Slicing And Dicing

Postcard 1a

I’m slicing and dicing my ancestral stones!

I’ve put my drawings of Neolithic monuments into Adobe Photoshop and I’m designing some merchandise for my solo show at The Worker’s Gallery in September. I’ll have original drawings, lino prints and etchings for the exhibition but not everyone can afford original art – or may not have room for it – so I want to offer a range of reproductions. I don’t just want to slavishly copy the originals though. I may choose one or two to be reproduced onto canvas or heavyweight art paper, but I also want to play with the drawings I’ve made and create some new digital imagery with them so they can be printed as postcards or magnets or greetings cards. I’ve not used Photoshop for design before, I normally use it for storing photos and cataloguing my work so this is new for me and I’m having fun seeing what it can do.

I have been travelling across South Wales with Rhondda-born archaeologist Dewi Bowen and Swansea film maker Melvyn Williams, hunting the wild megalith, accompanied by my portable drawing board, portfolio of Fabriano paper and a bag full of assorted artist’s materials.  Dewi is researching his latest book on Neolithic monuments and Melvyn is making a documentary film of our literary and artistic adventures.

If you want to know more about my solo show in The Worker’s Gallery in the Rhondda Valley in September, please click here.

And if you want to see some of my other artwork, please click on the image below.

Quoit

 

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LSD and the Psychedelic Art Movement – http://wp.me/p3x4lI-1xO

So interesting

Big Pants, Burkini And The Nightwalker

randoms

Another glorious day, temperature around 30 Celsius, a heatwave!!! Husb and I went down to the beach again this evening, when it had cooled off a little and for the first time in years I went into the sea for a splash about. I can’t swim and our summers are usually so miserable that I rarely bother going in for a dip. I don’t even have a swimming costume so I made do with a sports bra, crop top and a pair of big pants, Bridget Jones style. If the weather stays nice I am tempted to buy a Burkini. I’m a pale, freckly, gingery Celt, practically a nightwalker and I rarely go out in strong sunshine so a Burkini might be the answer. I hear Marks and Spencer sells them now. Hhhmmmmmm!

20160718_204242

When I was little we were on the beach all through the summer and stayed in the sea for hours. Ironically, it was pretty grubby back then, now we have international standards and Swansea Beach is nice and clean. I scribbled for just a few minutes, focusing on getting down the barest details of the scene using a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen into my A5 leather bound steampunk style sketchbook. The sun was much stronger last night and I took this snap of Husb and me as shadows on the beach.

 

I have been travelling across South Wales with Rhondda-born archaeologist Dewi Bowen and Swansea film maker Melvyn Williams, hunting the wild megalith, accompanied by my portable drawing board, portfolio of Fabriano paper and a bag full of assorted artist’s materials.  Dewi is researching his latest book on Neolithic monuments and Melvyn is making a documentary film of our literary and artistic adventures. All the work I’m doing will eventually be featured in a solo show in The Worker’s Gallery in the Rhondda Valley in September. If you want to know more, please click here.

Hipster On The Beach

hipster

It’s been a glorious day – the Summer has returned and it was too hoy to go out comfortably until this evening – earlier today it reached the upper 20s! Which is very hot for gingery, freckly, pasty Northern Europeans like me and Husb. We took a stroll along Swansea Beach and I had a scribble. There were loads of people down there and I spotted this hipster and his chum so sketched them with a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen, size S, into my A5 size leatherbound steampunk style sketchbook.

full moon july

The sunset was gorgeous, subtle and stripey and a full moon rising. I’m so lucky to live here.

 

I have been travelling across South Wales with Rhondda-born archaeologist Dewi Bowen and Swansea film maker Melvyn Williams, hunting the wild megalith, accompanied by my portable drawing board, portfolio of Fabriano paper and a bag full of assorted artist’s materials.  Dewi is researching his latest book on Neolithic monuments and Melvyn is making a documentary film of our literary and artistic adventures. All the work I’m doing will eventually be featured in a solo show in The Worker’s Gallery in the Rhondda Valley in September. If you want to know more, please click here.

If you want to see some of my other artworks, please click here.

We’ve Got Palm Trees

palm 1

Yes, we have palm trees all along the beach front and in many parks. They grow well here because the Gulf Stream swirls up around our coast and into Swansea Bay. It means the temperatures are pretty warm for this latitude but it’s also very damp as well. Husb and I went for our regular walk on the beach and I stopped to scribble this little clump of palms with the twin islands of Mumbles in the background.

palm 2

I drew into my A5 leatherbound sketchbook with a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen size S. It’s an exercise in markmaking really,  moderating my pressure, line and patterning for different areas. The specimen bush that the palm is growing out of was the most fun, lots of random scribbling.

 

I have been travelling across South Wales with Rhondda-born archaeologist Dewi Bowen and Swansea film maker Melvyn Williams, hunting the wild megalith, accompanied by my portable drawing board, portfolio of Fabriano paper and a bag full of assorted artist’s materials.  Dewi is researching his latest book on Neolithic monuments and Melvyn is making a documentary film of our literary and artistic adventures. All the work I’m doing will eventually be featured in a solo show in The Worker’s Gallery in the Rhondda Valley in September. If you want to know more, please click here.

If you want to see some of my other artworks, please click here.

 

 

Boop That Little Nose

NATHAN JULY 2016

Our great-nephew is having a sleepover and of course he got scribbled! He was contentedly playing with his iPhone which reflected light back onto his face. He’s at that stage where he’s no longer a little boy but not quite a teenager and his face still has some of the softness of a child, but not for much longer. I still want to boop his little nose though. He hates that 😀

I haven’t done much work in my sketchbooks lately so it’s nice to sit at home and draw family. I drew into my A4 hardbound sketchbook, prepared with ripped brown paper stuck in with Pritt stick, using white conte crayon, a 6B graphite stick and carbon.

 

I have been travelling across South Wales with Rhondda-born archaeologist Dewi Bowen and Swansea film maker Melvyn Williams, hunting the wild megalith, accompanied by my portable drawing board, portfolio of Fabriano paper and a bag full of assorted artist’s materials.  Dewi is researching his latest book on Neolithic monuments and Melvyn is making a documentary film of our literary and artistic adventures. All the work I’m doing will eventually be featured in a solo show in The Worker’s Gallery in the Rhondda Valley in September. If you want to know more, please click here.

If you want to see some of my other artworks, please click here.

Siadwel Live!

Siadwel

Husb and I managed to get hold of two audience tickets for a radio show recording at the BBC featuring the comedian John Sparkes’ character  Siadwel (pronounced Shadwell). We’ve been fans for years and think he’s one of the most underestimated comedy actors in Britain so it was a real treat for us to be there as he recorded an hour of hysterical and surreal comedy. I was hoping to scribble Siadwel himself but he was so entertaining that I didn’t want to get distracted from the comedy so I did this sketch of some of the audience during the break.

Here’s some classic Siadwel on YouTube.

And here’s a Podcast . Treat yourself 😀

 

Hostility

Overgrown stones

This is my 6th month travelling around South Wales, following the legendary Trail Of The Boar Hunt from The Mabinogion and drawing the Neolithic monuments on its track and up until now we’ve only had the weather to contend with. But on our last day out we had a miserable day of relentless hostility directed at those looking for their ancestral heritage. The first site we visited was accessible via a public footpath according to the Ordnance Survey Map except the path had been blocked off with barbed wire and had disappeared anyway under a thicket of thorny undergrowth and as we were trying to find a way through the landowner appeared and started shrieking at us. So we left quickly without visiting the stone. Onto the next site which had some standing stones a few metres off the road in a field which strictly forbade access and the stones were so overgrown with grasses, red campion and giant hogweed that they could barely be seen. Then to a long barrow at the end of a long and winding public footpath that had been planted over with crops – if we’d trampled the crops we would have been guilty of criminal damage and if we’d skirted around the outside of the field, we’d be trespassing. And finally a stone in an open and public place – except it had been removed from it’s original setting and relocated. Hostility takes many forms.

 

I have been travelling across South Wales with Rhondda-born archaeologist Dewi Bowen and Swansea film maker Melvyn Williams, hunting the wild megalith, accompanied by my portable drawing board, portfolio of Fabriano paper and a bag full of assorted artist’s materials.  Dewi is researching his latest book on Neolithic monuments and Melvyn is making a documentary film of our literary and artistic adventures. All the work I’m doing will eventually be featured in a solo show in The Worker’s Gallery in the Rhondda Valley in September. If you want to know more, please click here.

If you want to see some of my other artworks, please click here.

A Subtle Intervention

long barrow 1

We went to find a long barrow hidden in a field of corn. There was supposed to be a public footpath but it had been planted over so we walked around the edge of the field until we reached the elevated ground in front of a copse of trees where there was a raised area covered in bracken, very different from the land around it. I’ve noticed that many barrows we’ve visited are barely indistinguishable from the land in which they lie, but they tend to have different plants growing on them which gives them a distinctive colour and texture to the rest of their surroundings. So although they are not large and obvious like standing stones and ceremonial circles, they exert a gently disruptive influence over the landscape, a subtle intervention.

long barrow 2

 

I have spent the past few months travelling across South Wales with Rhondda-born archaeologist Dewi Bowen and Swansea film maker Melvyn Williams, hunting the wild megalith, accompanied by my portable drawing board, portfolio of Fabriano paper and a bag full of assorted artist’s materials.  Dewi is researching his latest book on Neolithic monuments and Melvyn is making a documentary film of our literary and artistic adventures. We are following the legendary trail of the boar hunt, y Twrch Trwyth from the Mabinogion, recording the Bronze Age ancestral stones that those ancient hunters might have encountered.

All the work I’m doing will eventually be featured in a solo show in The Worker’s Gallery in the Rhondda Valley in September. If you want to know more, please click here.

If you want to see some of my other artworks, please click here.

The Caged Stones

Bowls Club

Last week I was back out on my journey across South Wales to find ancient monuments on the Trail Of The Wild Boar (Y Twrch Trwyth) from the legends of The Mabinogion. This is another of a very few stones now in an urban setting, just outside the Bowls Club in Bridgend. This particular stone is no longer in its original position, which had been allotments for many years. It was moved a few metres to make way for a car park when the new leisure centre was built. I feel uncomfortable when stones are in an urban or agricultural setting because they exist on our terms, not on the terms of those who put them in the landscape and they seem like animals caged in a zoo, unable to fulfil their potential in the wild.

 

I have spent the past few months travelling across South Wales with Rhondda-born archaeologist Dewi Bowen and Swansea film maker Melvyn Williams, hunting the wild megalith, accompanied by my portable drawing board, portfolio of Fabriano paper and a bag full of assorted artist’s materials.  Dewi is researching his latest book on Neolithic monuments and Melvyn is making a documentary film of our literary and artistic adventures. We are following the legendary trail of the boar hunt, y Twrch Trwyth from the Mabinogion, recording the Bronze Age ancestral stones that those ancient hunters might have encountered.

All the work I’m doing will eventually be featured in a solo show in The Worker’s Gallery in the Rhondda Valley in September. If you want to know more, please click here.

If you want to see some of my other artworks, please click here.