A Victorian Corset Part 1

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?

Quirky And Lurky

On The Map press

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.

Psychedelic Male Nude

 

 

Male nude with stripes
Male nude with stripes

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 😀

Sun, Storm And A Nude

 

A watercolour nude
A watercolour nude

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.

 

Open At Last

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Some of my drawings and linocut prints

So our exhibition is finally open! Loads of people came to Oriel Ceri Richards in absolutely filthy weather and it was buzzing. Lovely evening. It runs until September the 26th and now I’m going to bed. For about a week. G’night 🙂 zzzzzzzzzzzz

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Rose Davies (Rosie Scribblah), Graham Parker, Sylvie Evans.

Blue Nude Reflected

Pat reflected

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

Rose 2

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

faces

 

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!