A Thousand and a Quickie On The Beach

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Apart from a quick sprint to the post office and local Co-op, I spent most of today slaving over a hot computer; Premiere Pro, Photoshop and Comic Life. So I was stir crazy by this evening. I grabbed Husb after dinner and we went for a trot down the beach, Swansea Bay is only a few minutes walk. I settled down on top of a dune and had a quick digital scribble. Then it started picking to rain. No place for a Samsung Galaxy Tablet Note 8. It’s not as hardy as me and Husb, we’re made in Wales. It’s like water off a duck’s back. Well, it is, actually, I suppose.

Oh, and this is my 1,000th blog post today. And I reached 2,000 subscribers to my blog this week as well. 😀 I’m well chuffed. Thank you for reading it.

Tiny Temper

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Heard a lot of noise on the roof around 6pm. Sparta Puss was facing off a very large and angry seagull. Husb and I tried to persuade the cat to come down but she was having none of it, so we left them to it. A few minutes later she came storming into the house and gave me a slap! Then she settled down on the stool in front of me in a right strop! What a temper. She glared at me for ages. So I scribbled her. She’s turned her back on me now. What did I do?????

 

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I drew her on my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 using a free Markers app, saving frequently and uploading the pictures into a slideshow gallery to show how the drawing has developed. I have to put in a background before drawing otherwise the final picture, when upladed, seems to turn into a negative.

Romantic Rosehill

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A hot sunny British Bank Holiday. Inconceivable! But here it was so Husb and I went for a stiff walk up to Rosehill Quarry, where I stopped awhile to draw the view over the Cretan Labyrinth, was cut into the turf in 1987 by Bob Shaw and a team of local volunteers. I don’t find it easy to work with landscapes, but I’m practicing hard to develop a style and approach that suits me. I guess my starting point is to define some key shapes and colours within the landscape and scribble them in place. Then I move away from the view and work with different drawing materials and colours, making marks and expressing what I want on the paper. It stops being about the subject and becomes about me. That sounds conceited but I’ve always thought of myself as an Expressionist and that’s what I’m doing, expressing myself.

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I drew onto a sheet of newspaper using charcoal, carbon and Daler Rowney artists’ soft pastels. The Quarry is an amazing place. A lot of the city centre is built with stone quarried from there and in the 1980s it became an inner city environmental project and was converted into a community park and wildlife corridor. Husb and I met while we were both wroking on the project so it’s one of our favourite places. Awwww there’s romantic 😀 . You can just see the labyrinth in the bottom photo.

Rain, Rest And A Little Darling

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Last night was the opening of the Commensalis group show at The Octagon in Fringe Arts Bath. Husb and I went up for the opening night and took in some of the other venues as well – more than 40 shows in 15 venues until June the 8th and all for free! The traffic back was terrible and we didn’t get home until well past midnight. I’ve never seen so many cars coming over the Severn Bridge. It’s good that so many people are coming to Wales for the holiday weekend, but look at the awful weather they’ve come to. Mind you, it’s just as bad in England – typical British Bank Holiday weather.

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So Husb and I have had a quiet day. I’ve been working flat out since I came back from my residency in Pakistan, and I worked flat out while I was there, so today was a little lazy break. But drawing practice must go on. So I turned to The Fox Project on Facebook again and scribbled this little darling. He’s called Ben. He still has some of the fuzzy black baby fur on his face, with the typical ginger fur starting to show.

Fiendish Foreshortening (Female Nude)

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Just back from life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop and here’s a drawing in progress. The pose was about 45 minutes. I used my Samsung Galaxy Tablet Note 8 using the free Markers app,saving regularly to keep a record of the development of the drawing.

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I like to go to life drawing regularly as the study of human anatomy underpins my artistic practice. The portrayal of the nude is a European artistic tradition going back tens of thousands of years, to Paleolithic times.

I’m a glutton for punishment and I choose difficult foreshortening to get some practice. This one was a pain!

Foxy Again

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End of a long day and I haven’t done a drawing so I found one of my favourite Facebook groups, The Fox Project and did a digital sketch using one of the fox pictures as a reference. I drew into my Samsung Galaxy Tablet Note 8, using the Marker free app.

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Mezzotint on aluminium: Percy Cat

A fantastic printgeek blog about doing a mezzotint onto an aluminium plate from Nancy Farmer.

Mezzotint on aluminium: Percy Cat.

FAB Fridge Art

Rosie Scribblah The Subversive Stitch

Busy busy busy in Bath. I have work in three exhibitions in Fringe Arts Bath this year. I’ve blogged about the first two in my previous 2 posts and now here’s the last – 3 little arty magnets in FAB Fridge, a street art extravaganza made up of over 500 little fridge magnets which will be stuck all over Bath at the weekend.

Rosie Scribblah Sixties Dude

 

It’s organised by the Collect Connect group that organised an exhibition of tiny art in cardboard boxes along London’s South Bank earlier this year. These three images of mine are original drawings on top of transfer prints, done from some of my digital photos.

 

Rosie Scribblah Ladies In Waiting

I really like the work that Collect Connect does, democratising art by taking it out onto the streets for anyone to see … and collect. It’s all systems go in bath on Friday night. All the exhibitions in this year’s Fringe Arts Bath are opening from 6.30 pm so if you’re anywhere within travelling distance, please come along. The city will be buzzing with arty stuff!

Another Exhibition Piece

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Well, I think this is an installation. Or it may be a sculpture? I’m not sure. Anyway, it’s something I’m exhibiting at anotther show in the Fringe Arts Bath, this time with the 12:34 group from Swansea. It’s a cardboard box; on the outside I’ve collaged inkjet prints of digitally altered photographs taken during a visit to berlin in a heavy winter a couple of years ago. On the inside, I’ve placed a drawing in ink on acetate based on the very graphic imagery of the Holocaust Memorial. I painted and drew on a small wooden artist’s mannequin and stuck that in front of the acetate. Then finally, I’ve put a small light source behnd the acetate to backlight it.

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It’s quite different for me, but I’m starting to like doing drawing installations, taking drawing off the wall and out into three dimensional space.

Long Hard Day

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Just back from the city of Bath where I helped install the Commensalis group exhibition for the Fringe Arts Bath festival. We have a group show at The Octagon from May 23rd to June the 8th. It’s one of the biggest fine arts festivals in Britain. I’ve done a drawing installation based on my research into ‘Degenerate’ artists, persecuted by the Nazis in the early 20th century. I’ve made a start portraying contemporary artists I know who would have been designated as degenerate under the Nazis. In the background is a large drawing in graphite, carbon and charcoal based on drawings I did of the Berlin Holocaust Memorial in the snow.

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Here’s another angle, with fellow artist, sculptor Jonathan Green sitting just outside the gallery, having a rest after spending 6 hours putting up his installation.

 

More to come tomorrow 🙂