Just back from life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop. I spent an hour drawing this pose in compressed charcoal, chalk and conte crayon, black and white, onto a piece of Saunders vintage paper. It had some severe foreshortening, with both hands and the left foot going in different directions. It’s the most difficult pose I have ever drawn. I sweated! But it’s very good practice and pushed me right out of my comfort zone. And now, relax 🙂
Husb and I went to a performance drawing event at the excellent local artspace, Creative Bubble, this evening to see artist Glan Jenkins working on a new drawing. I draw all the time so I’m used to being completely in the zone, cut off from the rest of the world as I get immersed in the emotional and physical experience of drawing. But this was the first time I have become immersed in someone else’s drawing experience. I was in the zone as Glan worked on his giant drawing and it was great to feel like that and yet have clean hands at the end. Result!
I scribbled as Glan drew, into my A5 hardbacked sketchbook with graphite sticks in three colours – black, grey and gold. It’s always a challenge to draw figures in movement, I find that I end up working on a composite as it’s impossible to draw quickly enough to capture a fleeting movement.
Yesterday I posted some starting point drawings, today I moved onto the next stage, making a drawing onto a block of vinyl as a guide for cutting. This will be a reduction block print, which means I will cut each colour from the same block. Today the cuts I made will eventually be white on the final print, I will print the first colour from this first cut, which will probably be a pale grey. Then I will cut that layer away. And print and so it goes on ….
This is where it starts. With doodling and scribbling and sketchbooks. Just chilling out and playing with some materials, tonight some black conte crayon into my A5 hardbacked sketchbook. I’ve been doing a lot of work recently from drawings and photos I did at the Berlin Holocaust Memorial in the snow a couple of years ago and the monochrommatic and dynamic images have obviously influenced these sketches. I don’t know where they will lead, I hope eventually to some lino block prints or etchings, but for the moment I’m enjoying this phase of playing with the conte crayon across the pristine white page, seeing where it’ll take me.
I’m taking part in a ‘Museum Experience’ at Swansea Museum, beginning on March 31st and carrying through to May 17th. It’s called ‘PROCESS’, because it focuses on the processes that artists use to create their work. More than an exhibition of work on walls, ‘PROCESS’ also showcases sketchbooks, tools and materials to foster an understanding of how artists create art.
There’s an opening at Swansea Museum with tea and Welshcakes in a family-friendly event on Easter Sunday afternoon (April the 5th) from 2-4pm to launch it. You’re very welcome to join us in this fabulous Victorian museum, a proper cabinet of curiosities and there’s an art-trail for children to do as well.
The show, with other members of the 15 Hundred Lives collective, covers painting, drawing, printmaking, collage and electronic media, and there’s also a programme of interactive arts events throughout March, April and May.
My part of the show features some of my block (relief) prints – lino, wood and foamboard. These portrait heads are based on photos and drawings I did during a visit to Pakistan and they’re incised into offcuts of Foamex signwriters board. It’s a fairly hard PVC foamboard that’s great for cutting very fine lines, much finer than you can get with lino or softwood. It’s the first time I’ve exhibited these portraits as a group. If you’re in the area, it would be lovely to see you.
Richard the Bird, our little visitor, returned home to his humans today. They’re back from their travels and picked him up this evening so I had a final few scribbles. He’s been with us for a month and we’re missing the little tyke already. He’d gotten used to us and treated Husb like some sort of parrot god. I wasn’t so honoured, mostly he ignored me, except when he tried to pull my hair out and then bit me. But the past few days he’s given me some more attention, which Sparta Puss didn’t like, so she started stalking him. Luckily he has a very sturdy cage. I enjoyed seeing him sitting on Husb’s shoulder, watching the television together. He particularly liked the rugby internationals and The Voice.
There’s a big space in the living room now where his cage was and it’s so quiet. The cats don’t speak much. But his humans do a lot of travelling so I’m sure he’ll be holidaying with us again. I drew these into my A5 hardbacked sketchbook with a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen, size F.
I spent the day at the fabulous Workers Gallery and Workshop in Ynyshir in the Rhondda Valley. I did a one-day drawing residency, working on a manier noir drawing based on photographs I took of the Berlin Holocaust Memorial in the snow a couple of years ago. A lot of people came in to see what I was doing and find out more about the technique and my work. I had a lot of very interesting conversations throughout the day and I started and finished an A2 size drawing.
The Valleys has a difficult reputation in the media, but I find people interested and engaged, maybe because there is so little investment and so few services, people seem genuinely keen on seeing what’s going on in the new gallery. I think the media image these towns have is nothing more than blatant class prejudice in my opinion. It’s easy to pick on working class communities who don’t have control over media output. I am really happy with the drawing and the discussions and feedback I had throughout the day, and grateful for the opportunity given by the gallery artists, Gayle Rogers and Chris Williams.
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.
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!
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.
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