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.

2014 Oct

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.

Puddings Together

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It’s been horrible weather today. Winter has finally arrived; cold, wet, blowing a gale. Just the weather for making a steamed Golden Syrup sponge pudding with lashings of custard. It’s a pretty good survival strategy for a British November. Settled down for a bit of TV after the pud and the kittehs, Ming The Merciless and Sparta Puss, cwtched together on the footstool. It’s very unusual for them; they generally try to pretend the other doesn’t exist, but I think they must have been feeling the Winter chill too.  I did a quick scribble of them into my tablet Samsung Galaxy Note 8, with a free Markers app.

Random Heads

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Went for a walk to Mumbles with Husb and the Little Nephew today. The weather was crazy, alternating between warm sunshine and gale force winds and driving rain. We found a greasy spoon caff and piled into traditional fried breakfasts. It was enough to carry me through the rest of the day. Won’t need anything until tomorrow’s breakfast now. I sketched heads around the cafe at random, just a couple of minutes on each. I used a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen, size F into my A5 Steampunk leatherbound sketchbook.

Boy In The Dark

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Babysitting a little nephew this evening and we’re watching films in the dark. There’s just enough light to pick out his features.

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Developing A Head

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Here’s another portrait drawing I did at Swansea Print Workshop’s life drawing group last night. I’ve saved the drawing regularly to show its development on my Samsung Galaxy tablet. I used a free Markers app and put in a dark ground to start with, working over it in lighter tones.

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Quick Head

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Just back from life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop. I did this very quick head study using the free Markers app on my Samsung Galaxy Tablet Note 8. I used the smart stylus and my fingers to get the different textures.

Ghost. Cake.

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Yesterday I posted about the new monotype I made, based on a drawing from my travel sketchbook. The monotype process produces an unique piece in full colour, but it’s possible to put a second piece of paper (BFK Rives 250 gsm) through the press and take a secondary ‘ghost’ print which is much paler and more ethereal. The prints are taken in sequence, first the Process Yellow, then the Process Magenta and finally the Process Cyan. Some of the Impressionists, notably Degas and Monet, used to use ghost monotypes as the basis for some of their pastel drawings.

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I had visitors this afternoon. So I made cake. A classic Victoria Sandwich with my homemade loganberry jam. I grow the loganberries in my garden and on our allotment, I’ve never seen them for sale. Husb is piling into what’s left. He takes no prisoners!

Victoria Sandwich