Here’s the last sketch I made while I listened to Helen Sear talking about her current exhibition at the Glynn Vivian art gallery at the weekend. Her show, “The Rest Is Smoke” is a presentation of the film / photography installation with which she represented Cymru at the Venice Biennale 2015.
Looking around audiences at events like these is great, so many interesting faces, all engrossed and unaware that I am watching and drawing. The artist as voyeur!
Another scribbled head from my visit to the Glynn Vivian art gallery a couple of days ago, to listen to the talk by artist Helen Sear while Storm Brian raged outside. The Glynn Vivian is a fabulous gallery and reopened after a five-year refurbishment last year. It’s great to have it back, it’s an amazing gallery and the city council has had the guts to keep it open and thriving in the face of swingeing public sector cuts.
The gallery is part of an exciting artscene in Swansea and the city is in the shortlist for the UK City of Culture 2021 with three others. It’s a mad, quirky place that oozes culture of all sorts, not just highbrow stuff. It’ll mean a lot if we win the bid, this part of Wales has been run down for so long yet arts and culture and sport thrive here without the huge amounts of cash and kudos enjoyed by places like London. What we could do with just a fraction of that!
I’ve been out and about with a sketchbook recently, getting back to basics, drawing as much as possible, not for projects but simply as part of my routine practice. An artist’s practice is just that, practice.
I went to a talk at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery by the artist Helen Sear, her work is currently featured there. I managed to scribble a few listening heads. I find that I can sketch and listen at the same time because I’m not concentrating on making “great art” so I don’t mind if it all goes pear shaped. This woman had the loveliest pre-Raphaelite hair, all fuzzy ringlets tied up in a loose knot, straight out of the late 19th century.
It was a terrible day outside the gallery, we were in the middle of Storm Brian and the gales were howling and the rain was lashing down. The Americans always seem to have quite posh names for their hurricanes – Ophelia, Katrina, but we have Storm Brian. I’m waiting for Nigel and Doris. Or Cissy and Ada maybe?
Here’s a sketch I did a couple of weeks ago at the Swansea Fringe. Husb and I went to the Swansea Storytelling event; it’s good for drawing faces because people are usually focused and concentrating. I used a 6B graphite pencil into my A5 lined notebook.
(Not so) Little Nephew is having a sleepover this evening so I scribbled him as he watched Gogglebox, tucked under a crocheted patchwork blanket made my Mam-inLaw. He’s growing so fast, he’s now taller than me by a good few inches. I’ve been drawing him since he was a baby, it’s nice to have that record of him growing up. I used my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 tablet with a free Markers app.
Just back from life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop. I drew with my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 tablet with the free Markers app. The pose was for an hour and I built up the drawing gradually. I saved every few seconds and I’m going to edit all the saved drawings together to make an animation, Husb is going to teach me how to edit on Adobe Premiere Pro. I made a sponge cake filled with lemon buttercream for the tea break. With proper butter of course. And fresh lemons.
I posted last week about a digital animation I made of some of my life drawings of female models who inspire me, my muses. It appeared last week at the FiLiArt conference and exhibition in London. I didn’t want to put it up until it had premiered at FiLiArt, but that’s over now so here is the animation, working with seven terrific artists’ models.
It’s the first time I have exhibited something like this and I’m pleased with it. I have a love/hate relationship with digital drawing but this seems like a good way of using it. I use a Samsung Galaxy Note 8 with a free Markers app.
Here’s a quick warm-up sketch I did at life drawing last week at Swansea Print Workshop. After this I worked on a portrait study for an hour, but I find I need to have a quick scribble to start with, to get used to the model and pose before committing myself to a longer study.
Although it was done quickly, I really like the immediacy of it. I find that when I tell myself that something is just a warm-up or a practice, I am much freer and less inhibited in my approach.
I worked onto my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 tablet with a free Markers app, sometimes with a stylus and sometimes with my finger.
Although my visit to Avebury on Friday was a quick one, I spent some time looking closely at the magnificent stones there. They are covered with fantastic growths of lichens and the surface of the stones has been weathered and eroded across the millenia. I took a close-up drawing of a section of this stone.
Husb and I are away for a few days visiting on the East Coast but we called in to Avebury on the way to see the ancient standing stones. We have been meaning to go for years and finally made it. It was a revelation! We’re used to tramping wild places in Wales and seeing a single stone or one chambered grave, but Avebury has more stones than you can shake a stick at. And the whole complex nestles in a delightful village with thatched cottages, a fine manor and imposing barns. Terrific place. Normally, I have one stone to draw so I spend some time choosing the best angle. At Avebury I had to run around choosing from loads of stones, all huge, imposing and worthy of attention. We didn’t have enough time to get around the whole site, so we’ll have to go back.
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