#Caturday Saturday seems to come around so quickly! This week I put the negative silhouette on top of a copy I made of a David Hockney painting during lockdown. The painter Ed Sumner ran a free Friday afternoon art class, The Cheese and Wine Painting Club, throughout Covid, teaching by copying the great artists. This is one of them. It suits the glorious weather we’re having at the moment so I paired it up with little Bill, our rescue cat.
Just back from the Saint George in Swansea, where Husb and I had a fantastic time listening to local band “Wild Eyed, Wicked and Oblivious“. I’m tired now, so I’ll just post the bass player, he has a proper old-fashioned tea-chest bass. Fabulous.
Here’s what I decided to do with my Birkrigg Common sketch that I posted yesterday (with the Hoad Lighthouse above Ulverston in the background). I did a few of these linear sketches on my recent holiday and I’m working into this one with some watercolour washes. I like blending watercolours directly onto the paper (Khadi). Plenty more to come.
I went through a digital phase starting about 12 years ago, drawing with my Samsung Galaxy Note 8, using a free Markers app. It lasted a while, it was very convenient to carry around and I didn’t get my hands and sketchbook dirty with charcoal and graphite. I remember those leggings well, I wore them until they were threadbare! These are sketches from September 2013.
Decisions! Decisions! Here’s the other half of my Birkrigg Common sketch that I posted yesterday. This clearly shows the Hoad Lighthouse, that towers above Ulverston, whose name invokes a “wolf warrior”. I did a few of these linear sketches on my recent holiday and now I have to decide what to do with them. Continue using my drawing pen to flesh out the detail and have fun with mark-making? Or wash them over with watercolours? Or leave them alone? Decisions, decisions…
It was a lovely warm and sunny day on Birkrigg Common in the Lake District earlier this month and I sat and I scribbled for a while. I used a Faber Castell Pitt pen into my Khadi Landscape sketchbook. On the upper right of the drawing is the Hoad Lighthouse, a famous landmark around these parts. I like to draw across the centre of the book to get a panoramic view. I’ll post the rest of the sketch tomorrow.
I taught a Community Arts class on Friday, at GS Artists, part of the 9to90 Creative Community programme. The topic was painting an imaginary landscape in acrylics, onto canvas board, in 2 hours. I referred to David Hockney’s landscapes for inspiration. The compositions he uses can be fairly simple, the colours intense, and the use of patterns fabulous. I’ve done a couple of my own and used them during the class to show what can be achieved. This is the painting (above) I did at the class. I work alongside my students and it’s good for me, I get to practice what I preach.
I took along a couple I did a while back, one I painted en plein air in the Lake District, the other completely off the top of my head.
It’s #Caturday Saturday again and this week I stuck the positive silhouette of our little rescue cat, Bill AKA William ChatNoir, onto a window with a blob of BluTack and took a photo of her framed by our garden. Spring has properly sprung and the plants are growing faster than I can keep them under control!
Seaside Scribbles and Rock Chick hair. Back to my sketchbooks of August 2013 and I seem to have spent a lot of time on Swansea beach, must have been a good summer. I had a long, shaggy, rock chick hairdo at the time. I really like my hair like that, but it’s a bit of a faff to be honest, gets very hot.
This is the “other” side of the drawing I posted yesterday, from my Landscape Khadi sketchbook. I like drawing right across the double page to get a panoramic view. I’ll be using watercolours on this – when I find the time! This is somewhere in the Lake District, up a mountain, I can’t be more specific than that 😀
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