Waiting For Mam

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I spent a happy hour puppy sitting the adorable gallery puppies at Galerie Simpson this afternoon. They are two sweet black Patterdale Terriers and when their Mam popped out, they patiently waited for her – before falling asleep. So cute. And very scribblable! I never miss an opportunity for a scribble. It’s interesting drawing different animals. I’m used to cats, human beings and other monkeys, even the odd bird, but these dogs are so different. Lovely little triangular floppy ears and skinny, skinny legs with big paws.

Galerie Simpson has recently opened on the High Street in Swansea. It’s an area that is undergoing a lot of regeneration and it badly needs it. I lived in this area when I was a small child until most of it was demolished and it’s been very run down for many years, so it’s good to see it on the up at last as part of the new Urban Village, being built by Coastal Housing Group. There’s a terrific exhibition of original prints, Art Lovers, at Galerie Simpson at the moment and it’s on until Easter. Watch out for events coming up at the gallery including Sunday Tea and an arty brunch.

I drew this into my A5 Tate Gallery sketchbook with a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen, size F and I used the last pages – I finished it! I love finishing a sketchbook, there’s a great sense of achievement and also excitement about starting a new one. Which one will it be? OOOOOHHHH!!!!! I’m such a geek 😀

Eadweard’s Horses

wpid-wp-1425583660083.jpegI rarely work from photographs but I took a series of photos on the beach yesterday and I’m going to use them for sketching for a few days. Drawing directly from life is energising, forces me to focus only on what’s absolutely important in the subject and is good practice but doesn’t give me the opportunity to analyse detail and movement.

For centuries, the way that artists drew and painted running horses was wrong because they moved too fast for artists to see them accurately. Then the pioneering photographer, Eadweard Muybridge did a sequence of photos of a running horse and finally artists were able to see how they ran and changed the way they painted horses.

So these photos are for research into how people and animals move and also to develop a shorthand of marks to represent the sea, which is something I have enormous difficulties with. Hopefully as the days go by, my drawings and mark-making will improve. I’m using graphite sticks into my A5 Tate Gallery sketchbook.

Not Enough Hours

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Had one of those days where I was out of the house a lot but with no time to draw at all so here’s the last of the life drawings I did last week. I concentrated on the model’s head and upper body and used my Samsung Galaxy Tablet Note 8 with the free Markers app. Sometimes there are not enough hours in the day!

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A Bit Of Columbian

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I was down at Swansea Print Workshop earlier and took some time to scribble the lovely old Columbian printing press. Dating from quite early in Queen Victoria’s reign (1855) this beauty is still in use, even though it’s a little bit wobbly and idiosyncratic. It’s quite complex and I’m right out of my comfort zone, I’m a people person, I draw people. Machinery is really alien so it’s good practice to spend some time trying to get it right. I used a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen size M into my A5 Tate Gallery sketchbook. I haven’t done any relief (block) printing for quite a while and I’ve been fancying using some of my stash of vinyl blocks – I have a few ideas, I just need to get cutting then I can use this lovely, lovely press again.

Richard The Bird’s Holiday

Richard the bird

Richard, our family parrot, has come to stay for a couple of weeks while his trained monkeys are on holiday. He’s fair game for a scribble, but he’s such a fidget and won’t keep still. I tried him with a Koh I Noor graphite pencil in 8B first, then went back to my comfort zone, a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen size S for the second page of drawings into my A5 Tate Gallery sketchbook. He’s quite a character and I think it comes out in some of these. He’s beating up a rolled newspaper at the moment, there’s shredded paper all over the floor and the cats won’t go near him!

The Red Castle

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Husb and I celebrated St. David’s Day today with a quick trip up the Valleys to visit Castell Coch, which is Welsh for the Red Castle. It was packed to the rafters with visitors so I didn’t have much time to draw, just a quick sketch of some of the extraordinary carvings above one of the fireplaces. It’s an amazing place, a Victorian folly built onto the foundations of a Medieval castle, designed by William Burges in the Gothic Revival style and bankrolled by the Marquis of Bute, reputedly the richest man in the world at that time.

We also nipped up to the lovely Workers Gallery in Ynyshir to take up some of my artwork. I show a lot of my work there, I am one of the gallery’s permanent artists. It’s a lovely place and it’s great to see a new arts venture open up in such an area of high deprivation.

I drew these sketches into my A5 Tate Gallery sketchbook with a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen.

 

Top Model

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And another life drawing from this week’s session – I was on a roll! I sat up on the plans chest for this one, looking from above and from a fairly acute angle to my left. The model was sitting on a small chair and his right foot was bent in a very awkward way, but it didn’t seem to bother him, he kept at it for an hour. Models are amazing, they’re not given the recognition they deserve IMHO.

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I used a Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and a free Markers app.

Some Quick Ones

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Here are a couple more drawings I did at life drawing group at Swansea Print Workshop last night. These are quick ones. I sat on the plans chest to draw the first one, so I was looking down on the model from above and to one side. I measured the left leg loads of times because it looked so odd when I drew it, but it’s in the right place, shows how weird foreshortening can be.

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These ones are the three 5 minute poses we do at the start of the session. I overlaid them in different colours because ….. well I think it’s pretty. I used my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 with a free Markers app.

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Prostrate Man

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Just back from life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop. I did a lot of drawings tonight. Here’s one of them, with one of our male models, a floor pose. I really like to take a drawing position above the model to draw from that angle.

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I used my Samsung Galaxy Tablet Note 8 with a free Markers app, saving several times so I can put them in a slideshow to show its development.

Drawing Darkly

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I spent some time in my studio today, starting a ‘manier noir’ style drawing. It’s a type of reductive drawing, working from black to white, rubbing away areas of charcoal to reveal the highlights. It’s the very first of a substantial body of drawings and original prints I have planned.

I prepared Fabriano Accademica paper with gesso and when it dried, I rubbed it evenly all over with compressed charcoal, using my hand to get a smooth black surface. I ‘draw’ into the charcoal with steel wool and very fine sandpaper. This technique results in a subtle but dramatic chiaroscuro.

Manier noir is an alternative name for the printmaking technique mezzotint, where an engraved metal plate has the highlights smoothed away with a steel burnisher.