Getting back to basics with some quick scribbles in my sketchbook. I nobbled Husb as he was watching TV this evening and did three sketches, each about 2 minutes, with a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen, size S, into my little Peter Pauper Press notebook.
Spent a lot of today using the Columbian press at Swansea Print Workshop and then went visiting family. When I got home, I didn’t have much time so I scribbled a quick sketch, just a few minutes, into my little A5 Peter Pauper Press sketchbook. I sketched my boot and my cat, Sparta Puss.
Swansea Print Workshop has a temporary artspace, The SPace, in the heart of the city and one of the benefits is that it gives our members a pop up gallery. Here are my series of screenprinted portraits of women artists who inspire me and four of my drawings of ancestral burial sites in Pembrokeshire – I drew them in the rain a few weeks ago. There’s also a collagraph fox by Kara Seaman and a drawing by Hannah Lawson.
The SPace is open to the public Wednesdays to Saturdays, 11.30 – 5.00 until the middle of February.
A few weeks ago I spent a couple of days in Pembrokeshire, drawing ancient monuments mostly in the rain. When I’m drawing something from life, I concentrate on getting the appearance and proportion right, doing a fair representation. I often use these original drawings as source material for something else, usually a print – an etching, silkscreen, monotype – but today I thought I’d try doing a drawing from my original sketch of Carreg Samson, a dolmen perched above the North Pembrokeshire coast. It was quite liberating as all the basics had already been done so I could focus on experimenting with making marks and developing the mood of the drawing. I only spent a few minutes on this but I think I might do some more and spend more time on them. I worked with carbon into an A3 Daler Rowney sketchbook.
I recently had a rubber stamp made from a screen print I did a few months back (here) and tried it out today for the first time on some leftover pieces of lovely Shiohara paper. It came out like, well, a rubber stamp. Being a geeky and rather obsessive printmaker, I of course wanted it to be absolutely perfect, like a lino block through a fine Victorian Columbian press.
Then I got over myself! A rubber stamp is a completely different animal and the effect of stamping gives a very different finish to a press. And then I started enjoying myself, stamping away. I hung them to dry on my clothes airer, using plastic pegs and cotton wool pads. I’m not sure what I’ll do with them – maybe a 3D piece?
I did it at The SPace, a temporary artspace by Swansea Print Workshop at 217, High Street, Swansea. Open 11.30 – 5.00, Wednesdays to Saturdays until mid-February.
A while back, I was walking along the street in the city centre and noticed a load of strange squiggles on the pavement.
It’s handy having a decent camera on my phone – how times have changed – so I took a few snaps.
The squiggles had been made by a machine that scrubs chewing gum off the pavement – ychafi! I downloaded them when I got home and had a bit of a play in Photoshop and Bob’s Your Uncle!
“Waste not, want not” as my Nana used to say, along with “Make do and mend”. She survived two world wars and the great depression of the 1920s and never threw anything away. I’ve been tearing some beautiful Japanese Shiohara paper for an edition of woodcuts and there are a load of small leftovers about 7 inches by 4. Cut in half they’ll be the ideal size to try out a little rubber stamp I made a few months ago with a laser cutter. I scanned a screen print I did of the artist Frida Kahlo and scaled it down then followed the complex instructions to operate some extreme machinery and out popped this stamp. I haven’t tried it out yet. I’ve been waiting for the right paper.
How can a cat look so cross and be purring at the same time? Husb and I went to see ‘Legend’, the new film about the Kray twins, this evening and when we got back, this is what greeted us. Sparta Puss looking furious but also purring like a train. I think she was really annoyed because we’d gone out for a couple of hours and weren’t there to pay her loads of attention but she was also glad to see us, well me as she seems quite hostile to all other life forms……
I had a quick scribble with my Faber Castell Pitt pen, size S, into my A5 “The Cat’s Meow Journal”. It took a couple of minutes. Sometimes the way cats sit, they look a bit like a Batman mask.
The film is excellent, gripping and so well acted. Tom Hardy, who played the twins, was absolutely brilliant. We saw it in our local independent cinema at the Taliesin Arts Centre. It’s a great venue, much nicer than the multiplex chains.
Husb and I had one of our great-nephews for a sleepover. He’s a delightful 11 year old with a superpower. He spreads chaos wherever he goes. He is Boy Chaos! This is our settee this morning. I have no idea how he managed to get a cushion cover completely off a gigantic cushion almost as big as him, simply by slobbing out on it all evening and watching the telly.
I’ve been worried that I have fallen out of the habit of sketching. I’ve been so busy with artspaces, exhibitions and going away that I hadn’t done any daily sketchbook work for about 2 months. So Boy Chaos has kickstarted my daily scribbles. I used Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens in sizes S and B along with a dark graphite stick into my little A5 ‘Cat’s Meow Journal’ by Peter Pauper Press. It was a gift last Xmas and it’s a gorgeous little thing, I love to scribble in it, even though it is faintly lined.
Here’s another study from last night’s life drawing session at Swansea Print Workshop. I have spent a lot of time using my Galaxy Samsung Note 8 tablet with a free Markers app at life drawing. It’s been my main drawing tool for a couple of years, but recently I got sick of it. I quite literally started to feel nauseous at the thought of doing any more drawing with it. I think it’s because I have to spend so much time on the computer anyway that I really needed a break. I dug out an A3 Daler Rowney sketchbook and some charcoal and graphite blocks and started to scribble away, feeling the drawing materials rubbing across the paper. So different to digital drawing, so real and responsive.
scribblah 