I scribble into my sketchbook more or less every day. Find a place, take a few minutes and scribble. It’s good practice and mostly I’m not noticed. I used a graphite stick into my A5 hardback sketchbook.
Print’s Birthday!
It’s Swansea Print Workshop’s 15th anniversary party this coming Friday 27th March from 7pm with a lovely exhibition of original prints from artists who have produced art here throughout our 15 years. There will also be wine and food and cake and our wonderful antique printing presses. Please pop in and bring your friends if you’re in the area.
And then on Saturday the 28th of March, the Swansea Print Workshop is hosting an Open Studio visit, a behind-the-scenes view of a lively print studio. Drop by and see artists / printmakers at work, our vintage and modern presses in action and the hand made prints created at this thriving artist collective between the city and the beach. Family friendly but small children will need to be supervised. From 11.00 am to 4.00 pm
Just look at these presses and typeface!
Bird In A Huff
I had a sneaky digital scribble this evening, looking at Richard the Bird through the bars of his cage as he glared malevolently back at me with his yellow beady eye. He was having a hissy fit because I gave him a fresh raspberry, foraged at the local supermarket, but he wanted Husb, the parrot god, to give it to him. I am just not good enough. So he snatched the raspberry from my hand and threw it out of his cage in contempt! He didn’t even taste it.
Bird Proof
Richard the Bird, Senegal parrot, is still holidaying with us, so we’ve been looking at parrot websites to make sure we know what we’re doing. The birds need to come out of their cage every day for exercise. This means that I have to take protective measures since the biting incident a few days ago. So I hide my hair under Husb’s woolly hat that he got in Iceland; put on my tough, outdoor hiking jacket that zips up around my ears; Husb’s extra thick skiing gloves and a pair of specs and that’s how I sit in my chair while Richard gets his ‘exercise’. Which means sitting on Husb’s shoulder watching telly. He’s such a couch potato.
Scribbles At The Pictures
Husb and I went to the pictures this morning to see the new Russell Crowe film, The Water Diviner. It’s a very good film, quite sad, a one-and-a-half-hanky film. I can cope with that much crying, but anything more than a three hanky film is one I won’t watch again. I had a quick scribble before the film began, drawing 6 heads in about 3 minutes, about 30 seconds each. Working at this speed really hones my observational skills and also the very physical dexterity in my right hand. My fingers, hand, wrist and shoulder have to be able to keep up with the speed of my eyes and brain. Art is a very physical occupation, well, the sort of art I do is. I drew with a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen into my A5 clothbound sketchbook.
For people outside the UK, the ‘pictures’ is the cinema or the movies.
A Life Of Its Own
Three years ago I visited Berlin, the temperature was around minus 20 degrees C and there was a couple of feet of snow everywhere. I went to the Holocaust Memorial, thousands of black stelae in a grid across the landscape and the deep snow threw ethereal shadows between the columns. I took a lot of photos because I was immensely moved by the sight – and sound – it was so muffled because of the snow. It’s taken all this time to really get to grips with it, to find a way of expressing the imagery in some way, to know what to do with it.
I think I’ve found a way forward with it at last, developing the work through the manier noir reductive drawing technique over the past two days at the Creative Bubble artspace in Swansea. The original photos, five of them in this slideshow, are the basis of the work, but once I’ve roughly mapped them onto the prepared paper with chalk, they start to become something else, they get a life of their own. I don’t normally work like this, it’s a new direction for me but I’m enjoying cutting myself loose.
Scribbling In Public
I spent today with the 15 Hundred Lives art collective at the Creative Bubble artspace in the city centre. We hold a monthly 2-day public access art event where we use the space to do our own work and invite one or two guest artists to join us as well. We open our doors to the public so that people can come in and see what we do and how art is made. It was really hectic today, which was great but meant I didn’t do much work on my manier noir triptych drawing. It doesn’t matter though because I enjoy talking to people about my work, especially those who might not have had much experience of art. It’s also interesting to work with other artists because we learn from each other.
At this month’s event, ‘Weirdness and Kisses‘, I worked with Lucy Read and Chris Harrendence as well as the other members of the collective. This is our 18th event, we started in Summer 2013 and I have found that I really enjoy drawing in public, it’s a performance I guess, although not a scripted or structured one. We’re at it again tomorrow – looking forward to it.
Teeny Tiny Rugby Fan
I scribbled this from a photo I took of our houseguest parrot, Richard The Bird and Husb at the weekend as they were watching the Wales v Ireland rugby international match together. Richard settled happily on Husb’s shoulder, watching intently and fluffing his feathers and shrieking every time Husb shouted or cheered at the game. He’s very blokey and likes to hang out with Husb, doing male bonding stuff. Well, watching telly and shouting. Gawd help us if he ever discovers lager.
I drew with graphite into my A5 hardbound sketchbook.
Pirate Parrot
Husb and I have been looking after a relative’s Senegal parrot for a couple of weeks. His name is Richard The Bird. He’s definitely a man’s man. He mostly ignores me and sits happily on Husb’s shoulder like a proper pirate parrot. But today for some reason he flew onto me. I was okay with it until he noticed that, unlike Husb who lost his lovely golden locks some time ago, I have a lush head of long hair. So he grabbed some in his beak and tugged as hard as he could. Which is surprisingly hard. My instinctive reaction was to push my finger between the parrot and my hair and pull it back from him. The parrots instinctive reaction was to sink his hooked beak right through my finger. I don’t know if he was scared or having a tantrum but he put a hole though my flesh and drew blood. Ouch! Luckily it’s my left hand so I still managed to sketch him, in graphite into my A5 hardbound sketchbook.
Skinny Shadows
Still on my self-imposed exile from the digital drawing machine, I carried on drawing from some photos I took on Swansea Beach recently. Although speed sketching is very useful, focussing the attention only on what’s absolutely vital, I want to do some more detailed action drawings and these can’t be done with a model or in a fleeting moment. Drawing from photos helps with composition, foreshortening and scale. I love the long, skinny shadows from the runners caused by a very low wintry afternoon sun. I used two grades of graphite sticks, grey and black, into my A5 hardbacked sketchbook.
scribblah 