Just back from life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop. I used my Samsung Galaxy Tablet Note 8 with the free Markers app for this 45 minute pose. I really enjoy working with this model. She has a very distinctive face.
The Fleecy Igloo
Greetings bald apes. I, Sparta Puss, have control of the pooter box again. The she monkey came back from hunting the other day with a fleecy igloo. She was very pleased with herself, I don’t know why. I’d have been impressed if it was a rat. She says it’s for me and Ming the Merciless to sleep in. Like we’re going to do what she wants?!
What an idiot. Ming has stormed off into another room to sleep on a newspaper and I am taunting her by settling down right next to it. That’ll teach the stupid ape. Next time she goes out hunting I expect some smoked salmon, not a poxy fleecy igloo.
Blue Birds
I carried on with my cyanotype experiments. I have always used an ultraviolet unit to expose them in the past, which takes about 6 minutes. I wanted to see if I could expose them with natural light so I sandwiched two negatives between pieces of chemically treated paper and a sheet of glass and left them for 1 hour 45 minutes in a window in the afternoon sun. I’ve been told that it’s quicker in summer, around an hour.
I developed them in cold water in the sink and I’m quite pleased with the results. The original images were small sketchbook drawings I did of pigeons some years ago. I scanned them and using Adobe Photoshop, reversed the image horizontally, inverted it into a negative and resized.
A Metre Squared
There’s a new gallery opening in Ynyshir in the Rhondda Valley in South Wales. It’s being run by artists Gayle Rogers and Chris Williams and they’ve put together a group of artists to become gallery artists. Each of us has a metre squared of wall space and that’s our own, permanently. I’ve made a metre squared notice board and constructed a sequence showing the development of a photopolymer intaglio plate from original drawing to finished editioned print. I thought it might be more interesting for people to see than if I just used the space to hang a small group of framed pieces.
The Workers opens officially next Friday, the 21st of November from 10 – 5. The Workers is at The Old Library, 9 Ynyshir Road CF39 0EN. There is a new exhibition of 2 and 3D work by Gale and Chris, the gallery artists metres squared, Gayle’s studio and a small gallery shop full of juicy merchandise.
We’ll Be Back!
I finished my big drawing today at Creative Bubble artspace in the city centre. The art collective I’m in, 15 Hundred Lives, has been using the venue for two days a month for over a year now, this was our 14th event. The three of us, collagist Sylvie Evans, painter Graham Parker and me, use the space to work and develop together as a group and also to let the public come in and see what it is that artists do during the creative process.
We also ask other artists to come in and work with us each month, to build relationships within the local arts community and so the public can see what a wide diversity of arts there is in Swansea. It’s a pretty groovy place. This month the talented painter David Hughes-Jones was our guest and other artists popped in with their work as well, Ann Lucas with her gorgeous needle-felted 3D forms and Melanie Ezra with her latest collage creation.
This will be the very last event at Creative Bubble. It has been leased by the University of Wales Trinity St. Davids (aka the art college) and the lease ends now! BUT they’ve taken out a lease on a bigger building right across the street which opens next month. And we’ll be back!
Bideford Black
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.
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.
It 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
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
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
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.
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
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.
The first is using Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen, size S and the second is using graphite, both into an A5 Tate Gallery sketchbook.
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