I Ate A Snail

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Today I ate a snail for the first time. I won’t bother again. It tasted like earth in garlic butter with the texture of one of those rubbery sponges you put make-up on, if you wear make-up. Husb and I went to a posh French restaurant for his birthday meal. His birthday was in August but it took a long time to get a reservation. Apart from the snail, it was lovely but now I’m stuffed and I don’t want to do any drawing. What a lazy mare. Here’s one I did earlier this year, in the rain on Swansea Beach. Now off to bed, like a beached whale in a duvet.

we wish you a merry creative sketching workshop

Ooohhh! Something for the artist in your life

pete scully's avatarpetescully

Creative Sketching Workshop US cover 1Christmas is coming boys and girls. Hey you know what would be good for those of you who like to sketch (or know those who might), a great book featuring twelve urban sketchers from around the world demonstrating a variety of different approaches to various urban sketching subjects. INCLUDING FIRE HYDRANTS. My book “Creative Sketching Workshop” was published recently and is a whopping good read. You can get it in the UK at bookshops and from the amazon, (currently ranked 153 out of all books on Art Issues, down from the previous high-mark of 22) and in the US you can also get it from north light publishing (they have lots of great art books, several by fellow sketchers), also bookshops and also amazon.com, where it is currently ranked as the 90,075th book out of all the books (let’s break that 90,000 mark dudes!). Learn a…

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Random Folk

st judes

Husb and I went to a meeting in our area this evening, a group of like-minded people looking at the feasibility of raising money to convert an empty church into a community arts / cultural facility. It’s an historic Victorian building, Grade II listed by Cadw and it would be a shame to see it remain empty or to be used for something that would take it out of community use. Of course I had a quick scribble, very quick, just a couple of minutes as I had to concentrate on what was going on. I sketched into my Peter Pauper Press A5 sketchbook with a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen.

 

Here’s the old church, St. Jude’s on Terrace Road in Swansea.

St. Jude's church
St. Jude’s church

Wish us luck 🙂

 

Three x Two

three Melvyns

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.

Puss ‘n’ Boots

pussnboots

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.

In The SPace

Space 1

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.

Drawing It Out

dolmen

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.

Get Over Yourself

her place 1

 

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.

Bob’s Your Uncle!

scribble 5 dark strokes

A while back, I was walking along the street in the city centre and noticed a load of strange squiggles on the pavement.

scribble 4 dark strokes

It’s handy having a decent camera on my phone – how times have changed – so I took a few snaps.

scribble 1 ink spatter

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

frida paper

“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.