On My Feet All Day

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I’m working on a series of full colour reduction monotypes at the moment and I spent all day at Swansea Print Workshop, on my feet! I’m exhausted. People don’t realise how tiring art can be. The series is based on small pastel drawings I did when I was in Pakistan earlier this year.  This technique uses a perspex plate to make three drawings into ink; the first in Process Yellow, the second in Process Magenta and the third in Process Cyan. They are printed in this order to give a full colour image. The plates are put through the press a second time to give a ‘ghost’ monotype.

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I used Caligo relief inks, the water washable ones, onto BFK Rives paper, 250gsm. You can read more about the technique here. Now I’m off to bed 🙂

Quality Counts

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I spent a couple of hours at Swansea Print Workshop yesterday and carried on with the series of small monotypes based on impressionistic drawings of the Punjabi landscape I travelled through earlier this year. The originals were drawn with Daler Rowney artist quality soft oil pastels into a Khadi handmade paper sketchbook. It’s important to use the best quality materials otherwise the artwork won’t last.

Someone asked me for advice a while ago; she’d bought a large pastel drawing and had it framed with archival quality materials. It was hung on a dry interior wall out of direct light and nowhere near a radiator but it had faded almost to nothing over the five years she’d had it. It was obvious that the artist had used inferior, probably student quality, pastels and hadn’t used top quality, acid-free paper.

In the interim, the artist had died so there was nothing she could do about it. This monotype is printed onto BFK Rives handmade paper, 250gsm with Caligo litho/relief oil-based inks. It should last a few centuries.

Phlebotomy

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Another hospital visit today, this time taking a relative to the phlebotomy department for blood tests. That’s three relatives in hospital for some reason over the past 2 weeks. Thank goodness for the NHS. This is free apart from the costs of getting there. Of course, we pay through our taxes and national insurance, but it’s when things like this happen that you realise how lucky we are. I had a quick scribble in the waiting room, drawing into my little spotty A6 sketchbook with Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens, sizes S, F and B and a graphite pencil (B).

Curry and Sketching

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We had two young relatives visiting this evening so we took them for a curry at the local curry house, The Vojon. Fantastic food there. Had a Handi Lamb Polongwala and garlic rice. mmmmmmm. I did some quick sketching of people nearby in my little A6 spotty sketchbook with a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen, size S. I forgot to take my glasses so I didn’t get to see the sketch properly until I got home.

The Road

YAAYYY Notsogreatdictator Smith is back with his spoof on political life in Wales. Well worth a punt

 

The Road.

First Pick Your Nuts

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It’s Autumn, it’s walnut season and my chum, artist Melanie Ezra, has discovered some walnut trees near her home. She gave me some she picked. I read somewhere that walnut skins make very good ink, so I’ve started to prepare them. I have an allergy to walnuts, they interfere with my breathing, so I wore rubber gloves, which is a good idea anyway because a dark brown liquid oozes out as soon as the skin is pierced and it stains.

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I cut the skins out and then scrubbed the nuts to remove the mushy brown stuff that was sticking to them. It was hard to remove so I rubbed them hard with a metal scourer. Although the skin and pulp are fairly soft, the nuts are hard and wrinkled.

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You can see how much they stained the yellow gloves. Tomorrow I’ll be putting the skins into a slow cooker to extract the ink.

Cat At The End Of A Long Day

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Been away today, across the border in England and just got back. It was a long day. The cats were pleased to see us and Ming the Merciless snuggled down on the stool next to my feet, in pink slippers and purple socks. My feet, that is, not Ming. It’s nice to go visiting but it’s also lovely to come home. I drew this with my Samsung Galaxy Tablet Note 8 using the free Markers app.

The Nightmare Foot

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Here’s another digital life drawing I did at Swansea Print Workshop this week. I love doing life drawing; I love anatomy and I like to challenge myself with a bit of foreshortening. It’s hard to draw though. That left foot was a nightmare.

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I used my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 tablet with a free Markers app. I laid down a very dark ground first then built it up with light tones. I save frequently so I can put the different stages into a slide show to show the development of the drawing.

Sleepy Head

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Just back from life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop and here’s a head. The weather has been much colder and stormy the past few days. It was the first time the central heating has been on there since the Spring and our model dozed off. I drew this on my Samsung Galaxy Tablet Note 8, using the free Markers app and working over a dark ground.

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SinABAD

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This is a cyanotype , an archaic form of photography, that I did a while back. It started out as a digital photograph of a local Swansea nightclub, Sin City. I cropped, turned it black and white and printed it onto an acetate which then became the negative for the cyanotype.  I have entered this image into ‘A Book About Death Wales‘, which opens at the Royal Cambrian Academy in North Wales on October the 18th. This image sprung to mind as soon as I considered entering ABAD. Why Sin? I think it must hark back to my early childhood, when I was taken to many Baptist meetings and I vividly remember old red faced preachers (always male) screaming, “You will die and burn in hell, you sinners!!!!” Put me off religion for life.