Smiles And Scribbles.

Here’s the last of the sketches I made last weekend at the Omnichron gig, a happy audience. It’s nice drawing a group as I can get to practice scale with the different figures there.

A Couple Of Heads.

A couple of scribbled heads from Friday evening, the gig of fabulous local band Omnichron.

And I picked the first rhubarb of the season today, loads of it in the garden, it’s been unusually warm lately and I think it’s brought the rhubarb along a bit early.

Sketchbook Archives: 30

Heads, Hand and Feet, a selection of sketchbook drawings from way back in July 2013, back before Covid19, remember those days? I went through a phase of sticking brown wrapping paper into my sketchbooks and drawing over it. I can’t remember why I stopped, I really like it. I’m not so keen on drawing onto black paper, it’s great when it works but I have a high failure rate.

#Caturday Silhouette 18: Mari Lwyd Again.

It’s #Caturday Saturday again and this week I have put the positive silhouette of Our Bill (the rescue cat) onto a rough proof print of my latest Mari Lwyd linocut. I find that with traditional grey lino, it can take one or two attempts to get a good print from a newly cut block, so I usually do a couple of proofs onto cheap paper – this is newsprint. I like it as the background for Bill’s silhouette though, the patchy greyness emphasises her image.

Scribbling And Gigging

Husb and I went to a gig this evening, put on by Yes Cymru and featuring one of our favourite local bands, Omnichron. I guess I’d describe their music as psychedelic dance. Had a great time. Of course, I had to have a scribble or two.

Getting Stuck In…

After trawling through photos and sketches, I’m getting stuck in to working out different bits of the composition. This is partly to get familiar with the details and partly to work out if this is what I want to go with. This is based on a photo I took of the spectacular fire spinner Ddraig Williams who will be a central figure in the finished work. I don’t know yet if it will be a big woodcut or a painting, maybe I’ll do both.

Trawling For Inspiration.

I’ve been trawling through my sketchbooks and photo archives for images to inspire me to develop a large-scale woodcut or painting of the annual Mari Lwyd celebrations locally. These are showing some promise. The fire spinner is the amazing Ddraig Williams and he’ll be a central figure if the composition works out as I want.

Roughing It: A Starting Point.

I’ve been mulling over an idea for ages, years, for a large woodcut or maybe a painting. I’ve been doing smaller pieces of work that have been independent of each other, but also try out elements of a potential larger artwork. Today I finally got off my bot and grabbed an A3 sketchbook (brown paper) and did some rough sketching with conte crayons. This is the first rough, no doubt there will be many more as I refine the composition and then the details, but this here is my starting point. I wonder how long it will take to get to the finishing point?

The inspiration comes from my participation in the Mari Lwyd events locally for the past few years, they’re usually at night and often feature fire. I’ve made a lot of sketches and a few prints. I’ve also been working on a few small paintings of people at night, outside in the firelight, that will feed into this as well.

Sketchbook Archives: 29

Here are some little scribbles from my sketchbook that I posted back in June 2013, gosh, 12 years ago already, back in the pre-Covid days. I’m not sure what people are doing in the first few sketches, maybe it was an art event? I like drawing people who are in unusual positions, it’s good practice.

#Caturday Silhouette 17: The Mari Lwyd

It’s #Caturday Saturday again and this week I have put the negative silhouette of Our Bill (the rescue cat) onto a rough proof print of my latest Mari Lwyd linocut. My eyes keep flickering back and forth between the cat and the eye of the Mari. Weird!