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Finishing The Drawing

I showed the first three phases of a new life drawing in yesterday’s blog and now here are the final three stages. I worked with conté crayons in white, black and sanguine into my A2 size brown paper sketchbook.

I love drawing onto brown paper. It reminds me of my childhood. There wasn’t any money to spare so my Mam used to cut up brown paper bags – that’s what you put groceries in before plastic bags – and I drew with bits of pinky white chalk she found on the edge of the Hafod tip behind our house.

The hands were hard work but worth the effort I think. They are well to the fore and the head recedes into the background. The Op Art cushion is fun and livens up the composition.

I have been travelling across South Wales with Rhondda-born archaeologist Dewi Bowen and Swansea film maker Melvyn Williams since February in all weathers with 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.

I’ve done around 50 drawings now and these will be exhibited in my solo show in The Worker’s Gallery in the Rhondda Valley in September. Please click here to find out more about it.

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

Stages Of A Drawing

Just back from life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop, working with one of our regular models, an older man. I worked large, into an A2 sized brown paper sketchbook that I picked up really cheap a few years ago in New York City. Ooooh get me! I built the drawing up with chalk to start with and then made more committed lines with white conté crayon.

Look. My friend brought me a set of conté crayons back from Cornellisens in London, white, sanguine and black.

Then I started in with the black conté. I’ll put up the final stages of the drawing tomorrow. I’m off to bed now. Goodnight.

By the way, since February, I have been travelling across South Wales with Rhondda-born archaeologist Dewi Bowen and Swansea film maker Melvyn Williams; cold and stormy, hot and humid, up mountains, through slurry, mud and bog, in all weathers 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.

I’ve done around 50 drawings now and these will be exhibited in my solo show in The Worker’s Gallery in the Rhondda Valley in September. Please click here to find out more about it.

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

Pop Goes The Bluestone

This is the final drawing I did last week on our two-day drawing / archaeology / filming trip to Pembrokeshire. It’s a beautiful site, Gors Fawr, near Mynachlog-ddu in the Preseli mountains, a lush green bog fringed with glowing hills, dotted with a stone circle and two outliers constructed from bluestone. It’s the last drawing I’ll be doing for a few weeks as I must now concentrate on getting the work ready for my solo show next month, but we hope to resume our hunt for wild megaliths throughout the Autumn. You can see Dewi Bowen, archaeologist and Melvyn Williams, filmaker in the photo above. We’ve been doing this for seven months and there are still plenty more ancestral monuments to visit, draw, film and write about.

Each monument, each ancient site, affects me in different ways and this carries over into my drawings. It’s easier to draw a standing stone or chambered tomb than a stone circle as the subject is smaller, more focused, not spread across a large area, so I’ve tended towards far more abstraction with the circles. I work quickly and intuitively and don’t really see what I’ve done until it’s finished. This was a surprise – it’s quite Pop Art. I’m starting to think that it might translate nicely into a silkscreen print. But not until the Autumn!

wild flowers — Purple ling and yellow gorse at Carn Llidi near St. Davids.

Since February, I have been travelling across South Wales with Rhondda-born archaeologist Dewi Bowen and Swansea film maker Melvyn Williams; cold and stormy, hot and humid, up mountains, through slurry, mud and bog, in all weathers 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.

I’ve done around 50 drawings now and these will be exhibited in my solo show in The Worker’s Gallery in the Rhondda Valley in September. Please click here to find out more about it.

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

The Nice People

Sometimes you meet people who are so nice it makes your day – or week even. We spent a couple of days last week hunting megaliths in Pembrokeshire and met some lovely people. We stopped to look for a stone in the little village of Dinas Cross in North Pembrokeshire. It was in a field next to the garage but we weren’t sure if we should go in as the gate seemed locked so Melvyn wandered into the garage and the owner came out and unlocked the gate and spent ages telling us about local stones and where to find them. Such a nice man and so keen to help us. And there were also Jon and Maria and Mike and Jeb who gave us such great hospitality while we were there. And the lady who offered to let us park in her garden when there was nowhere else to park for miles. And Jane and her travelling companions at Cerrig Y Gof. And all the nice people on the track to and from St. Elvis’ Burial Chamber. Lovely people and lovely places. I didn’t finish the drawing of the Dinas stone because we were in a hurry so I’ll finish it this week, when I have a spare moment. Chance would be a fine thing!

Since February, I have been travelling across South Wales with Rhondda-born archaeologist Dewi Bowen and Swansea film maker Melvyn Williams, cold and stormy, hot and humid, up mountains, through slurry, mud and bog, across beaches in all weathers 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.

I’ve done around 50 drawings now and these will be exhibited in my solo show in The Worker’s Gallery in the Rhondda Valley in September. Please click here to find out more about it.

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

Pointing At The Head

We stayed awhile at Cerrig Y Gof, a group of five cists in an oval site in a field just outside the beautiful village of Newport on the North Pembrokeshire coast. This particular monument is aligned with the small peninsula of Dinas Head in the distance.

We were lucky to have good weather, the day after our eventful trip to Carn Llidi where we were buffeted by gales up a mountain. By contrast, the Newport visit was warm, sunny and calm.

I have been travelling across South Wales with Rhondda-born archaeologist Dewi Bowen and Swansea film maker Melvyn Williams since a cold and stormy February , up mountains, through slurry, mud and bog, across beaches in all weathers 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.

I’ve done around 50 drawings now and these will be exhibited in my solo show in The Worker’s Gallery in the Rhondda Valley in September. Please click here to find out more about it.

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

Fellow Hunters

Cerrig Y Gof is a site of five tombs just outside the village of Newport in North Pembrokeshire. They were completely overgrown with brambles and bracken but we carefully cleared most of the undergrowth away, revealing the ancient treasures underneath. We met some fellow hunters of the wild megalith and had a great conversation – we rarely see other people on our travels.

Since February I have been travelling across South Wales with Rhondda-born archaeologist Dewi Bowen and Swansea film maker Melvyn Williams, up mountains, through slurry, mud and bog, across beaches in all weathers 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.

I’ve done around 50 drawings now and these will be exhibited in my solo show in The Worker’s Gallery in the Rhondda Valley in September. Please click here to find out more about it.

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

Gatepost To The Moon

Sometimes ancient stones can be found in hedges and used as gateposts. We found a fine example, a really big one in a field on the hillside near Llanychaer near the north Pembrokeshire coast. There were three large standing stones, including the gatepost, the other two in the hedge and one fallen stone at the bottom of the field. The group is called Parc Y Meirw (Field of the Dead) and they align with the moon’s highest point in the sky, a phenomenon that happens every 18.6 years. Knowledge of this cycle is useful for predicting eclipses.

I drew with conte crayon, carbon and Daler Rowney artists’ soft pastels onto Fabriano paper prepared with gesso, charcoal and my home-made walnut ink. I sat on the grass to do the drawing, it was warm and dry and I could spend some time working on it, and some jolly farm boys drove by in a tractor and called out to see my drawing. We brightened each others day.

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.

Summer? Really?

So you’d think that as it’s August we’d be having some nice summer weather. You’d think. Except this is Wales and there I was in Pembrokeshire a couple of days ago, near the top of Carn Llidi, trying to draw in gale force winds. In August. In summer. Yeah.

I did as much as I could, which wasn’t much in those conditions. There are two chambered tombs on the site and this is the smaller, which was slightly protected from the gusting wind by the larger tomb. I managed to get a substantial outline drawn onto my prepared paper and took some photos so I can finish it later.

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.

Saint Elvis Of Preseli

I’ve just come back from a 2 day trip to Pembrokeshire to draw more ancient Neolithic monuments on my quest across South Wales. The first stone we came to is the burial chamber of Saint Elvis. It’s near Saint David’s which is not too far from the Preseli Mountains. Hmmmm! I wonder if Elvis Presley had Welsh ancestors?

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.

The Last Leg

I’m on the last leg of The Boar Hunt, Y Ywrch Trwyth, my quest to draw Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments across South Wales that coincide with the route of this story from The Mabinogion. Just a half dozen or so left to visit and draw, along with Rhondda-born archaeologist Dewi Bowen and Swansea film maker Melvyn Williams. I like to draw on prepared paper and I’m nearly out of it so I’ve prepared some more.

I stretched a very large piece of Fabriano Accademica paper onto a wall and gave it two coats of white gesso. Then I rubbed compressed charcoal into it, covering the surface densely. Then a coat of thinned gesso, applied randomly and quickly and a second coat, again brushed on roughly. Finally, I used my home-made walnut ink, which breaks up nicely over the gesso undercoat. I love the way it runs.

We’re setting off early tomorrow. I hope it stops raining!

If you want to know more about my forthcoming solo show, Yr Helfa / The Hunt, 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.

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