Just back from life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop.It’s late and I’m tired, but it was a joy to draw this model, to lose myself in the act of drawing and forget that I’m shattered, my feet hurt and my back’s aching. It’s like entering a state of meditation – or a state of grace depending on your world view. I drew with black, sanguine and white conté crayons onto a large-ish (A2) piece of brown wrapping paper over about 45 minutes. I like the style (it’s like I was channelling Frank Brangwyn), although I think the forehead is too high.
Last night was the opening of Swansea’s International Women’s Day exhibition at Cinema & Co. It was fantastic but I’m too tired to blog about it now – I’ll do it tomorrow.
I had a bit of a scribble when I was waiting for the bus yesterday. I had 10 minutes or so to kill and that’s enough for a bit of street drawing. A while back I finished all the pages in my leather steampunk sketchbook so I replaced the pages with scraps of paper left over from other art projects. The paper here is a piece of Somerset that I’d initially squeegeed with a browny grey acrylic screenprinting medium the screenprinted in with some of my sketchbook drawings and photographs. I use these papers for mixed media work but this bit was left over and too good to throw away. I drew the street scene with a black Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen, size F.
Another blast from the past, here I am at 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. Here I am walking the spiral labyrinth installed by prehistorian Dewi Bowen and musician/puppeteer David Pitt.
Artist Hannah F Lawson used one of the windowless back rooms to create some light paintings, using various lights and Tai Chi movements. Filmed by Melvyn Williams.
And back to now, coming up from Wednesday March 8th, a new exhibition to celebrate International Women’s Day at Cinema & Co in Swansea.
I am putting 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.
This is one of my artworks in the new exhibition in Swansea’s Cinema & Co, I drew it the other evening at life drawing in Swansea Print Workshop using conté crayons, black, white and sanguine, onto brown wrapping paper. The exhibition opens on Wednesday March 8th, International Women’s Day and continues throughout the month. Cinema & Co has organised a great programme of films and events for the month, which coincides with International Month of Women’s History and is showing the film Frida (Kahlo) immediately after the opening of the exhibition – click here to find out more and / or book tickets.
The celebration of International Women’s Day (IWD) has been around for over a hundred years. Its roots were in the campaign to win votes for women and it was ratified by the United Nations in 1977 as a day for women’s equality and world peace.
I am putting 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.
Finally, I’ve finished the artwork I’m putting into the International Women’s Day exhibition in Swansea’s Cinema & Co, opening Wednesday March 8th. It’s called WMD – Women of Many Dimensions. My piece is stitched Shiohara paper overstitched with printed images of Käthe Kollwitz forming the front part of a late nineteenth century corset..
W.M.D. (above) will feature wall-based artwork from 21 Welsh artists along with films, talks, food and performances and will be happening at Cinema & Co throughout March, along with other events in Swansea, which is actually quite a funky city.
The celebration of International Women’s Day (IWD) has been around for over a hundred years. Its roots were in the campaign to win votes for women and it was ratified by the United Nations in 1977 as a day for women’s equality and world peace.
I am putting 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 I am looming in the background of the life drawing I did last night at Swansea Print Workshop. It’s a slow selfie. I always look so cross when I’m drawing. Ho hum.
I am putting 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.
So there we were, Husb and I splashing through the torrential rain on the dark, sodden streets of Pontypridd, early evening, searching for somewhere to get some hot food fairly quickly because we were on our way to somewhere else. The only half decent place we could find was a chippy, so we sat in the warm, dry, plastic interior under fluorescent lights and scoffed our way through freshly made chips – mine with steak and kidney pie and chipshop gravy; Husb with chipshop chicken curry. Lush! Proper comfort food.
Then onto Pontypridd Heritage and Cultural Centre, which was down a lot of dark steps right by the swollen river in the dark, for a talk by prehistorian Dewi Bowen to the Pontypridd Historical Society on the Bronze Age Archaeology of the Glamorgan Uplands. Fascinating stuff. There’s Dewi above, in the dark with his illustrations on the projector. I had to have a scribble of course. All in all a grand night out……
I’ve been travelling across South Wales with Dewi and filmmaker Melvyn Williams regularly for the past year. Dewi is researching his new book, ‘Hunting The Wild Megalith’, based on the premise that the ancient Welsh legend, The Boar Hunt / Y Twrch Trwyth, from The Mabinogion, can be tracked across the sites of Neolithic monuments throughout the South Wales landscape and Melvyn is making a film of our journey. Here’s a short one he did late last year…..
I am putting 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’m half way there with my new piece; I’m making it for the IWD (International Women’s Day) exhibition coming up on March the 8th at Cinema & Co in Swansea. I’ve cut and stitched half the garment from Shiohara Japanese paper, I’ve stitched strips of prints I made with a rubber stamp based on a silkscreen print I did of Käthe Kollwitz – a hero of mine, I’ve stitched channels through the paper garment and now I’ve started threading aluminium armature wire through the channels to stiffen it. Half done, other half to finish……
W.M.D. (above) will feature wall-based artwork from 21 Welsh artists along with films, talks, food and performances and will be happening at Cinema & Co throughout March, along with other events in Swansea, which is actually quite a funky city.
The celebration of International Women’s Day (IWD) has been around for over a hundred years. Its roots were in the campaign to win votes for women and it was ratified by the United Nations in 1977 as a day for women’s equality and world peace.
I am putting 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.
This full size portrait drawing is part of a much larger piece of ephemeral drawing I made back in Autumn 2015 when my fellow artist Melanie Ezra and I took over a semi-derelict shop in Swansea’s High Street and opened it up to other artists to see what happened – we called it ‘The Bagpuss Window’. I drew intuitively with little planning and as the three weeks went by the drawing took a darker turn.
I’m going to post some of the videos made of ‘The Bagpuss Window’ by Melvyn Williams over the next few blogs because I want to show some of the fab artists who came along and did art.
Here are two, Melanie Ezra and Jonathan Green …..
I am putting 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 did a lot of work today on the new artwork I’m making for the W.M.D. exhibition coming up fast. It’s part of a corset that I’ve constructed in paper. I finished the cutting and sewing and now I’m ready to stitch strips of paper stamped with the image of German Expressionist artist, the late Käthe Kollwitz, who is a hero of mine.
BUT! I can’t decide. Should I sandwich the images in between the two pieces of the paper structure or should I stitch them to the top? I quite like the subtlety of the sandwiched ones but this is going to be exhibited in a venue that often has subdued lighting, so maybe I should go with the boldness of the images stitched on top? I’ll have to make my mind up tomorrow……
W.M.D. (above) will feature wall-based artwork from 21 Welsh artists along with films, talks, food and performances and will be happening at Cinema & Co throughout March, along with other events in Swansea, which is actually quite a funky city.
The celebration of International Women’s Day (IWD) has been around for over a hundred years. Its roots were in the campaign to win votes for women and it was ratified by the United Nations in 1977 as a day for women’s equality and world peace.
I am putting 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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