do some good. I was one of the lucky ones, but I’m not sure what to do with it. Any ideas gratefully received. Thanks 🙂
I sleep sandwiched between Husb on one side of me and Sparta Puss on the other, which is normally OK but last night they ganged up on me. Husb got up for a toilet visit at 4am and Sparta Puss decided to follow him, because like many cats she thinks it’s her duty to accompany her trained monkeys to the loo. She took the shortest route, which was across my chest and throat. She’s no lightweight. I’m a very light sleeper and they woke me up. Then they came back to bed and dozed off straight away. I lay tossing and turning until the alarm went off. This is my life!
The drawing is of Husb snoozing with his late cat, Little Ming.
Mamelles!
Since we spent a week puppy-sitting the delightful Smudge, we’ve kept to the routine of walking in the morning before we start work. I did a quick scribble in my A6 sketchbook the other day, but only had time for a basic continuous line drawing. So I photographed it and uploaded it onto my Samsung Galaxy Tablet Note 8, into a free app called Markers, and then added in some tones and more line work to flesh the drawing out a bit. It’s a view from the top of Rose Hill, looking down over the city towards the sea. On the right in the distance are the twin islands of Mumbles. The name allegedly comes from French sailors who, when sailing by, spotted the islands and exclaimed “mamelles, mamelles” which translates as “breasts, breasts“.
