I was out this evening, giving a talk to the lovely people at the Porth Cawl art group and some of them were interested in how I made my home-made walnut ink, so here it is again. It’s definitely worth doing if you can get your hands on a few walnut fruits, not the nuts, the greeny, apply fruit around the nut is what’s needed. It’s a lovely ink to use, like drawing with liquid silk.
Source: Walnut Husk Ink Revisited
I’ve been thinking about how artwork develops from my original sketches.
I always carry a sketchbook and have dozens and dozens stuffed into cupboards with thousands of sketches done over the years and most stay locked away. But occasionally I find something that inspires me to use some of them as the basis for new work, usually some form of printmaking. About 3 years ago I was fortunate enough to visit Pakistan for a month as a resident artist at the Zaira Zaka Print Studio near Rawalpindi. On a crazy car journey from Rawalpindi to Lahore on my birthday in the worst storm I’ve ever seen, I sat in the back of the car and scribbled with my Daler Rowney pastels into a Khadi handmade paper sketchbook, capturing speedy impressions of the ever-changing atmospheric landscape as we drove. When I came back I edited the drawings into a video (below).
I also took the sketches into the studio at Swansea Print Workshop and started to work on small full-colour monotypes; if you want to find out more about my technique, please click here.
I have put my series of drawings of ancient Welsh monuments on Artfinder. If you want to see more, please click on the image below or the Artfinder link at the top right of this page.
I try to get along to life drawing sessions at Swansea Print Workshop as often as possible as drawing underpins everything I do artistically and I need to practice. This is a fab model, she’s excellent and I love to draw her. Unfortunately, even the most experienced models can get a dead leg and that’s what happened this week, so I wasn’t able to finish the drawing. But never mind, I like the unfinishedness of it. I drew with white, sanguine and black conté crayons, in that sequence, onto brown wrapping paper.
I have put my series of drawings of ancient Welsh monuments on Artfinder. If you want to see more, please click on the image below or the Artfinder link at the top right of this page.
Just back from Swansea Print Workshop’s weekly life drawing, it’s late and I’m tired. Our model got tired too, her leg went stiff and painful after about 40 minutes so we spent the last 10 minutes doing a quick pose that didn’t hurt her leg. I like it. It’s drawn with white and sanguine conté crayon onto brown wrapping paper.
Another blast from the past, from The Bagpuss Window, a semi-derelict artspace set up by Melanie Ezra and myself about 18 months ago. It only lasted 3 weeks but we, and lots of other artists and performers, did loads of arty stuff. Swansea Print Workshop lent us a portable etching press so I got stuck in with some paper drypoint plates and produced a small edition based on a little sketchbook drawing I did during my residency in Pakistan a couple of years ago.
Filmmaker Melvyn Williams made some short videos of what we got up to – here are a couple …..
First off, performance poet Rhys Trimble jamming with gong artist David Pitt.
And a quick blast of me…..
I have put my series of drawings of ancient Welsh monuments on Artfinder. If you want to see more, please click on the image below or the Artfinder link at the top right of this page.
I went to a consultation event in Swansea’s Grand Theatre today, organised by the City Council to move forward with a bid to be the next UK City of Culture in 2021. Of course, I found some time for a scribble during the tea break. A good chance to draw a crowd, good practice for perspective and proportion.
The End Frame events are free entry but please book tickets for ‘Big Eyes’ from Cinema & Co.
I have put my series of drawings of ancient Welsh monuments on Artfinder. If you want to see more, please click on the image below or the Artfinder link at the top right of this page.
You know what I did last Summer? Well, Husb and I took part in a reality TV programme for Sky Arts. It’s about spotting fake masterpieces in art galleries across the UK. We appear mainly in the episode from Cardiff but if I told you any more, I’d have to kill you lol 😀
That’s Husb in the picture from The Radio Times, peering through his great grandfather’s spectacles. And I’m in the background. It was a brilliant experience. I saw at first hand how programmes like this and The Great British Bake-off are put together (not at all glamorous) and I got to see brilliant art close up without hordes of people milling round.
The series starts this Tuesday, March 28th at 8pm and continues for 8 weeks. I hope I don’t come over as a div 😀
And on Wednesday March 29th ………
The End Frame events are free entry but please book tickets for ‘Big Eyes’ from Cinema & Co.
I have put my series of drawings of ancient Welsh monuments on Artfinder. If you want to see more, please click on the image below or the Artfinder link at the top right of this page.
Here’s something else I’m about to experiment with at the moment. Nori paste, magnesium carbonate and powdered pigments. oooohhhhh!!!!!!
The End Frame events are free entry but please book tickets for ‘Big Eyes’ from Cinema & Co.
I have put my series of drawings of ancient Welsh monuments on Artfinder. If you want to see more, please click on the image below or the Artfinder link at the top right of this page.
I went to our local art gallery, The Glynn Vivian earlier today for a talk from the artist in residence, Sharon Morris, one of the nine exhibiting artists in one of the current exhibitions, ‘The Moon And A Smile’, inspired by early Victorian photographs from the Dillwyn Llewellyn family who lived at Penllergare and Sketty Hall in Swansea. The exhibition responds to a time in the 1840s and 1850s when Swansea was at the centre of international experiments in photography, especially Mary Dillwyn, John Dillwyn Llewellyn and his daughter Thereza. I had to have a scribble of course, and did this drawing of Sharon Morris as she spoke. I drew into my tiny new Paperblanks sketchbook with a Faber Castell Pitt pen, size F.
The End Frame events are free entry but please book tickets for ‘Big Eyes’ from Cinema & Co.
I have put my series of drawings of ancient Welsh monuments on Artfinder. If you want to see more, please click on the image below or the Artfinder link at the top right of this page.
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