I’m still finding these psychedelic watercolour life drawing as I’m trawling through old sketchbooks. I forgot I did so many. This is a tiny one, drawing and coloured into a tiny A6 Cotman watercolour pad, using Winsor & Newton half pan watercolours, artist quality, expensive but worth it. I used Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens for the linework. This is one of our models from the regular Swansea Print Workshop life drawing group.
Husb and I strolled along Swansea Beach this evening and I took some photos of the extraordinary sky – it looked like it was full of fire opals shimmering above us. The weather has been appalling throughout the so-called Summer, so maybe this is the harbinger of something better for the Autumn. “The sky at night, shepherd’s delight….” – fingers crossed 🙂
We walked along the Promenade, looking out to Mumbles, with its breast shaped islands and returned past the Brangwyn Hall which houses the famous Empire Panels, magnificent oil paintings, and Swansea’s Guildhall, an Art Deco building inspired by an Egyptian Temple.
Here’s another one from the archives. I still have a rotten cold and I haven’t done any drawing today because I’m wallowing in misery and grumbling for Wales! I went through a phase of doing these life drawings in watercolour and pens a while back, using Winsor & Newton paints, sable brushes and Faber Castell Pitt pens onto Cotman watercolour paper. I like to use the paints in this choppy, psychedelic fashion, getting away from realism. Now that I’ve revisited them, I really like the technique and I’m going to do more. When I get rid of this filthy lurgi. 😡
This model has been working with our artist group at Swansea Print Workshop for some years now. He’s an older man and a very experienced model. People think that it’s easy, just sitting around while people draw you, but it’s not. I’ve done it – it’s tougher than it looks.
Here’s a short video with me and some of my art, and two of my fellow artists. It’s showing alongside our current exhibition at Taliesin Arts Centre and it’s only 4 minutes. Just about bearable. And I don’t grumble once in it. Honest.
I’ll be popping up at The Taliesin Arts Centre in Swansea throughout September with my fellow artist, Sylvie Evans, from the 15 Hundred Lives art collective. Our exhibition, “People And Place”, with painter Graham Parker, is downstairs in the Oriel Ceri Richards Gallery, running until September the 26th and we’ve been given space in the upstairs foyer-bar, just outside the theatre, to have a pop-up studio where visitors will be able to see us doing what artists do, making our art. We’ll be there for a few hours before some of the films and plays in the September programme.
I’ll be there on the following Wednesdays from 4.30-7.30 pm:
September 2nd / September 9th / September 16th / September 23rd
And collagist Sylvie Evans will be there on Fridays from 4.30-7.30 pm:
September 4th / September 11th / September 25th
We’ve installed some of Graham’s painting studio and Sylvie will be working on her collages when she’s there and I will be doing live-action drawing. Would be lovely to see you 🙂
I’ve caught a heavy cold and I’m going to get an early night and sulk! So I’m reposting Melanie Ezra’s artblog instead. There’s loads of arty things in it, including some stuff of mine……
Summer is drawing to an end and it’s quite a quiet time for me. I’m about to hit the ground running in September though and have so many projects about to kick off it’s ridiculous. One of these is an exhibition I’m co-curating at the end of September called A Victorian Tapestri which aims to create a dialogue between Victorian attitudes and the evidence that remains here in contemporary Swansea. Already artists from all over the country are considering and creating, delving and deliberating. From Victorian corsets to workhouse soundscapes it looks like this show will have it all.
Then there’s a little matter of the Venice Biennale. I’ve created some miniature versions from the Structured Chaos series for the Venice Vending Machine which will be opening at the end of next month.
I’m also about to kick off a series of photography workshops called Bringing Gower Home
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Terrific exhibition coming soon to Swansea Print Workshop – oooohhh!!!
An exhibition of prints, drawings and collage
Viv Rhule explores limestone creatures and the plight of bees through ink, pencil and print Kara Seaman creates prints and illustrations about animals from nearby places and faraway lands
PRIVATE VIEW on Friday 4 September from 6 to 9 pm
Continues on Saturday & Sunday 5 & 6 September, 11 to 4 pm
FREE EVENT | ALL WELCOME
Today I started something new. After months of making artwork for my exhibition at Oriel Ceri Richards, I launched into my next piece for a group exhibition at the end of September, “A Victorian Tapestri” based on Victorian Swansea. I’m doing something with cyanotype and a Victorian corset. Cyanotype is an early Victorian method of photography, one of the earliest, invented by the astronomer Sir John Herschel. I am using an historic pattern of a Victorian corset by Butterick and I have cut the pieces out of a heavyweight Somerset printmaking paper, a beautiful soft white, acid-free, cotton, deckle edge paper (250gsm) from St. Cuthbert’s Mill in Wells, Somerset. They’ve been making fine papers there for about 300 years. I like the idea of working with very old patterns, materials and techniques. Now, what am I going to do with it?
Look at what I’ve been getting up to with fellow artist Melanie Ezra. We recently developed a quirky artist map of Swansea, edited by Alban Low and published by Sampson Low Ltd. Our local newspaper, The South Wales Evening Post, did this feature on us today (thanks Jenny White), lurking around Swansea Castle. I got the crease down my face. Ho hum. 😀
If you want to buy a copy of the map, at a ridiculously low price, please follow this link here.
Here’s another of my watercolour nudes from quite a while back, about 7 years I think. Doesn’t time fly!!!! I stopped doing them because I thought I was getting into a rut, but looking back at this series recently, I really rather like this technique so I think I’ll prepare stretch some papers for life drawing next week and do some more. I’m using Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens for the linework and Winsor & Newton half pan, artist grade watercolours with some rather stiff sable brushes.
My most recent body of work, over 2 dozen new drawings and lino cuts, is being exhibited at Oriel Ceri Richards Gallery until September the 26th and here’s a short video about it if you’d like to take a look 😀
After the excitement of last night’s opening of our group exhibition, ‘People And Place’, Husb and I had a lazy day. We went for a walk in the sunshine and treated ourselves to lunch in a lovely local restaurant, Mosaic. It seems like I haven’t had a day off for ages. It’s not just making the artwork – over 2 dozen new pieces – but there’s all the framing, labelling, publicity, inviting, marketing………
So today I’m blogging another one from my archives, a life drawing in watercolour, using Winsor & Newton half pan artist watercolours onto Cotman watercolour paper with Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens for the linework.
Now we’ve battened down the hatches because there’s supposed to be a storm on the way; today’s sunshine was short-lived and tomorrow it’s back to work. Not much rest for the self-employed.
If you want to find out more about my current exhibition, here’s a short video about it.
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