Day Trip To Sweden

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Husb and I went on a bus from Denmark to Sweden today, across THE BRIDGE which featured in the television series of the same name. We spent a few hours exploring Malmo, which has an ‘English Shop’ that sells Marmite for British expats to smuggle across THE BRIDGE because it’s illegal in Denmark. We found a sculpture of a cat by the river, a weird fountain and a great Design Museum.

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I haven’t done any sketching since I’ve been here. I’m on holiday and having a break. It’s lovely. Here’s a view from the bus as we crossed THE BRIDGE.

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On Holiday

I’m away! I’m in Denmark visiting friends and chilling out. I’ve hardly scribbled since I arrived. Back to normal in a few days xxx 😁

Reclaimed

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The reclaimed silkscreen

Some time ago I bought some second hand silkscreens. They had photochemical stencils on them and needed to be cleaned so that I can re-use them. They had been originally coated with Speedball Diazo photoscreen emulsion so I had to use Speedball’s remover.

I poured a little remover onto one side and quickly spread it over with a small, stiff nylon scrubbing brush. I turned it over and did the same on the other side then let it stand for one and a half minutes, no more as the screen remover mustn’t dry out. Then I scrubbed both sides with the brush before scrubbing again with hot water pouring onto it, making sure to get into all the nooks and crannies until it was perfectly clean. Then off into the garden on a sunny afternoon to dry. And ready to use again.

Health and Safety notes: I used protective glasses, thick rubber gloves and old clothes.

Screening Paula and Käthe

I carried on preparing my silkscreen of portraits of two of my favourite artists, Paula Mödersohn-Becker and Käthe Kollwitz. Yesterday I painted the images onto a silkscreen using Speedball Diazo Drawing Fluid and a small sable brush. I let it dry overnight and today I applied the Diazo Filler Solution. I dribbled a little onto the screen (laying horizontally on some props) and scraped it over the blue painted images with a piece of clean mountboard (matte card). Then I let it all dry again.

Once the Filler Solution was dry, I rinsed the screen in my sink with warm water and the blue Drawing Fluid washed away, leaving a clear (yellow) area which is where the ink will be squeezed through onto the paper. But that will have to wait until I come back from visiting a friend – in Denmark! Lucky me 😀

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The washed screen

 

 

Paula and Käthe

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Something different today. I’m working on a silkscreen, planning a series of small screenprints based on my favourite artists. Here are the first two: Paula Mödersohn-Becker and Käthe Kollwitz, both active in the late 19th and early 20th century. I did some drawings based on photographs of the two artists, drew them onto the screen in pencil and then filled out the area to be printed with Speedball Diazo drawing fluid. I’ll let them dry overnight and then move onto the next stage, using Diazo screen filler.

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.

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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.

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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.