Bird Proof

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Richard the Bird, Senegal parrot, is still holidaying with us, so we’ve been looking at parrot websites to make sure we know what we’re doing. The birds need to come out of their cage every day for exercise. This means that I have to take protective measures since the biting incident a few days ago. So I hide my hair under Husb’s woolly hat that he got in Iceland; put on my tough, outdoor hiking jacket that zips up around my ears; Husb’s extra thick skiing gloves and a pair of specs and that’s how I sit in my chair while Richard gets his ‘exercise’. Which means sitting on Husb’s shoulder watching telly. He’s such a couch potato.

Scribbles At The Pictures

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Husb and I went to the pictures this morning to see the new Russell Crowe film, The Water Diviner. It’s a very good film, quite sad, a one-and-a-half-hanky film. I can cope with that much crying, but anything more than a three hanky film is one I won’t watch again. I had a quick scribble before the film began, drawing 6 heads in about 3 minutes, about 30 seconds each. Working at this speed really hones my observational skills and also the very physical dexterity in my right hand. My fingers, hand, wrist and shoulder have to be able to keep up with the speed of my eyes and brain. Art is a very physical occupation, well, the sort of art I do is. I drew with a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen into my A5 clothbound sketchbook.

For people outside the UK, the ‘pictures’ is the cinema or the movies.

 

A Life Of Its Own

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Three years ago I visited Berlin, the temperature was around minus 20 degrees C and there was a couple of feet of snow everywhere. I went to the Holocaust Memorial, thousands of black stelae in a grid across the landscape and the deep snow threw ethereal shadows between the columns. I took a lot of photos because I was immensely moved by the sight – and sound – it was so muffled because of the snow. It’s taken all this time to really get to grips with it, to find a way of expressing the imagery in some way, to know what to do with it.

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I think I’ve found a way forward with it at last, developing the work through the manier noir reductive drawing technique over the past two days at the Creative Bubble artspace in Swansea. The original photos, five of them in this slideshow, are the basis of the work, but once I’ve roughly mapped them onto the prepared paper with chalk, they start to become something else, they get a life of their own. I don’t normally work like this, it’s a new direction for me but I’m enjoying cutting myself loose.

Scribbling In Public

manier noir day 1I spent today with the 15 Hundred Lives art collective at the Creative Bubble artspace in the city centre. We hold a monthly 2-day public access art event where we use the space to do our own work and invite one or two guest artists to join us as well. We open our doors to the public so that people can come in and see what we do and how art is made. It was really hectic today, which was great but meant I didn’t do much work on my manier noir triptych drawing. It doesn’t matter though because I enjoy talking to people about my work, especially those who might not have had much experience of art. It’s also interesting to work with other artists because we learn from each other.

At this month’s event, ‘Weirdness and Kisses‘, I worked with Lucy Read and Chris Harrendence as well as the other members of the collective. This is our 18th event, we started in Summer 2013 and I have found that I really enjoy drawing in public, it’s a performance I guess, although not a scripted or structured one.  We’re at it again tomorrow – looking forward to it.

Teeny Tiny Rugby Fan

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I scribbled this from a photo I took of our houseguest parrot, Richard The Bird and Husb at the weekend as they were watching the Wales v Ireland rugby international match together. Richard settled happily on Husb’s shoulder, watching intently and fluffing his feathers and shrieking every time Husb shouted or cheered at the game. He’s very blokey and likes to hang out with Husb, doing male bonding stuff. Well, watching telly and shouting. Gawd help us if he ever discovers lager.

I drew with graphite into my A5 hardbound sketchbook.

 

Pirate Parrot

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Husb and I have been looking after a relative’s Senegal parrot for a couple of weeks. His name is Richard The Bird. He’s definitely a man’s man. He mostly ignores me and sits happily on Husb’s shoulder like a proper pirate parrot. But today for some reason he flew onto me. I was okay with it until he noticed that, unlike Husb who lost his lovely golden locks some time ago, I have a lush head of long hair. So he grabbed some in his beak and tugged as hard as he could. Which is surprisingly hard. My instinctive reaction was to push my finger between the parrot and my hair and pull it back from him. The parrots instinctive reaction was to sink his hooked beak right through my finger. I don’t know if he was scared or having a tantrum but he put a hole though my flesh and drew blood. Ouch! Luckily it’s my left hand so I still managed to sketch him, in graphite into my A5 hardbound sketchbook.

 

Skinny Shadows

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Still on my self-imposed exile from the digital drawing machine, I carried on drawing from some photos I took on Swansea Beach recently. Although speed sketching is very useful, focussing the attention only on what’s absolutely vital, I want to do some more detailed action drawings and these can’t be done with a model or in a fleeting moment.  Drawing from photos helps with composition, foreshortening and scale. I love the long, skinny shadows from the runners caused by a very low wintry afternoon sun. I used two grades of graphite sticks, grey and black, into my A5 hardbacked  sketchbook.

 

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.