Visiting Iceland with Husb and yesterday spent a fascinating afternoon at the Elf School, eating delicious pancakes and listening to fascinating stories about Icelandic elves. I have reposted a blog from 3 years ago when I first visited Iceland and encountered some very strange beings. I wondered if they might be elves or the Huldufolk (Hidden People) but the head of the Elf School thinks they are more like trolls.Trolls! How cool is that?
Source: The Hidden People
I’m in the land of ice and fire, Iceland, for a few days. Arrived this morning and on the bus from the airport to Reykjavik, I snapped this little volcanic dome in the grim lava landscape. Been awake since 3am so I am going to get some shut eye now. Good night 😊
It’s my chair. Mine. You’d never know it!
Sparta Puss won’t give me my chair back!
Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens into an A6 sketchbook.
A couple of quick kitty scribbles done in Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens and charcoal into a little A6 sketchbook. Ming The Merciless is one of my favourite models. She’s an elderly one-eyed rescued cat who is nice as pie until she sees the cat basket because that only means one thing, a visit to the vets. Then she turns into psycho kitty!
I spent a happy hour fondling beautiful papers and sniffing oil pigments and pulling on my favourite antique printing press. I was doing some trials on four lovely Japanese papers. This is an Atsukushi White, just 39 gsm. Above is the back of the paper on the woodcut block just after I’d put it through the press.
And here it is, peeled off the inked surface. I also tried out ShoinBis, Shiohara and Sekishushi. I’ll check them out when they’re dry and see which performed best.
The image is from a little wood block I cut a few years back when Sparta Puss was little. She used to run up the curtains and totally wrecked the nets. One day I grabbed the camera and photographed her pulling shapes as she slid down the curtains. I did some drawings from the photos onto plywood, got out my Flexcut tools and hacked away and then hand printed a small edition of 30, currently available through Artfinder.
Yesterday, Husb and I went to the launch of the latest exhibition, Of Site And Song, at the lovely Workers Gallery in Ynyshir. This gorgeous venue recently celebrated its first birthday. It used to be the village library but it was closed down because of austerity cutbacks and artists Gayle Rogers and Chris Williams reopened it as a charming gallery, sculpture workshop, studio and art shop. They have also created a reading area for local people to drop in and browse art books. Chris is a sculptor and he created The Rhondda Tunnel in cardboard as the centrepiece of the new exhibition.
We drove back across the mountain but instead of our usual route via Maerdy and Aberdare, we went through Treorchy and Pontrhydyfen. Whichever way you go the views are spectacular and during the Autumn the hills are burning with 50 shades of brown. Glorious.
Here’s another piece from a few years back, a watercolour done at Swansea Print Workshop’s life drawing group onto an A3 spiral bound Cotman watercolour pad.
This is an old one of mine, from when I was going through a watercolour period at the weekly life drawing group at Swansea Print Workshop. This model has beautiful robes and we often try a pose or two with them on. The reflected figure in the large mirrors formed a composition that I really liked. I used an A3 spiral bound heavyweight watercolour sketchbook.
I never think of myself as a painter; I used the watercolour and brush to draw with the liquid. I didn’t try to do a lot of detail, I used fairly broad brushes to concentrate on colour rather than fine line.
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.
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.
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