Ants In Pants

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I carried on with my break from digital drawing today, doing some speedy scribbles of a young relative, who of course can’t sit still for more than a few seconds. But it’s always good practice to work quickly and it’s an opportunity to catch fleeting expressions. I used a graphite stick into my A5 hardbacked sketchbook. They’re not good likenesses but I don’t have the skill to capture a likeness in just a few seconds. It takes at least a few minutes and that’s too much to expect from a teenager with ants in her pants 😀

 

Exile

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It’s day two of my self-imposed exile from the Galaxy Samsung Tablet and digital drawing. I took my Khadi handmade sketchbook to the beach at twilight with some carbon and chalk. I had prepared the book with a sponge and Indian ink which gives a varied surface on the heavily textured paper. The drawing isn’t an exact copy of what was there but an impression, an interpretation, combining what was in front of me with what was already on the page. That’s a departure for me as well, I rarely work from my imagination. It’s interesting to do this and to see what develops. I think it’s an important part of my practice to push out of my comfort zone and try new things.

 

Dis-Comfort Zone

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I’m trying to get away from digital drawing on my Samsung Galaxy Note for a while because I think it’s become my new comfort zone, taking over from my Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens. I soaked a piece of natural sponge in some dilute Indian ink and scrubbed it over quite a few of the pages of my little Khadi handmade paper sketchbook; it’s heavily textured and the ink pooled in different places across the pages, giving me some interesting patterns and tones to work over. I took it down for a walk on the edge of the beach earlier this evening with some carbon sticks and chalk and quickly sketched between some trees, working with the shapes and textures already on the page. It’s very quick and impressionistic, as far from my comfort zone as it’s possible to be. My dis-comfort zone. It will be good for me.

Big And Free?

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Here’s the other drawing I did at the life drawing session at Swansea Print Workshop last night. I did something a bit different this week and uploaded a copy of a cyanotype I did some time ago (it’s in the permanent collection of A Book About Death, Wales) and drew over it. I’ve been using my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 tablet at life drawing for over a year now, mainly because I’m too lazy to pack my paper and drawing materials. It’s been good to learn a very different drawing technique, but I think I’m getting a bit stale with it now, it’s feeling overworked. I really feel the urge to take some large sheets of paper with me next week, a pile of charcoal and a drawing board and get stuck into something big and free.

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So next week I’m going to get back to basics.

From The Back

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Just back from life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop. I drew the back view of the model reflected in the large wall mirror. I used my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 with a free Markers app. I made a pineapple upside down cake for the tea break. It was still warm and welcome on a cold, wet night.

 

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Fatty Bum Bum

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Sparta Puss has put on a shedload of weight over the Winter! She resists all attempts to put her on a diet so I’m naming and shaming her! I can’t cut down her rations too much because we’re looking after a Senegal parrot for a few weeks while his humans are on holidays and whenever Sparta is hungry, she sits next to the parrot’s cage and stares greedily at him. When he goes home, we’ll be counting her calories strictly. I think I’ll get her a treadmill. I drew this into my A5 hardbacked sketchbook, opened fully, using a graphite stick. She’s lying along my lap and she’s so heavy that she’s making my legs ache. I should call her Fatta Puss from now on.

Distortion

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I’m doing some drawings from digital photos I took on Swansea Beach recently, to practice drawing detail and movement. Trouble is, when I downloaded the photos onto the computer and made them large enough to draw from, they have a lot of distortion. It’s not a problem, it just looks a bit fuzzy and there are some weird bits that I wouldn’t get if I was drawing from life. On the other hand, I’m not sure I’d be quick enough to draw these people walking, especially with the dog. I drew with a graphite stick into my A5 hardcover sketchbook, make unknown, it was a present.

 

The Dark Manner

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I’ve been working on some ‘manier noir’ drawings. The name means ‘in the dark manner’ and usually refers to the printmaking technique of mezzotint. I stretched the paper onto a wall originally, gave it 2 coats of gesso and when dry, I rubbed it all over with graphite block, then a rag dipped in turpentine to get a smooth slightly metallic finish. The drawing is done with wire wool and aluminium oxide paper, or fine sandpaper, removing the highlights and  paler tones. It’s a type of reductive drawing. One of the photos in the slideshow below shows how big the paper is, but I’m planning on getting three smaller drawings from it.

 

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An Older Woman (Female Nude)

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I like to work with this older model at life drawing group at Swansea Print Workshop. She is covered with blue tattoos of plants and animals that belong to the food chain; ants and flies run all over her body, chased by lizards and they swarm over her shoulders into carnivorous pitcher plants. She is very voluptuous, which is great to draw. I used my Samsung Galaxy Note and a free Markers app and it took about 45 minutes. The advantage of a digital drawing is that you can save reguarly and turn it into a slideshow which tracks the development of the drawing.

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Almost Manga

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We have some little relatives staying for a sleepover and of course, they are scribbling fodder. My little niece was cwtched on the settee watching a film and I tried to draw her. So very hard! All children are aliens! They have such weird proportions – HUGE eyes, little turned up nose, tiny chin and chubby cheeks. She looks like a Manga cartoon! Every time I tried she ended up looking like a character in a comic book! None of these actually look like her, I’m still struggling so hard to get the proportions right. I’ll get there. I’ll keep on trying. I’ll crack it eventually. Scribbled into my new A5 hardbacked sketchbook with a graphite stick.

Bit of trivia. There is a now unused graphite mine in Cumbria, the Lake District, which used to provide the graphite for cannonball manufacture in the days of Elizabeth the First and pencils have been made there since the 1830s. There’s even a pencil museum in Keswick, a grand day out.