One From The Archives 9: The Cushion

Cushion

Surrounded by symbolism, the interplay of shadows describes the form of the nude. This is an etching of one of the female models I work with and is developed from a nude study drawn with Renaissance materials, inspired by artwork I did for a television series about da Vinci.

This type of etching allows me to translate my line drawings into a more permanent medium. It gives me the freedom to be as expressive as I like and to draw using a fast, energetic style. The fact that I am taking a drawing onto another stage of development means I can introduce additional elements of design. The objects on the wallpaper behind the figure look like a a simple decorative pattern at first.

Look closer and you can see that they are skulls and petroglyphic animals, without being too arty you could see these as symbolising the brief life of the individual versus human culture; which can last for tens of thousands of years.

Cushion Detail

One of the main reasons we create art is to attempt to live beyond our allotted life span in some way. This coupled with the enormous emotional impact death has on the lives of each and every one of us makes it a massive subject.

In this piece I am also recalling the Memento Mori, a tradition in European [and latterly American] art, dating back to Roman times, where the viewer is reminded that death is the inevitable consequence of life, typically by including a skull.  You can see a previous blog featuring one of my other ‘Memento Mori’ here.

If you want to find out more technical details about the printmaking techniques I use please click here to go through to the technical section on my website. The etching “The Cushion” 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 link on the right hand side of this blog to see other works for sale.

Drawing And Gonging

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Coming up to the end of the second week at The Bagpuss Window and I’m getting on with the gigantic wall drawing, worked mostly intuitively. I’ve been pushing out of my comfort zone. I normally work directly from life, small, with fine pens and my drawing can be very tight and controlled. I want to use these few weeks in the old shop to experiment and loosen up my drawing as much as possible.

The past few days, we’ve been joined by David Pitt who, amongst other creative activities, plays gongs. Wonderful instruments, such incredible music. He was playing today as I was drawing and I got right into ‘the zone’, carried away by the incredible sounds and drawing automatically. When I looked at what I’d done, it was markedly different to the drawings I’d done earlier in the week, much freer. I used my fingers more, smudging the sparse features rather than fretting over details and doing loads of cross-hatching.

Gong
David Pitt and two gongs

It’s been a really good experience so far and there’s so much arty stuff happening locally that Swansea’s being called the new Montmartre. 

Popping Up

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This evening I did my third stint in a little pop-up studio at the Taliesin Arts Centre. I’m a member of an artist collective, 15 Hundred Lives, and we have an exhibition at Oriel Ceri Richards Gallery until the 26th of September. We’ve been given some space in the Taliesin foyer/bar to do live art, so I’m there on Wednesday evenings throughout the exhibition’s run and collagist Sylvie Evans is also doing some sessions. You can see her collaged sail installation hanging in the stairwell.

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I started when the bar was fairly quiet which gave me a chance to draw something other than people. I don’t like drawing architecture and interiors, really hard, much prefer to draw people and animals. So this evening was good practice for me. I used a double page from my A4 hardbound sketchbook that I’d prepared with brown wrapping paper glued in with Pritt stick. I drew with Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens, sizes S and F.

Eventually the bar filled up with people come to see this evening’s film and I had some great conversations with those interested in what I was doing. I took along some completed sketchbooks for browsing. It’s a good opportunity to publicise my work, hand out business cards and direct people downstairs to the gallery to see the exhibition. Only one more pop-up studio session to go, but I’m going to be doing an artist walk-and-talk around the exhibition on Saturday the 26th. More about this soon.

Here’s a short video about our exhibition showing the three of us doing our art and you get to hear me speak.

One From The Archives 8: The Mirrors

The Mirrors
The Mirrors

I like this style because it allows me to pick out the most essential aspects of a scene.  The drawing style I use most is the ‘continuous line’ method, where I keep the pen on the paper without taking a break and restarting in another part of the drawing. I also hardly look at the paper at all.

That method of drawing lends itself particularly well to direct line monotypes. A detailed description of which can be found here.   In this monotype I have taken a very busy and colourful life drawing and focussed in on the emotional centre of the piece; a woman lost in her thoughts, seemingly alone.

By outlining the woman and her reflection boldly, I hope to draw the gaze to the hard exterior we all sometimes show to the world. Individual limbs and even her face are softer; more delicate and almost blend in with the background. The image shouts “leave me alone” in a way that the more colourful original never could.

 

Fairy girl double
Fairy girl double

If you want to find out more technical details about the printmaking techniques I use please click here to go through to the technical section on my website. The drawing “The Mirrors” 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 link on the right hand side of this blog to see other works for sale.

Heston And Husb

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I’m carrying on with the ephemeral  wall drawing I’m doing down at The Bagpuss Window, the pop-up artspace in a shop about to be demolished in Swansea’s High Street. The drawing will be demolished at the same time. I wrote some text, “The older you get, the more dead people you know” and this is inspiring the whole piece. I’m using charcoal, chalk and conte crayon.

The door has been open and people pop in for a look. One chap came in and asked why I was drawing “….that telly chef, Heston Blumenthal“. It’s Husb! Same hairstyle though 🙂

 

 

One From The Archives 7: Rinascere #7

Rin 7 for WP

The pose a model strikes can lend a lot to a piece of work. It is one of the reasons I work from life as much as I do. When I look at this, I see a person who is relaxed and confident as she sits in contemplation of her future. I might be reading that into the pose but our body language says a lot about us and when making decisions about how to represent someone artistically, it can often be the dominant feature.

The difficult part is creating an atmosphere in the rest of the drawing which enhances it. Here I have given the fabric she is sitting on a bright, chequered pattern. This allows me to use the full range of tones to lift the mood of the piece. Browns and blacks are not naturally uplifting shades but using the checks gives me the ability to introduce a bit of lightness into the work without the seat dominating the composition at the expense of the figure.

To the same end, the wash fades to white towards the top of the frame to reveal her head and shoulders as if they were in a pool of light.

If you want to find out more technical details about the drawing materials and papers I use please click here to go through to the technical section on my website. The drawing “Rinascere #7” 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 link on the right hand side of this blog to see other works for sale.

One From The Archives 6: Straight Ahead

Straight Ahead

I like to work with a range of models and this middle aged woman is one of my favourites. She exudes confidence and is so comfortable in her own skin.

I draw from life weekly at Swansea Print Workshop, working with professional artists and models. This underpins my artistic practice and inspires me to develop the images into other genres – printmaking, mixed media, painting and intuitive drawing. Models do it for all sorts of reasons, but they all have one thing in common, they love art and engage with art by inspiring artists.

A big part of life drawing is simply the opportunity to practice technique. This can be the technique of drawing itself, where  the actual pose of the model is important. Things like foreshortening can be tricky, as can hands and feet. In fact, the expression “It costs an arm and a leg” comes from centuries ago when rich people commissioned artists to paint their portrait. There was a basic rate just for a head and shoulders portrait. An arm was extra. A leg cost even more. I talked about this in an earlier blog which you can see here.

Then there are the techniques to do with rendering surfaces and textures like skin fabric and flat areas. These will change according to what medium you are using.  Here I was using Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens and ink washes onto mounting (matte) board highlighted with white conte crayon.

Straight Ahead detail for WordPress

 

Because I like to draw the  room as well as the model I get plenty of scope to practice these techniques.  In this detail, you can see how the washes allow me to render the fabric and the skin in a very free way. The pen work lets me give the figure a sense of weight, using thicker lines and also to convey distance by sketching in background objects more faintly.

If you want to find out more technical details about the drawing materials and papers I use please click here to go through to the technical section on my website. The drawing “Straight Ahead” 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 link on the right hand side of this blog to see other works for sale.

 

One From The Archives 5: The Warrior Prone

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Full colour reduction monotype

I did a small series of full colour reduction monotypes a few years ago, working with a young soldier I know who is also a life model when he’s on leave. He loves modelling and he’s really good at it. From an artist’s perspective, it’s fascinating to work with a man in the prime of life who is in the best possible physical condition, not overdone like a body builder but as fit as it’s possible for a human male to be.

But apart from that, what resonated with me is the danger of his job. He loves what he does, which is difficult for me as I abhor war, but I also accept that some humans are born to be warriors and this man is one of them. And he is a son and a grandson and a brother, as human as the rest of us. All my monotypes are based on original life drawings. I do many in my sketchbooks but only a few make it through to development into something else – a monotype, etching, screenprint, painting etc… When I chose the drawings to develop for the ‘Warrior’ mini-series, I focused on my own feelings and showed the vulnerability of the model. Warrior he may be, but he’s also fragile flesh and bone and his life could be snuffed out so easily.

Warrior prone small
The original drawing, charcoal into an A3 sketchbook

 

The full-colour reduction monotype process produces one piece with deep, jewel-like colours but I also put another piece of the gorgeous BFK Rives paper through the antique etching press at Swansea Print Workshop to take a second – ghost – impression. This technique was beloved by Impressionist artists Degas and Monet and they often worked over the ghost monotype with oil pastels. But often, the untouched image is quite beautiful without any more work, the oil pigments break up slightly like an Impressionist painting.

The 'ghost' Warrior Prone
The ‘ghost’ Warrior Prone

If you want to find out more technical details about monotypes, please click here to go through to the technical section on my website. The “Warrior Prone” 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 link on the right hand side of this blog to see other works for sale.

 

The Eye Wild

News of a fab exhibition coming up at Swansea Print Workshop

drawntoprint's avatar15 Years, people and printmaking

A DATE FOR THE DIARY:

The Eye Wild |An exhibition of original prints by Carol Lawrence and Bridget Stevens | Daily 25 -27 September, 11.30 to 4.00 | FREE

where does an idea come from? where does it go? marks on paper from an inner world made visible. Artists Carol Lawrence and Bridget Stevens explore the inner landscape and respond to poetry and myth through printmaking

WITH SPECIAL EVENT | Hear the poems read by some of The Poets, let your eye range wild and see where it takes you. Join us for a Tea Party where Print Meets Poetry meets Cake Sunday 27 September 2015 2.30 – 4.00 pm |FREE

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On The Move

refugee 1

Husb and I went to the gathering in support of refugees in the centre of Swansea this afternoon. There was a good turnout and I took the opportunity to have a few scribbles. Drawing in crowds is hard; people don’t stay still. You fix on one figure as your starting point but before you finish, they’ve moved! It’s like drawing pigeons, they move constantly. So it’s good practice for me, but very frustrating.