Knickers In The Sun

Knickers_in_the_sun

The Sun Is Shining!!!! And it must be all of …. 20° Celsius. A Heatwave! And what happens here in the UK in a heatwave? People take their clothes off. That’s what. It doesn’t take much sunshine to get us to drop our inhibitions …. and our clothes.

So today was really busy, but in a nice way. Husb and I went to a brilliant talk at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery about the artist Käthe Kollwitz, currently exhibited there. Then onto the Street Food festival at The Waterfront Museum. Nice grub. The Swansea Gay Pride event was also there and we ended the day at the opening of Alison Lockhead’s radical and moving installation at Volcano, on Swansea’s High Street. And managed a couple of family visits. In between, we sat on the grass in the sun, opposite a rainbow coloured police car, sipping cold drinks and watching the world go by. I had to have a scribble of course. A very short skirt, undulating thighs and red knickers caught my eye.

sketchbook

I drew into my small cloth-covered Laura Ashley sketchbook (above) with a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen (size F) and added a flash of red knicker afterwards in Adobe Photoshop.

Digital Scribbling

I took a photo of the abstract piece I did a couple of days ago. I used my home made walnut ink onto Winsor & Newton watercolour paper. I want to work on some ideas for developing it but don’t want to draw directly onto it and spoil it, that’s why I took a digital photo and uploaded it into the Markers app on my Samsung Galaxy Tablet and did a bit of white line scribbling. It’s a bit tentative, but that might be the time of night.

Inspired By Käthe

WAA exhibit
My three-dimensional form made from cut and stitched Shiohara paper, with hand writing and Kathe Kollwitz stamps developed from an original screenprint.

 

In June, I will be running a two – day masterclass at the Glynn Vivian art gallery, linked to their excellent Kathe Kollwitz exhibition.  Exploring her life and political activism through her drawings and printmaking, I will be covering two techniques, drypoint and woodcut, drawing inspiration directly from her magnificent work and using the exhibition as a catalyst to create small editions over the weekend.

 

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A digital drawing I did based on Kathe’s woodcut, The Widow.

 

I love Käthe’s work, I have admired her for decades, I’m so chuffed that she has her own exhibition in my local gallery.

Please click here if you want tickets for this masterclass.

Vintage Paper And Liquid Silk

d second wash

Another development in my current phase of random experimentation. A dear friend has given me a lot of vintage art supplies, mostly lovely papers, and I’m putting them to good use. This is a large block of water colour paper, the kind that where all the sheets are stuck together which saves you from having to stretch individual pieces. It’s quite a big one, about 20 x 14 inches. I don’t usually use watercolour, especially on a large scale, so I watered down some of my home-made walnut ink and brushed it onto the paper, leaving it to dry overnight. Then I took some undiluted walnut ink, a rich chocolatey sepia that flows like liquid silk and poured some onto the paper.

 

At first I had a strong urge to try and make something representational, but I resisted that and brushed across the paper randomly, using a 2.5 inch household painting brush. The ink holds the impression of the brush, which I like. Once it’s dry. I’ll peel it off and have a think about what I will do with it. Probably something with conté crayon and/or soft pastels. Maybe even oil bars.

Please click here to find out how to make walnut ink.

May Day, Beltane And The Horse

mono 11 chine

It’s May Day, Beltane, and in some parts of Britain the Hobby Horse, or ‘Obby ‘Oss, is part of the festivities marking the beginning of Springtime fertility. There is a long tradition, predating Christianity, of celebrations involving horses, possibly linked to the ancient Celtic horse goddess, Epona. Here in Wales we have the Mari Lwyd, or Grey Mare, although this is a New Year tradition. Here’s a monotype from sketches of the Ystrad Mari I did earlier this year.

Resisting …..

MDF 1

 

 

 

I’ve been carrying on with my attempt to get more randomness in my work, to be more expressionistic and less controlling. I spent a bit of time over the weekend priming (gesso) and undercoating (white acrylic) some pieces of MDF. Today I brushed one of the pieces with a loose mixture of Daler-Rowney Georgian black oil paint and linseed oil.

 

I greatly admire the German Expressionist artists, especially Käthe Kolliwtz and I’m envious of artist friends who seem able to sit and doodle and produce lovely drawings straight from their imaginations. So I tried not to control what I was doing, not to fall into the trap to try and make it realistic.

 

I worked into the black oil paint with rags, cotton buds (Q Tips), bubble wrap and scrunched-up tissue paper, resisting the temptation to do something representational. I rubbed away and removed the black paint, a reductive rather than additive method.

 

 

 

On the left, my work station and on the right, the loose oil paint brushed onto prepared MDF (Medium Density Fibreboard.

 

 

Two close ups showing some of the detail of the reductive paintwork.

 

Piling On The Glamour

acrylic

More of the glamour of being an artist. Yesterday I primed some MDF with acrylic gesso and sanded it smooth. Today I painted the pieces of MDF with white acrylic paint. Then I sanded them a bit. And then I painted them with a second coat of white acrylic paint. In this exciting picture, you can see the large tub of gesso, on the floor, and the smaller but still fairly substantial tub of acrylic paint on the plans chest.

Involuntarily Underpaid Women Mark 6,000 Years Of Not Resorting To Violence

Short, witty, to the point …. https://wp.me/p78BLO-5AA

Oh The Glamour!

priming

The glamorous life of an artist, eh? Spending a Saturday afternoon sanding down sheets of MDF (with a dust mask on of course) and priming them with acrylic gesso and then sanding them down again. Tomorrow I’ll put on a layer of white acrylic paint. And sand them down again. Oh, the glamour!

Back To The Real World…

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A friend gave me a massive stack of paper recently and I’ve been sorting it out. There was a pile of drafting film, I think it might be Mark Resist (Mylar) which is really nice stuff, but the stack was creased and so I thought I’d use some for experimenting, trying out some ink and wash work over a large sheet of paper I’d previously coloured. I’ve been trying a few ideas out digitally but today it was back to the real world of ink and brushes; my own home-made walnut ink as it happens and a mixture of hog hair and Isabey watercolour brushes.