Blue Nude Reflected

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Here’s another from the archives, when I went through a watercolour phase at life drawing group. I like to use watercolour in a choppy fashion, more like a gouache. This older model used to be a dancer and has a very lithe body which is so interesting to draw, a bit like Egon Schiele’s models. I used Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens for the linework and Winsor & Newton artist’s half pan watercolours onto a heavy Cotman watercolour paper. It’s important to use the best artist quality materials, cheaper ones will fade. The drawing was done at Swansea Print Workshop which has a large drawing room with mirrors.

“People And Place” – The Video

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Here’s a short video about the art collective I’m in. It shows the 3 of us, a painter, a collagist and a scribbler / printmaker, at work. We’re called “15 Hundred Lives” and we have our first major group exhibition, “People And Place” starting tomorrow (Friday 21st August, 6-8pm) at Oriel Ceri Richards in the Taliesin Arts Centre and running until September the 26th. The Taliesin cinema will be showing our video as a short before their feature films while the exhibition is on.

Here’s our video on YouTube, I’ll be uploading it to Vimeo soon……

It’s got some great footage of the antique Columbian Press I use down at Swansea Print Workshop.

More Digital Head

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Here’s the second drawing I did at last week’s life drawing group at Swansea Print Workshop, working with an older female model. I used a Samsung Galaxy Note 8 with a free Markers app. There’s a slideshow below showing the development of the drawing.

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Creatively Bubbling

 

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A new drawing for my upcoming exhibition at Oriel Ceri Richards from Friday August the 21st.

 

For 2 years the “15 Hundred Lives” art collective that I am part of has been running public access art events monthly at the Creative Bubble artspace in Swansea’s city centre. Each month we have guest artists working with us and it’s a privilege to have worked with 26 guests since we started and interacted with hundreds and hundreds of visitors, members of the public who have seen us on Facebook or on this blog or in the local paper and have come in to see what it is that artists do all day and how we do it.

 

This month we celebrated our second birthday and our guests, Jacki Phillips and Melanie Ezra, thrilled our many visitors with their fine art knitting and multi-layered collage respectively. And we had so many people coming in and engaging directly with artists and art in the making. It’s fabulous. We are so committed to demystifying art and making it inclusive and accessible and this great venue, a partnership between University of Wales Trinity Saint Davids and Swansea City Council, is making it happen. I love doing this. I love meeting people and explaining what I’m doing.

Emerging Heads

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I’ve spent two days working with the 15 Hundred Lives art collective in the Creative Bubble artspace, giving the public open access to our working processes and at the same time putting the finishing touches to the last pieces of work for our upcoming exhibition at Oriel Ceri Richards. Here I’m drawing onto vintage paper that I’d prepared by squeegeeing black and gold acrylic screen print inks straight onto the paper, to break up the tyranny of the white. I’m working onto it with chalk, compressed charcoal and white conte crayon. I’ve broken away from my usual practise of working directly from life, drawing instead from my imagination. The imagery that’s emerging has been influenced by some visits I made about three years ago to Berlin and Iceland, but more of that later. Now to bed. I’m shattered!

This is how galleries should be…

I’ve been here all day with artists and other people, having an arty time. Here’s Melanie Ezra’s take on it 🙂

melaniehonebone's avatarMelanie Honebone

I’ve been at the Creative Bubble in Swansea today as part of an event run by artists group Fifteen Hundred Lives.

It’s been busy, really busy. I’ve barely had time to make any artwork. Usually there’s a steady flow of interesting people who are curious about art and inbetween comes a heap of artmaking. But today has been unprecedented.

This is the kind of atmosphere and engagement that art should have. All galleries should have this vibe. At the Creative Bubble there are no barriers between artists and audience. Here everyone is equal. Here no question is awkward and everyone is so passionate about what they’re doing that criticism is a welcome addition to the creative process.

We’ll be here again tomorrow 12:30pm til 5pm tomorrow. Come and join us. Creative Bubble, Cradock St, Swansea.

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Jabbing My Finger

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Just back from life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop with a couple of studies of heads. Our model is a retiree and she’s been modelling for us for some years. I love drawing the faces of elders, so interesting and so much life written across them. I used my Samsung Galaxy Tablet Note 8 with the free Markers app. There is a slideshow below with the different stages of the drawing.

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I mostly use the stylus to draw but tonight I used my finger as well, jabbing it onto the screen, a strangely satisfying feeling.

FRAMED!

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The boring, mundane side of being an artist. It isn’t all about creativity. I have an exhibition coming up next week and the work has to be framed and, being a skint artist, I can’t afford to take over 2 dozen works to the framers so I’m knuckling down and doing it myself. It’s a mixture of linocuts and drawings, a new body of work.

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I’m working at the Creative Bubble Artspace for a few days, with the other members of the 15 Hundred Lives art collective. It’s really useful to have the space to spread out and work together, discussing the mix of our work and how we’re going to frame and hang it.

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On Friday and Saturday, it’s the second anniversary of our monthly public art events. We open the doors of the artspace and invite the public to come in and see how artists work, what we do all day. We’ll be celebrating with cake, Victoria Sandwich and Lemon Drizzle. And art of course. Click here to find out more.

The Block Block

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Here are the vinyl blocks I printed yesterday, inked up and ready to go. They’re about 7 x 9 inches each. They’ve been printed singly but I like the look of them grouped together in a block and might print a couple of sheets like this. But that’ll have to wait until after I’ve finished mounting and framing all the work for my upcoming exhibition at Oriel Ceri Richards from August the 21st.

I drew, cut and printed these at Swansea Print Workshop on an antique Victorian Columbian printing press.

 

Seaweed, beer and maps

Lots of Swansea things here including our love of eating seaweed and an arty map by yours truly and Melanie Ezra