Only last week I was complaining about how I’d hit a creative block and how miserable I was with making art. Over the last few days I’ve been having loads of fun, doing digital drawings of people with their heads thrown back. It isn’t a flattering pose but it’s great practise drawing pretty extreme foreshortening and I’m enjoying it immensely. Here’s a spectacular ginger! All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, eh? I’m using my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 tablet with a free Markers app.
It’s late and Husb and I are just back from a comedy gig at Cinema&Co with the surreal comedian Noel James. I had a quick scribble in the dark, it wasn’t easy, but it’s good practice. And now I’m off to bed. Nos da. Good night.
I’m hooked now on these foreshortened views of people with their heads thrown back Husb and I went to the new art shows throughout the city today and I asked people if they’d pose for a photo with their heads thrown back and I got seven victims – er I mean volunteers! It’s been fun drawing this beard, loads and loads of scribbles, totally in my comfort zone 😀
There’s so much arty stuff happening in Swansea this month, Joy Revision at Galerie Simpson, Meridian at Volcano, Everything Now at 211, High Street, The BEEP Painting Biennale at Dynefor, and loads more.
This is an interesting blog about the vanitas genre…. https://wp.me/p1bzJP-2KV
Yesterday, I did a bit of drawing practise of a head thrown back with some severe foreshortening. It was so much fun that I did another today. My poor long-suffering family are posing for me. I have a lot of family. There may be a lot of these nose jobs…..
Putting The Work In…. So the past few days I’ve been slapping an underpainting onto a canvas but now the serious stuff has to start, I need to get stuck into the details. I want to have the head thrown back from the torso so I took a few photos of long-suffering Husb (I guess he must be my Muse) and drew this one into my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 tablet using a free Markers app. I blocked in the background in a beige-y colour and then worked up the drawing with white and a couple of brown shades, finishing with orange on the eyebrows. I used the stylus and my finger, the stylus gives a more defined line. Husb is very tall and I am short so I am used to seeing him from this angle. I love a nice bit of foreshortening.
Here’s how far I’ve gone with the underpainting ….
I’ll get the head painted on in more detail next ….
I’m not a painter. I draw, I make original prints, I experiment with mixed media work. But I rarely paint. So as far as I’m concerned, anything goes. If something doesn’t work out, I can paint over it and start again. So I don’t know what the rules are (well, some of the basic ones, but that’s it) and I’m going to do whatever takes my fancy. When I do printmaking, I prefer to work with just the three primary colours, Process Cyan, Magenta / Red and Yellow and I’m trying to keep to this principle with this painting; I’ll see how it pans out. I’m also keen on trying to draw more than paint, using very thin washes of translucent colour that flow from the brush with the sort of lines and marks I use in drawings.
Just Get On With It!
I find making art really hard. People often say to me, “how lovely to work at something you enjoy“. WRONG!!! It’s blood, sweat and tears all the way for me. I get stuck in cycles of creative self-doubt which are absolutely paralysing and I’ve been in one for some months now. So today I gave myself a good talking to and told myself to just get on with it. I started a painting a few days ago, putting on a dark ground and then a rough underpainting in pale grey, so today I mixed up a fairly thin wash of black acrylic ink (Liquitex Heavy Body) and did some quite quick and intuitive linework.
Although I have an original life drawing for reference, I am trying to work without it as much as possible, and rely on my imagination and intuition. I really must snap out of this and stop being so afraid to create. After all, if I don’t like what I do, I can always cover the canvas with gesso and start again.
Another Life Drawing (Female Nude)…
Here’s another life drawing I did at Swansea Print Workshop’s drawing group this week. It was a thirty minute pose that I drew on my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 tablet with a free Markers app.
I started with a mid-brown ground laid down with my finger and then worked the drawing up with a light brown large brush tool, again using my finger to draw. Finally I did some fine line work, using the stylus.
Back to life drawing (female nude).
I started back to life drawing group this week after a break of several months, life got in the way. I think the break did me some good, I’m a bit looser and I’m taking more chances and playing around with distorting the figure.
I drew onto my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 tablet with the stylus and my fingers, using a free drawing app called Markers. The slideshow shows the different stages in constructing the drawing.
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