Bideford Black

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I was with a group of artists working with the 15 Hundred Lives collective at Creative Bubble today. We have the artspace for a couple of days every month to work together and to let the public come in and see how art is created. I’ve been working on a very big drawing in charcoal and chalky pastels, based on an original life drawing, and I’ve been trying out an old traditional pigment, Bideford Black, which is a naturally occurring black clay-like pigment from Devon.

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I found it very interesting to use. It feels like a lump of crumbly clay but when you start to rub it on the paper, it quickly acquires a smooth surface and feels oily as it moves across the paper. I thought it would be hard to overlay it with other media, like carbon and chalky pastels, but they went on beautifully.

DSC08171It made me feel a connection to ancient artists, those who drew on the caves in Paleolithic times, using ochres, chalks and clays they found on and in the earth around them. Primeval. I like it. I’m at Creative Bubble for another day tomorrow so will finish the drawing then.

Scribbling With Shami

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Husb and I went to a lecture in Cardiff this evening, at the University. Shami Chakrabarti, the Director of Liberty, spoke eloquently about human rights and her new book.  She was too far away for me to draw; I need to be closer to get enough detail to focus on, so I looked around the audience and scribbled this chap a few seats away. I used a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen, size F into an A5 Tate sketchbook.

Comparing Blues

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I did some experimental cyanotypes yesterday, comparing different papers and fabrics. I used some of my sketchbook drawings for the imagery. The best results were given by a medium weight white cotton that was dipped into the cyanotype chemicals and squeezed to remove the excess. There was also a good result with the white Somerset paper, applying the chemicals with a brush. The brushwork becomes a part of the overall image. The original drawing is a sketch I did in Llandeilo.

I’ll be developing some more images onto larger pieces of fabric for a new group project I’m involved with called ‘Divided By The Meltwater‘, which is a collaboration between artists in Swansea and North Devon. We face each other across the sea. At one time in the distant past, it was all dry land. Then the sea levels rose and we became separated. The project explores this concept.

The Blues

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Spent a happy few hours at Swansea Print Workshop this evening experimenting with cyanotype. I want to do some onto fabric rather than paper so I had to try out some different materials and methods of application today. I had three different fabrics; a very lightweight white muslin, a cream coloured stiff cotton and gesso-coated canvas. I cut 2 pieces of each and I dipped one of each pair into the liquid and squeezed it to remove the excess and brushed the cyanotype chemical onto the other. I used up the leftover chemicals on pieces of Somerset paper. Waste not want not.

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I had prepared some acetates as negatives by scanning some of my sketchbook drawings into Adobe Photoshop and inverting them before printing them out on an inkjet printer. I exposed these onto the dried coated fabrics and paper in the large ultraviolet unit at the print workshop for 6 minutes. Then I developed them in cold running water. At first, the prints are a greeny grey, then the blues start to come out. The best results were on the creamy stiff cotton and dipping gave better definition than brusing the chemicals on. The process bleached the cotton from cream to white, which I wasn’t expecting. Now I can begin to construct the final works.

Cyanotype is one of the earliest forms of photography, surviving into the 20th century as engineering blueprints. It’s now crossed over into fine art printmaking.

Tube Heads

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Husb and I went to London on Saturday to take in some art and I always take the opportunity to do some sketching on the Tube. It’s not easy because the trains shake around a lot and they’re packed, especially at the weekend, but I managed a couple of decent heads.

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The first is using Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen, size S and the second is using graphite, both into an A5 Tate Gallery sketchbook.

Follow The Line

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Husb and I went up to London yesterday for a day of art. First stop, the National Portrait Gallery for the Grayson Perry exhibition, ‘Who Are You?‘. Fantastic show; the works are dispersed throughout the permanent collection of 19th and 20th century portraits so you get to see lots of other work as well. And it’s free! We were on a tight schedule so no time to sketch before hurrying down The Strand to The Courtauld and the Egon Schiele show. £7.50 each but that includes entry to the entire collection, which is stupendous.

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I couldn’t pass up a chance to study from such a great artist and although the place was packed to the rafters, I stopped and drew from two of his earlier male nudes. I concentrated on his line, which is paradoxically exaggerated and very accurate.  I used graphite into an A5 sketchbook.

A Very Fine Cat Indeed

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Greetings hairless apes. Sparta Puss here. My bald monkeys haven’t let me near the pooter box for a while and to be honest I’ve been too busy sleeping anyway. It’s Winter. It’s the only thing to do until Spring and the new season’s rats come a calling. My moronic monkeys have been keeping me and my fellow feline goddess, Ming The Merciless, curfewed because of the big bangs happening every night. Something to do with an ape who tried to blow up a building a long time ago.

 

It’s a damned infringement of my liberty and I’m very dissatisfied with them.  I’ve heard that some bald apes are much nicer to their kitties. There was one cat called Hodge whose domestic chimp actually made a famous quote about him. And what does my monkey do? Scribble. That’s right. Scribble on her tiny pooter box. Useless gibbon. I demand a quote. Nothing less!

Pen. Paper. Nude. Chair.

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Just back from life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop. I started drawing with my Samsung Galaxy tablet and the darn thing ran out of battery! So I had to go old school and use pen and paper; Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen size F in sepia into a Khadi handmade paper sketchbook, pre coloured with a tea bag.

I’ve hardly used pen and paper for life drawing since I’ve had the tablet and I really enjoyed getting traditional again. Our model is new and it’s always a challenge for me to draw someone unfamiliar, but it’s a reasonable likeness. The foreshortening was also a challenge and I’m not too happy with bits of it, but overall it’s okay. It took about 40 minutes. She’s sitting on an old bentwood chair with a red velvet seat that’s been knocking around the Workshop for donkey’s years.

Khadi Cat

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It’s Bonfire Night and the sound of exploding fireworks is unsettling Sparta Puss, who is alternating between dozing fitfully on my stool and pacing around the living room. I have a few small Khadi sketchbooks, beautiful textured handmade paper from India and some sepia walnut ink I made recently, so I grabbed a brush and started sketching her in transit. I’d previously coloured the paper with wet tea bags to break up the white with a pale brown wash, speckled by the rough texture of the paper.

I sketched her dozing, which is the page I’m least pleased with; then pacing around. She has one of those very expressive question mark tails, constantly curling around itself and it was fun following the movement with a sable brush. Finally, a couple of sketches, just a few seconds each, of her sitting down, watching me watching her. Most of the fireworks have stopped now, but the cats are staying until after the weekend, because there’s always someone who carries on with the explosions well beyond Guy Fawkes night.

Big Specs

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Grabbed a cuppa in the cafe in Waterstones bookshop earlier, one of my favourite places. Books, cake and hot beverages. Died and gone to heaven. The weather was awful, cold, very rainy and blowing a gale – miserable. But lovely inside my refuge.  As usual, I had a bit of a scribble and spotted this bloke opposite me, engrossed in his laptop while he had his cuppa. Good for me because I could draw him without being spotted. He had these very large, quite 1980s spectacles on. I drew with a Faber Castell Pitt pen into my A5 leatherbound Steampunk sketchbook.