Plum Cake And A Nude

nov 5 a

Just back from life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop. I hadn’t drawn this model before, she’s new but I got the hang of her reasonably well. Sometimes it takes ages to get used to a new model, sometimes things just fall in place. The portrait and figure took about 50 minutes then I did the semi-abstract one in the last few minutes. I used charcoal and chalk into an A2 sketchbook made from brown paper. I love drawing onto brown paper, it’s great having a ready-made mid tone .

I made a plum upside-down cake for tea break. I had some hard plums that were not juicy or interesting so I put them into the bottom of a cake tin and mixed up a sponge to go on top. It went down well enough and the plums tasted much better cooked.

Land Of Ice And Fire

trolls small

Husb and I visited Iceland (the country, not the shop) three winters ago and we managed to get a really cheap package deal to go again in a couple of weeks. It’s a fabulous place for an artist, although hard to draw outside in winter temperatures. I tried out different preparations for the papers I took last time so I’ll be replicating those when I go again. You need robust, thick paper, like a heavyweight Khadi, or card – I used mount board (matte board). I laid down some colours onto my papers and cards with ink washes and acrylics last time and drew over them with oil bars and soft pastels. I’ll be doing that again. My usual M.O. of lightweight sketchbook and drawing pens just doesn’t stand up to the moisture in the air and the piercing cold.

We’re hoping to see the Aurora Borealis this time – they didn’t show up on our last visit and I’ve booked myself into a half-day introduction at the Icelandic Elf School.

Let Sleeping Cats Lie

sleeping cats lie

Says it all, really 😀

Sparta Puss in my A5 lined cat sketchbook, The Cat’s Meow Journal, by Peter Pauper Press using Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens, sizes S and B.

The Final Cwtch

Tair Carn Uchaf

Another unseasonable warm and bright day, but glorious weather to say goodbye to artist Ann Jordan’s ‘Cwtch’, a giant woollen blanket and environmental installation. You can read more about this extraordinary piece here. It is in it’s final resting place, a circle of eroded peat bog up on the Black Mountain in the Brecon Beacons National Park in South Wales. A multi-generation group went up the mountain with Ann and some rangers from the national park and helped to stretch and lay it in place and then, after weighting the edge with local stones, we scattered a sackful of local heather seed over it. The blanket should provide a good environment for the seed to germinate and grow and stop the patch from further erosion.

cwtch photo

Of course, I took the opportunity to have a scribble. I’m looking west-ish here towards ‘Tair Carn Uchaf‘, the Welsh for The Three Upper Carns, ancient burial mounds in the distance and Carn Pen y Clogau on the right of the drawing. One of the park rangers described the area as a ‘Bronze Age Landscape Of The Dead’. That phrase brought up all sorts of images. I think I’ll be heading this way again, soon, to do some more drawing.

One From The Archives 24: A Pug In A Pink Sweater

Bruce the pug cuts a rare sartorial dash in this fetching pink sweater from the house of Calvin Canine. He is often the subject of my niece’s off the cuff dressing up adventures and has an extensive wardrobe.

Pug in a pink sweater

He seems to enjoy it and will happily lounge around the house in whatever is fresh off the catwalk. Being a pug he is somewhat rotund so these horizontal stripes probably aren’t the most flattering choice but he wears everything with a swagger and won’t be intimidated by society’s narrow definitions of beauty.

I’ve never seen a dog with more natural style and panache but looking back, the silk pyjamas and a smoking jacket probably was going a bit far.  Although the Fez was a master stroke.

This work is done using the suicide method of block printing. For this you produce a multi-coloured print using the same block, by progressively cutting away each colour. You end up totally destroying the block, so there’s little room for error and there’s no chance of ever doing a reprinted edition.

I printed wet on wet to get a slightly ‘fizzy’ surface texture and to encourage some colour mixing.

If you want to find out more technical details about techniques I use please click here to go through to the technical section.

The lino print “Pug In A Pink Sweater” 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.

 

Plumb Tuckered

heyokah

It’s been a long hard day of arty shenanigans. I started early this morning playing a ranting judge in a short film being made by friends. Then onto a second day of drawing in public at the Creative Bubble artspace in the city centre – I do this for a couple of days a month with the 15 Hundred Lives art collective. A quick bite to eat and off to a Halloween Shin-Dig nearby with some groovy people who have taken over an old shop and are developing it into a community cultural centre; early days yet but it looks very promising. I did some more spontaneous drawing there, some faces looming out of a long sheet of brown wrapping paper – well it is Halloween after all. And finally to one of the Elysium events – an open studio which was buzzing. A quick bit of blogging then off to bed because I’m plumb tuckered out. Goodnight 😀

The Big Draw-ing

Dolmen 8

 

The 15 Hundred Lives art collective that I’m a member of is holding a Big Draw event at the Creative Bubble artspace for a couple of days. October is not only the month of the national Big Draw, the world’s biggest drawing festival, it’s also the month of All Hallow’s Eve, an ancient festival for remembering the dead. It’s a Christian festival, part of Allhallowtide; a pagan festival based in the Celtic Samhain; Calan Gaeaf, the Welsh winter festival; and the 20th century secular Halloween tradition of trick or treating.

A lot of my artwork is based on memories of those who have died, my ancestors, and I started a big drawing inspired by this and by my recent couple of days in Pembrokeshire drawing ancient burial monuments.  I don’t see it as a depressing thing at all.  I started by ripping up lumps of newspaper and sticking them on to a roll of Fabriano Accademica with Pritt stick. Then I started drawing onto it with compressed charcoal. Here’s a slide show of the development of the work.

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We had quite a few people drop in and draw with us, some lovely work and lots of great discussions. Another day of it tomorrow – I might do another big drawing.

A Christmas Card Tradition

A master printmaker and thoroughly nice guy.  Please come and visit Alan during his short residency at Swansea Print Workshop and check out his fabulous lino cuts in this blog.

 

Source: A Christmas Card Tradition

Up The Mountains

mountain 3

Today I dropped off some new work to the wonderful Workers Gallery in Ynyshir in the Rhondda Valley. Husb and I drove up over Aberdare and Maerdy and stopped to take some photos of the rugged scenery in the late Autumn light. Wonderful place.

mountain 2

 

mountain 1

mountain 4

The new exhibition, ‘Of Site And Song’ opens on November the 5th and runs until December the 23rd. It would be lovely for people to make a little trip up to this lovely gallery and to take in the amazing landscape as well.

Up The Workers

Of Site & Song Exhibition Workers Gallery (1)

In this era of austerity and cutbacks, it’s so good to acknowledge a success story. Just over a year ago, two artists, Gayle Rogers and Chris Williams took over the recently closed public library in the little village of Ynyshir, up the Rhondda Valley and reopened it as a gallery. Not only a gallery but also a studio, a cultural reading space and a meeting venue for the community. They have just celebrated their first anniversary and will shortly open their Winter show, Of Sight And Song. I’m so flattered that they have chosen one of my images, a manier noir drawing inspired by The Holocaust Memorial, for the poster and invitations and I’m chuffed to be exhibiting in The Workers again.

A great venue, please do make an effort to get up the Rhondda Valley to visit it. The area is fabulous anyway, great scenery, interesting history and the very best chip shop in Ferndale. The show opens on November the 5th and runs until December the 23rd.