I arrived early for a meeting with the art collective so I went for a coffee by the Waterfront Museum. It’s on the old dockside which has now been gentrified and is full of galleries, coffee shops and interesting nooks and crannies. The late summer weather has been amazing, warm and sunny and dry, so I sat outside and had a bit of a scribble with my beverage. There are still a few large-ish boats moored by the dock.
Just back from life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop with a new digital life drawing done on my Samsung Galaxy with a free Markers app. This is one of our older models whose face and body are full of character built up over a lifetime of experience.
It’s quite late and the TV is full of the Scottish Referendum on independence which took place today. I’m going to try and keep awake to see the results, but it’s been a long day so I don’t know if I’ll succeed. Whatever, by breakfast time we’ll have the result. History in the making. Exciting times.
I’m a member of an artist collective, 15 Hundred Lives and we have been running a monthly public art event at the Creative Bubble artspace in Swansea for over a year now. September is our 13th event. We take the space for two days a month to work together as a group – a painter, a collagist and a printmaker / scribbler. We also invite a different guest artist each time to work with us. This month we’re joined by Tim Hanks, who creates three-dimensional form in wool that he spins himself.
We open the space to the public because we want to show what it takes to make a work of art. People see art on walls in galleries and often have no idea what goes into it, so we decided last year to let people see for themselves how it’s done. If you’re around in Swansea city centre on Friday or Saturday, please drop by and see what we’re working on. It’s Creative Bubble, Cradock Street, Swansea.
I spent the evening at Swansea Print Workshop, doing some monotypes. This technique stacks three coloured plates on top of each other – in yellow, red and blue. You can read more about it on my technical web page here. The technique gives one full-colour piece and one ‘ghost’ monotype, taken from a second pressing. Unlike most printmaking processes, you can’t make an edition of these. They are unique.
I developed the image from one of a series of drawings I did on my artist residency in Pakistan during April. We were travelling through the Punjab and I did almost 50 sequential pastel drawings, impressions of the landscape, atmosphere and weather surrounding us. I wasn’t sure how to develop these drawings. I edited them into a short film , ‘Drawn Punjab’ and now I’m going to make a series of monotypes.
I usually do monotypes of the human form, not landscapes or atmospherics, but I’m reasonably pleased with this first one. I can see what I want to modify so I might do it again and use stiff brushes to soften it and maybe use more blue. We’ll see.
All artworks have a starting point and this is where my next few drawings start their gestation. I’ve had some beautiful A2 vintage Saunders paper for a while, not knowing what to do with it. So today I took a cheap window cleaning squeegee and scraped some black acrylic screen printing medium over some of them. Then I did the same with gold medium on top. I’m not sure what I’ll do next, that’s for another day.
This is the last of the digital drawings I did at this week’s life drawing session. I forgot to take the stylus that goes with my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 tablet so I had to draw with my finger. It’s the first time I’ve done this and I’m quite pleased with the results. It’s much softer and smudgier than normal. I used the free Markers app, saving frequently to show the development of the drawing.
Here’s another digital sketch I did at life drawing this week. I used the free Markers app on my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and saved regularly to make a slide show of the development of the drawing.
This is a marvellous model with a very interesting and strong face.
Husb and I are keen walkers and we’re having a great late summer here at the moment, with a spectacular Supermoon and high tides. We went for a walk along the promenade at Mumbles, a little former fishing village at the Western tip of Swansea Bay. I stopped to sketch three of the many people fishing in the exceptionally high tide. I used two Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens, sizes S and B and some graphite pencils into my leather bound Steampunk sketchbook.
Just back from life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop. I did quite a few digital drawings on my Samsung Galaxy Tablet Note 8 using the free Markers app. Here’s 2 of them. I’ll blog the others tomorrow.
Husb and I are off out now in a minute. There’s been a massive solar flare over the past few days and there’s a possibility of seeing the Aurora Borealis this far south, but we’ll have to get out of the city centre away from the artificial light. It’s going to be chilly. And late.
Here’s another quick sketch I did the other evening at our local curry house, the incomparable Vojon. Sketching in public forces you to be quick and it also forces you to zone in on the essential details, which is really good practice. Drawn with a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen, size S into my little A6 spotty sketchbook.
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