Northern Soul

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Husb and I went to the Taliesin cinema this evening to see Northern Soul, a great film with a fantastic soundtrack. Set in the 1970s, it reminded us how grubby and ugly Britain was back then, at least in the working class areas. Damn good fun though. Would love to be able to dance like that again, but all that dancing and partying in my youth has caught up with me 😀

Had a juice in the bar and did a quick scribble of people’s heads. Speed drawing forces you to just capture the main details and is really good practice. I used a mid-grey graphite stick into my A5 Tate Gallery sketchbook.

 

The End Of The Road

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It was a sad day in our city. A local man who was well known to many of us has died. I blogged about him a couple of years ago but didn’t say too much about him because he didn’t like a lot of attention. Tea Cosy Pete was a gentleman of the road, a man with a lifestyle that would be too eccentric for most of us, but for many decades he lived on the city streets, politely turning down offers of housing. Today the harsh lifestyle caught up with him and he died from a stroke, in his mid 60s. Peter was well liked, respected and accepted in a way that might not have been possible in larger cities. There has been a huge outpouring of grief across social media and the local press, with many tributes and  people telling their own Tea Cosy stories.

I often saw him standing and sitting around Swansea, but I only did one drawing as I felt uncomfortable about intruding into his privacy. It’s not something that normally bothers me, I think that artists are by our very nature, voyeurs, spying and scribbling. But it wasn’t the right thing to do with Tea Cosy Pete. May he rest in peace.

Teen Ager

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Husb and I went with Teenage Niece to see the film Effie Gray this evening at the Taliesin Arts Centre. Excellent film, I was gripped from the start and Dakota Fanning put in a marvellous performance. Managed to do a quick scribble of Teenage Niece afterwards. It had to be quick because she pulls faces all the time. And she’s too old to believe that one about your face freezing if the wind changes.

A Bit Of Colour

After a couple of days of live art and big drawing, I’ve had a quieter day doing some cataloguing. It’s one of those menial admin tasks that’s so boring but it’s important to keep track of the work I’ve done, some of it going back years. As I worked I rediscovered stuff I’d forgotten about. Here are some life drawings of a male nude model that I did a few years ago using watercolour instead of my usual drawing pen. I don’t much like using naturalistic colour, I don’t really see the point, so I play around with it. I used some very sturdy sable brushes, jabbing at the paper to give a chunky effect.

Time To Play

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As any self-employed person will know, there’s a lot of paperwork and admin, business development and marketing to do and the past couple of months have been full of everything except creative work. If it wasn’t for my daily artblog, most days recently would have passed by without me doing any art work. Except for a couple of days a month with art collective 15 Hundred Lives where we hang out at the Creative Bubble artspace in the city centre to work together and have a bit of a play. It’s a relief to just start out with a germ of an idea and develop it for two days, trying out different materials, working and reworking without having to worry about meeting deadlines or working to a brief. It’s probably trivialising it to describe it as play, but the pressure’s off and it’s a chance to be totally creative, do what I like and see what happens.

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Last month I blogged about the drawings I did in Creative Bubble from sketches I made in the catacombs in Malta. I used one of these as the basis for the much larger drawing I did this weekend, working with the walnut husk ink I made a while ago, applying it with large brushes and a piece of natural sponge. When it was dry I drew on top with a piece of carbon to get some dark definition and then brushed the carbon lines with a largeish brush and water to soften and merge them. I also incorporated a nude male figure from one of my sketchbooks. I’ve been going to life drawing for years and have a pile of sketchbooks filled with hundreds, maybe thousands of life drawings and I am always looking for ways to use these drawings. I don’t know where I’m going with this yet, maybe I never will, but it’s just great to do some creative play once in a while.

Creative Bubble Artspace is supported by the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and Swansea BID to improve the city centre.

The Hand

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Here’s the drawing I did at life drawing group last night using my Samsung Galaxy Tablet Note 8 with the free Markers app. The pose was a bit difficult because the model’s hand was so far in front and there was some extreme foreshortening.

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The Waiting Room

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Went with a loved one to the local hospital for x-rays and took the opportunity to have a scribble while I waited. It’s very selfish but hospital waiting rooms are good places for sketching as people are often very preoccupied and don’t notice you.

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This elderly man was dressed for the winter and kept his fabulous fake fur hat firmly on his head for the duration. I used Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens, sizes S and F into my A5 Tate Gallery sketchbook. We weren’t there long. The NHS at its best is fantastic.

The Onesie

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So what is it about men and onesies? This is the second time I’ve seen a grown man wandering around in a man size Onesie. This chap in a Onesie, waistcoat, big boots and floppy hat was trying on jackets in the YMCA second hand shop in Swansea a few days ago. I didn’t like to stare and sketch so I’ve drawn him from memory using my Samsung Galaxy Tablet Note 8 with the free Markers app. Quite an eccentric character.

Just Seconds

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One of those days – loads of admin and computer and filing and then off to the opening of a friend’s exhibition so I only had SECONDS to do any drawing. But I set myself the task of drawing every day so draw I did. I was doing some voluntary work at Swansea Print Workshop today and managed to grab a few moments to sketch the top of the vintage Columbian printing press, the bald eagle, using graphite into my A5 Tate Gallery sketchbook.

Husb and I were in Malta last month and visited the fantastic National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta which is hosting an exhibition of artefacts from 7000 years of Malta’s history, ” Malta – the Great Story of a Small Island-Nation through 100 Objects”. And there was this lovely Columbian press!

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Made in London, it was imported after freedom of the Maltese press was won in 1839 and many newspapers were launched within just a few years. One of the main characteristics of the Columbian is that it was designed to allow a whole newspaper page to be pressed in one pull. And it’s considered important enough to be one of the 100 artefacts to be included in this historic exhibition. And we have one just like it in Swansea!

Blog A Sprog

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I’ve been taking advantage of babysitting family sprogs to carry on practicing drawing heads of children. It was the two-year old’s turn today. I mesmerised him with a DVD of Tractor Tom and scribbled with graphite into my A5 Tate Gallery sketchbook. I had a couple of attempts first before it finally clicked and I’ve ended up with a reasonable likeness and a drawing that I like. I’m very pleased with the flexible and flowing line the graphite has given me.

I tend to fail at portraiture with children because I can’t accept the extreme proportions that are right in front of my eyes but this time I forced myself to pay close attention to what was actually there and forget the nagging voice in my head telling me that the proportions couldn’t possibly be like that. The face is very small and drops away at the bottom of the head, leaving a very large brow. The little ear, so round, is set very far back, the upper lip juts out further than the tip of the nose and the chin falls away completely. And there’s the MASSIVE cheeks (food storage pouches) and huge eyes to contend with. It shoudn’t work but it does. Yes, chuffed with that 😀