On Midsummer’s Eve

Rhossili

 

One lovely thing about having visitors is that we get to take people around the great places locally; it’s easy to be complacent about your home and take it for granted. It’s good to see your locality through the eyes of others. Today I took my friend down to Rhossili Bay at the furthest point of the Gower Peninsula. Using Dewi Bowen’s archaeology book as a guide, we climbed up over Rhossili Downs to find ancient stones. Despite the gorgeous Midsummer sunshine, there was a brisk wind which made it difficult to draw. I settled into the heather at the top of the Downs, just past the Trig Point, with the three jagged points of a ruined burial chamber (one of the group called Sweyne’s Howes) in the foreground and the Worm’s Head seeming to swim out to sea in the background. It’s an absolutely glorious location; Rhossili is one of the top 10 beaches in the world and the ancestors sussed it about 5,000 years ago. I drew onto prepared Fabriano Accademica paper with Daler-Rowney artist’s soft pastels.

 

I’ve been travelling around South Wales with archaeologist Dewi Bowen, who is researching his new book on Neolithic / Bronze Age monuments. His previous book on the stones of Ancient Siluria (South East Wales) can be found here. Also with us  is film maker Melvyn Williams, recording a documentary about our experiences. Some of Melvyn’s short films can be seen here. If you want to see some of my other artworks, please click here.

A week of vigils…

Another local artist has been drawing at vigils this week. So sad that these dreadful things happen ……

pattimcjones's avatarPATRICRAFT

In remembrance of the 49 who died in Orlando, 200 people gathered in Swansea’s Castle Square to light candles and sing ( ‘Something Inside So Strong’by Labi Siffre). I have started to do a simple sketch or two at each action I attend; in this case I drew the last person to leave the vigil. He was a student who patiently kept on lighting the candles on the steps:

Student

A day later I was in the Square again, this time with only a handful of people (it was very short notice) and for only a short time. Long enough to listen to Stephen Kinnock pay tribute to Jo Cox’s many achievements (including having persuaded the PM to accept 3,000 child refugees from Syria recently):

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The people of Swansea will continue to side with the oppressed,  marginalised and in this case, martyred. We may be only a small axe but we deliver a resounding’no pasaran’ to…

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Visiting Joe Bach

rose indienne

We have a friend visiting so we were out and about most of the day, taking in some galleries and museums. I think the best was the show of Josef Herman drawings and paintings at Swansea Museum. He was known affectionately as Joe Bach during his years in Wales and he spent much of his art career recording the ordinary people around him and I guess that’s what I do with my sketchbooks most of the time. We went to a local curry house later where I quickly scribbled these two sketches.

 

I’m currently working on a series of expressive drawings of ancestral sites and if you want to see some of my other artworks, please click here.

 

Shared from WordPress

A terrific blog about colour from Victoria Finlay

The meaning behind the many colors of India’s Holi Festival – http://wp.me/pXc3m-9y

Close Up

Maen Llia 1

Here’s a closer view of the drawing I did of Maen Llia yesterday. We drove up to the Black Mountains in changeable weather but, as often happens, as soon as we stopped the car, thick black clouds loomed over the hills and dropped torrential rain onto us. Nearly Midsummer and we’re huddled in the rain!!!! Anyway, it cleared up after a while and I walked through the mud down to the stone which is a couple of hundred yards from the road. I worked on top of some Fabriano Accademica paper prepared with charcoal, white acrylic paint and my own home-made walnut ink. When I was preparing the paper, I was allowing myself to be influenced by impressions and memories of the landscapes I had been visiting on my hunt for the wild megalith. I drew firstly with compressed charcoal, drawing lines over and over again, taking a sensory pleasure in just drawing lines. Lines are beautiful. Then I chose from my box of Daler Rowney soft pastels and worked in impressions of sky, hills, pasture, mosses, lichens.

I overlaid the stone onto the background, without making it solid, keeping a transparency because that’s sort of how I feel about the stones, that they are echoes from the ancestors overlaid onto modern life; they are mostly not noticed by us, even less understood, hiding in plain sight.

 

I’ve been travelling around South Wales with archaeologist Dewi Bowen, who is researching his new book on Neolithic / Bronze Age monuments. His previous book on the stones of Ancient Siluria (South East Wales) can be found here. Also with us  is film maker Melvyn Williams, recording a documentary about our experiences. Some of Melvyn’s short films can be seen here. If you want to see some of my other artworks, please click here.

 

The Licking Stone

Maen Llia 2

 

I’ve been travelling around South Wales drawing ancestral stones since February and today I paid a return visit to Maen Llia. I loved it so much the first time that I wanted to go back and draw it again from a different angle and also to spend some time there absorbing the atmosphere. Last time I drew the stone from a distance but today I went up really close and was surprised to see that it’s made of uncharacteristic red sandstone, heavily pitted over its surface, interspersed with thick colonies of mosses and lichens. There was graffiti carved into it’s surface – from the 1860s! I walked down to the stream that it is reputed to sometimes drink from – Maen Llia translates from Welsh as ‘The Licking Stone’. It’s a magical site.

 

I’ve been travelling around South Wales with archaeologist Dewi Bowen, who is researching his new book on Neolithic / Bronze Age monuments. His previous book on the stones of Ancient Siluria (South East Wales) can be found here. Also with us  is film maker Melvyn Williams, recording a documentary about our experiences. Some of Melvyn’s short films can be seen here. If you want to see some of my other artworks, please click here.

Dead Nature

fruit bowl

 

I don’t often draw a still life, I don’t know why because it can be varied and interesting and you don’t have problems with the subject moving. The French phrase for ‘still life’ is ‘nature morte’ or dead nature which maybe a more accurate description. I drew this into my A5 leatherbound sketchbook using a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen, size S in black.

 

I’m currently working on a series of expressive drawings of ancestral sites and if you want to see some of my other artworks, please click here.

The Vigil

Orlando vigil 1

 

Husb and I went to a vigil in the city centre last evening for those recently murdered in the atrocity in Orlando in the USA. It was sad but also joyous because so many people came together to commemorate those who had died and to stand up for what’s right. I’m of an age that I can remember when friends were routinely “queer-bashed” back in the 1970s and 1980s and the police and general public didn’t want to know. Times have changed. What was heartening at the vigil was the spread of ages, from elders to teenagers, united.

 

Orlando vigil 2

 

 

 

I’m currently working on a series of expressive drawings of ancestral sites and if you want to see some of my other artworks, please click here.

Recycle Reuse

mumbles

I’m always surprised at what people throw away. I often pull discarded prints out of the waste paper bin at the workshop, they’re done on beautiful paper with top quality inks and can be reused for drawings and collage but still people chuck them. Other people’s waste is my raw material and I use these thrown away prints for my own drawings. I like starting to draw over something unfamiliar. I took this down to the beach last night and drew with compressed charcoal, used neat and also rubbed in with my fingers. I might eventually cut it down to a small border or even no border at all. I was standing outside the Civic Centre, looking across Swansea Bay at Mumbles.

 

I’m currently working on a series of expressive drawings of ancestral sites and if you want to see some of my other artworks, please click here.

Filthy Paws

8

I always was a mucky kid, climbing trees, making dens, digging the garden with my fingers. I haven’t changed. One good thing about being an artist is that I can be just as mucky as I was back then. Today I prepared a huge piece of paper for manier noir drawing.

 

I was intending to cut up the sheet into smaller pieces to do a series of drawings, but I quite like this huge piece …. maybe I should keep it like this and do one giant drawing. What do you think?

 

manier noir
So…shall I split this up into smaller pieces or do one enormous drawing?

 

 

I’m currently working on a series of expressive drawings of ancestral sites and if you want to see some of my other artworks, please click here.