I’ve been out and about today, mostly at the 10th birthday celebrations of local Elysium Gallery and I didn’t get to do any art for my blog, so I thought I’d post this one from 4 years ago. It’s a bit technical; I had been making some colour-separation monotypes for an exhibition ……
Source: PHEW!
Water Colour. The clues in the name. Water. Colour. Water first, then the colour. I’ve been having a few little experiments with watercolours lately. It pays to use excellent quality paints as the colours are so vibrant. I soaked the paper with a sponge first then dappled little spots of watercolour onto the surface with my finger, then ended up with a few scribbles of Aquarelle pencils. I’ve never liked paintbrushes, which might be why I’m a printmaker. It’s nice to play around with materials with for no other reason than having a play.
Just back from life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop, where I used my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 tablet and a free Markers app to draw this evening’s model. I started differently, scribbling random colours over the background, picking out the figure roughly in larger blocks of light colours and finishing with a fine pen function. I made a cherry and coconut cake for tea break.
I work part time for a charity that works with vulnerable people, I run arts and craft sessions. I love it. I really love it. People come in, have a cuppa and some biscuits and do some arty stuff for a couple of hours in a warm, safe place.
We do all sorts of different things and of course, people work at different levels according to their experience. Some people haven’t done any art since school, others have been to art college. Today I set up a simple teaching session on collage (from the French collé meaning ‘to stick’). I cut out some simple stencil shapes for those that wanted to use them and we ripped up loads of small pixels of paper from a stack of magazines and old photographic diaries.
Some background card and a packet of glue sticks and we’re off! There’s a lovely mix of styles and approaches and people seemed genuinely pleased with the experience.
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.
scribblah 