My poor old (as in very old) laptop is on its way out. I’m hoping to get another in the next couple of days but until then, my blog posts might be a bit all over the shop, so it’s pot luck. Here are some trees. I painted them from a sketch done on my hourly walks during the Covid19 lockdown, remember that? It seems like forever ago now. My painting style here is influenced by the European Expressionist painter Gabrielle Munter.
Piggies! This fine beast is from my blog in April 2013. I visited a farm and drew some Mangalitza pigs. I really liked my sketch of the boar and turned it into a little lino cut.
I traced my Mari Lwyd sketch onto tracing paper today, flipped it over and drew it onto my lino block, like we used to do with maps back in my schooldays, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. It’s a very basic outline, I’ve got to do some studies of the bells and ribbons, flowers and eyeballs before I start cutting.
It’s that #Caturday time of the week again and here’s the negative silhouette of our little Bill the rescue cat, overlaid onto a quick pastel sketch I did out and about.
The last sketch and last hat from the Imbolc gig. There seems to be a trend for hatted performers at the moment for some reason. This is a fine bit of headgear and thankfully this musician isn’t bearded or bespectacled so he was a bit easier to draw.
I was scribbling at a gig recently and most of the performers had some sort of combination of hats, beards and spectacles, which I find quite hard to draw. But here’s a performer without any of them. But he had a bandana. First time I think I’ve drawn a bandana. But it was ok.
Some more little scribbles from the gig the other weekend at Imbolc. The three things I find hardest to draw in people…hats, specs and beards…all in one subject. Tough going especially as drawing live is quite difficult anyway, but really good practice.
I did a rough yesterday in monochrome washes of a new thing I’m working on which will eventually be a lino cut based on sketches of some of the Mari Lwyd / Hen Galan celebrations I’ve been to over the past few winters. I like the overall composition but it’s very rough, so I’m starting to practice getting the details into a format that will transfer over to linocut. The Mari Lwyd is adorned with ribbons and bells, so that’s my starting point.
This is the first sketch, trying out an idea for a new linocut based on the Welsh Mari Lwyd tradition. I like the format, 21cms x 42cms, and I like this composition. I’ll probably try out a few more variations and I want to sharpen up some of the design stuff, like the ribbons and bells. I’ve been out and about drawing Mari Lwyds for a few years now, and I think it’s about time I made more work from my sketchbooks.
This #Caturday Saturday, here the silhouette of little rescue cat Bill on top of a silkscreen print based on sketches of pigeons in Swansea. I merged the drawings with some text I had written about the experience of drawing the pigeons, watching them from the window of Waterstone’s cafe, that used to be the old Carlton cinema. I cut the image of Bill from some very heavy textured paper that I recycled and painted black. The pigeons used to sit on the large letters of the “WOOLWORTHS” sign, it was always lit up so the letters were warm. When Woollies closed, the signage was removed and pigeons never sat there again.
scribblah 