Drizzly Dog

3 people and dog

Sometimes I work from photographs because I find it’s useful to be able to do a more detailed analysis of the image than I’d normally be able to do when I’m drawing directly from life. It gives me the chance to concentrate on things like perspective, proportion, foreshortening, reflections and composition. When I’m working with someone in a formal situation, a life model or someone sitting for a portrait study, there’s plenty of time to get things right, but drawing en plein air is way too fast to scribble down anything other than the most basic details.

Now and again, I pop down to the local beach to take some photos for drawing practice. This was a typical Swansea winter day, grey, drizzly with lots of dog walkers. I used a graphite stick into my A5 hardbacked sketchbook.

Six Minutes

6 minute head

Today’s sketch is purely practice. I googled ‘elderly women heads images’, chose one and sketched it in graphite into my A5 hardbacked sketchbook with a time limit of 6 minutes. This forces me to focus on the most relevant aspects of the face, how little I need to draw to get a reasonable image and a reasonable drawing.

Swansea: On the Map: An Artist’s Walk

This is a map I made with fellow artist Melanie Ezra showing our quirky walk around the ugly, lovely, bonkers city of Swansea.

 

Swansea: On the Map: An Artist’s Walk.

The F. C. B.

FCB 1

For people from outside Britain, an F. C. B. stands for a Full Cooked Breakfast. In England, it’s a gigantic platter of sausage, bacon and eggs, supplemented by a variety of delicacies like fried potatoes, fried tomatoes, baked beans and black pudding (made with blood). The addition of cockles (like clams) and laverbread (seaweed) turns it into a Welsh F. C. B.

FCB 2

 

Husb and I went to our local Greasy Spoon caff earlier to meet up with some friends for a consolatory F.C.B. to cheer ourselves up after the UK election results. We stuffed ourselves and I took the opportunity to scribble some of the other punters. One of them was a little old lady who was wearing a typical little old ladies woolly hat. At least, it’s typical for these parts. We don’t have the best weather in the world, y’know. Anyway, we consoled ourselves with our grub and have spent the rest of the day in each other’s company, valuing one of the things that matters most in life, friendship.

Different Marks

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Here’s another of the thirty minute portraits I did a few days ago at Swansea Museum, part of the live art action I’m doing with other members of the 15 Hundred Lives art collective. Our museum experience ‘PROCESS’ is on at the museum until May the 17th. I did this with grey and black graphite sticks into my A5 spiral bound sketchbook. Most of the portraits I’ve done so far have been in pen, but the last few I did in graphite and it brings in a whole range of different marks. I’m doing a series of portrait drawings on people in my generation – baby boomers. There’s a lot of us, apparently. Eventually I want to do at least a hundred of these.

Literary Scribbles

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Husb and I had a great time at Swansea’s Galerie Simpson yesterday evening at the launch of Seren Books’ new collection of the poems of John Ormond. Of course, I took the opportunity to scribble, sketching heads with a graphite stick into my A5 hardback sketchbook.

Seren is ‘Publisher in Residence’ at the gallery until May the 10th

The Art Of Caring: Nursing And Drawing

Three postcards for the Art Of Caring exhibition
Three postcards for the Art Of Caring exhibition

I have three drawings in The Art Of Caring exhibition coming up in Surrey soon. I submitted three sketches that I’d done while visiting elder relatives in hospital and they’ve been reproduced as postcards for the show. All in all there are 251 artworks from 133 artists from all around the world on the theme of ‘Care and Caring’, celebrating International Nurse’s Day .

The Private View is next Tuesday 12th May from 4-6pm and the show runs daily, 10am to 6pm until May the 16th at the Rose Theatre, 24-26 High Street, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey KT1 1HL.

I have a relative who is a nurse. She works long hours in a frequently dangerous job in a service that is constantly being messed around with by idiot politicians. Sometimes things go wrong with the National Health Service and it’s right to highlight these situations and challenge bad practice, but on the whole, we have an excellent health service that many people around the world would love to have and we shouldn’t be complacent about it.

A Speedy Head

Jones C

Here’s another of my 30 minute portrait sketches, done recently during the 15 Hundred Lives exhibition, “Process” at Swansea Museum.  It’s been a great experience and lovely to work with the people who volunteered to sit in a very public place and be stared at by me and scribbled while passers-by look on.

I’m aiming to do at least a hundred of these quick heads as part of a major project that I’m planning for next year – but more of that later. I’ve done 14 so far so I’ll have to get my skates on. I worked with Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens into an A5 spiral bound sketchbook.

 

Heads At The Museum

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I did a second day drawing 30 minute portraits at Swansea Museum today. I am working on a potentially large body of drawings of Baby Boomers that I hope to develop into a major work in a year or so. A lot of people are volunteering to sit for me, there’s been a terrific response and I wouldn’t be able to do it without them. Thanks so much to everyone who has sat for me so far and I’m looking forward to drawing many more.

I drew this with Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens into my A5 spiralbound hardback sketchbook. I drew 7 people today and I’m shattered, it takes so much concentration. Tomorrow I will have a lie-in.

Pre Teen Lethargy

pre teen

Our pre-teen nephew is having a sleepover with us. He’s annexed the large settee with the best view of the television and installed himself for the duration. He’s at a funny stage of development with his face starting to assume adult proportions, but still quite squished up in a large head which sort of wobbles on top of a skinny body with Bambi legs tapering off into the distance. I think this scribble captures that adolescent lethargy. I used 3 grades of graphite sticks into my A5 hardbacked sketchbook.