I am rather pleased to announce that one of my paintings has been chosen to feature as today’s “Art Of The Day” on the on-line gallery Artfinder. The Art Of The Day feature can be found here.
Fan Girl
Fan Girl, which I blogged about last week here, is a painting inspired by my teenage years. It is available for sale on Artfinder here. I have been on the site for about a month now so I am delighted about the additional coverage. Click on the link on the right hand side of this blog to see other works for sale.
After nearly a month doing art in a semi-derelict shop (The Bagpuss Window) I’m back to my normal routine and life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop on Thursdays. This evening’s model goes by the name of Ben D’Busse, a pun on a local traffic experiment that turned out bad!
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I drew this with a Samsung Galaxy Note 8 using a free Markers app. I put in a grey ground to start with and then did most of the drawing with my fingertips, using the stylus to put in detailed line work towards the end. Here’s a slide show of the drawing in different stages of development.
I often use the idea of an individual enveloped by darkness. I find it both isolates the model and allows me to focus on small, significant details or design elements. It concentrates attention on the central figure as well as exposing the nature of the materials used.
Here, the dark washes show up the texture of the paper so it becomes a feature of the composition. The highlights, using white conté crayon, do the same at the other end of the spectrum.
This drawing is part of a series I did using the rinascere technique. Rinascere means to be reborn or to revive and is the root of the word ‘renaissance’.
My first blog about this drawing, along with others in the series can be found here. The background washes are my own addition to the technique and further enhance the impression of age and tradition.
I used Indian ink with a traditional dip pen and conté crayon on handmade paper, prepared with black and sepia ink washes.
The drawing “Rinascere #10” is available for sale on Artfinder and if you’d like to find out more, please click on the link here to go directly to them or click on the top right of this page to see other works for sale.
This model is very physically active and as a result, very confident about her body and the poses she strikes. Here she is leaning back with her leg up in a devil-may-care sort of way.
It always surprising just how much the physical presence of a model can reflect their underlying personality. My life drawing is a way of maintaining and expanding my skills as well as exploring ways of expressing this deeper meaning through the depiction of the human body.
You can see from my fist blog about this drawing here, that I was mainly concerned about the technical aspects of the process at the time. With hindsight it is easier to see the expressionistic nature of the drawing and how the choice of materials helps to bring out the drama.
I like to recycle materials, especially papers and mounting boards and I prepared this piece with an ink wash, dribbled randomly across it before I began to draw.
The drawing “Leg Up” is available for sale on Artfinder and if you’d like to find out more, please click on the link here to go directly to them or click on the top right of this page to see other works for sale.
Chalk and charcoal ephemeral drawing onto newspaper
I’m reaching the end of my time drawing on the wall at The Bagpuss Window, Swansea’s pop-up artspace. Tomorrow is our last day and the keys go back to Coastal Housing Group on Thursday so that the building can be demolished to make way for new social housing. So it’s going to be put to good use. The final part of my drawing is a drawing of me drawing. There’s still a fair bit of work to do on the face because the likeness isn’t very good and I had to resist the temptation to shave a couple of stone off my body! My right hand also needs a lot of work but I hope to have the whole thing finished by 5pm tomorrow so I can take a final photograph and then – the end…….
This is an etching of one of the male models I work with. It was developed from the nude study below, which I drew with Renaissance materials, inspired by artwork I did for a television series about da Vinci.
Each printmaking technique has its own advantages. This one allows me to indulge myself, using all manner of materials to make the image. I can push the ink around and draw as freely and as quickly as I like, knowing that the engraving process will capture all of the detail and subtleties.
I first blogged about this work in 2012 when I was introduced to the technique at Swansea Print Workshop.
It’s quite a bleak subject and I love the way the figure seems to be struggling to pull himself out of the darkness, into the light. I suppose we all feel like we are surrounded by darkness at some point in our lives and art is not and should not always be about sunshine and landscapes. Sometimes it has to show us our fears and fragility.
Using more than one medium means I can explore a subject in greater depth and develop my thoughts and feelings about it as I go through the range of options available. You have to go deeper into a subject before you can come out the other side.
The print above is a photopolymer steel plate etching, hand-printed by me using oil pigment onto BFK Rives cotton rag paper.
The drawing below is in Indian ink using a traditional dip pen, on handmade paper, prepared with black and sepia ink washes.
Rinascere #1
The print “Dystopia” and the drawing “Rinascere #1” are available for sale on Artfinder and if you’d like to find out more, please click on the links here and here to go directly to them or click on the top right of this page to see other works for sale.
I have been doing some printmaking at The Bagpuss Window, the temporary artspace in Swansea’s High Street, making a little edition of miniature drypoints (similar to etchings). I set up a printing area around the little etching press, with an inking table, a blotting table and a drying table. I measured and ripped 8 pieces of Bockingford 250gsm paper and put them into a bucket of water to soak. I like to leave them for at least an hour.
I started out with a small sketchbook drawing I made last year during my residency at the Zaira Zaka Print Studio in Pakistan, and redrew it with a soft drawing pen onto a piece of paper drypoint plate (from Intaglio Printmakers). Then I scratched into the drawing with a lot of cross hatching and mark-making, using a drypoint tool, although a 4 inch screw will do.
Setting up a printing area
The inking table (dirty area)
The soaking / blotting table (clean area)
Drawing on the drypoint card
Scratching the image
A tiny squeegee inks the plate
Removing ink with an old plastic card
A tiny edition
I used a little rubber squeegee strip to apply drypoint etching ink – it’s important to get the right ink, ordinary etching ink doesn’t work so well. I scraped across the surface to remove surplus ink with an old plastic card and removed a little more with some tissue, wiping the edges with a clean rag. It’s vital not to overwipe, it’s surprising how much ink you can leave on the plate – it doesn’t show up on the paper.
Then I gently blotted a piece of the paper between two sheets of kitchen roll with a small roller – just to remove surface water, not to dry out the paper – and placed it over the etching plate on the press bed, put some clean tissue on top, put the blankets over it and wound it through the press. Then I dried it between sheets of tissue under a heavy board to stop it from wrinkling. You can get 6-8 prints from a paper drypoint plate if you’re fairly gentle.
Here’s 3 minutes of my feet walking the lovely labyrinth made from chipped bark by archaeologist Dewi Bowen and musician David Pitt in The Bagpuss Window this week. The feet are not interesting at all, except it looks like I have my shoes on the wrong feet, but the accompanying gong music from David is wonderful. Go with the flow…….
Dewi has written an excellent book about Siluria, now South-East Wales, and its ancient standing stones, burial chambers, cairns and stone circles. Well worth a read and dead cheap.
Here is an illustration of how the natural differences in original print methods can work. These two pieces are taken from the same original drawing but because of the nature of the processes, one is reversed.
The three colour separation monotype above is done by removing ink from a transparent sheet, then applying that sheet to a piece of paper. This is called the reduction method and gives you a reverse image compared to what you see when you are drawing.
You can compensate for this easily these days but sometimes I prefer to use the natural qualities of the traditional printmaking methods. A detailed description of the process can be seen in my techie section. For this print I used oil-based litho/relief pigment onto BFK Rives cotton-rag paper
The direct line monotype, below is done by working on the back of an inked-up sheet, which is placed on top of another piece of paper. This means it will produce a direct copy what you are drawing.
For this I used archival quality oil-based litho ink onto Zerkall paper
The monotypes, ‘The Warrior Gazes’ and ‘The Warrior Pensive’ are available for sale on Artfinder and if you’d like to find out more, please click on the links here and here to go directly to them or click on the top right of this page to see other works for sale.
I never know who I will be drawing when I turn up for my weekly life drawing session. The models can be in their seventies or twenties, male or female. Because of this they each present different challenges and opportunities. Older models bring a lot of experience which is often visible on their skin or in their style of posing.
Younger models can bring a jaunty confidence, just because they are still full of the strength and exuberance of youth. This is exactly what I think this pose demonstrates. I have tried to capture the physical strength with the use of bold lines and a lightness of colouring which echoes the easy going optimism that we often have when we are young.
For this drawing I used Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens and watercolour washes onto beautiful Somerset paper.
This drawing, which I have called ‘Jaunty’ is available for sale on Artfinder and if you’d like to find out more, please click on the link here to go directly to it or click on the top right of this page to see other works for sale.
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