Testament of Youth

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Husb and I went to see the new film based on Vera Brittain’s book, ‘Testament of Youth’ this morning. Deeply moving, I cried buckets but don’t let that put you off. It’s a beautiful film and well worth seeing. Just be sure to take hankies. We sat between 2 couples, one in their 20s and the other were seniors. I drew these, just a quick scribble. It was good to see the wide range of ages in the audience. I remember seeing the TV series at the end of the seventies which was very good but this was more intense.

Impossible Lashes

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Husb and I have a small visitor having a sleepover. He’s 10 and his face is starting to elongate but still has childlike chubbiness. Very young faces are so hard to draw, no wrinkles, no saggy bits, very few visual cues to go on. I used graphite into my A5 Tate Gallery sketchbook.

Why do children have such impossibly huge eyelashes?

Smudginess Abounds

fairy back

 

There are different ways of doing monotype prints. This technique is called a direct line monotype. You ink up a plate, usually perspex or glass, with a very thin layer of litho / relief printing ink. Then you gently lay a piece of good quality paper, not too thick,  onto it and carefully draw onto the paper with a sharp pencil. Peel the paper off the plate and there’s a monotype. Artist Tracey Emin does this a lot. I like to do it when I’m doing life drawings. A sharp pencil will give a good line and you can use your thumb or finger to press on a bit of tone and texture. There is a characteristic smudginess and softness with this technique.

Je Suis Charlie.

A tribute

Tribute to Charb.

A touching tribute

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In honour of Stéphane Charbonnier, his colleagues, and the police, who lost their lives in the senseless violence that took place in Paris on the 7th of January 2015. It’s difficult to come to terms with the events of that day, perhaps we never will—how can we?

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Je Suis Charlie

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Scribble Cat

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The end of a long, cold, rainy day, busy with loads of admin. I’m sitting half watching a documentary about World War 2 on the telly with Sparta Puss on the stool in front of me. Time for a scribble. I used graphite into my A5 Tate Gallery sketchbook.

Random Sponging

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I sponged a load of Khadi handmade paper with Indian ink washes and the heavy texture of the paper created some lovely variations in tone and texture. I was stuck indoors today working at the computer so Husb and I went for a walk this evening, in the dark and drizzle. We went down to the beach which was very smudgy and atmospheric in the gentle rain.

When I got back, I looked through the sponged papers until I found some that evoked the atmosphere we’d been walking in. I rubbed some black carbon and white chalk onto parts of it. I normally work directly from life, so it’s a big change for me to work completely intuitively and at random.

Paper Love

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I love paper! I love it, adore it, when I was little I even ate it! I love to possess as many papers as I can afford. I love to try them out with different media and see what they’re capable of. This is handmade Khadi paper. I doused it with an Indian ink wash using a natural sponge and the texture of the paper created some nice stippling.

I have been trying to work out how to draw local landscape, which is very atmospheric. I particularly want to try out ways of capturing twilight and darkness and preparing the paper in this way is showing some promise. I added some highlights and lowlights with chalk and carbon but most of the work had been done.

Bloke In Pub

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Had a quick scribble up the pub tonight. For someone who hardly ever drinks, I’ve been to the same pub twice in 3 days. Tonight we were celebrating the birthday of a dear friend. I didn’t feel like drawing but I force myself to do it, because that’s my job. This bloke was sitting nearby and I thought he had an interesting face 🙂