Another Digital Nude

1392932352575

We always finish with a long, one-hour, pose at Thursday night’s life drawing group at Swansea Print Workshop. I couldn’t be bothered to pack my drawing bag, if I’m honest, so I just took my Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 tablet and used the free Markers app. I’m learning more and more about the digital approach as time goes on. I started by laying down a background, overlaying several translucent colours with my finger – white, grey, beige and white again. Then I drew the figure and surroundings with the stylus, keeping my pallete restricted to sepia, olive, sanguine, grey and white with a splash of pink, varying the limited brushes to achieve different lines and pressures. I saved at several stages – never forget to save – I lost a few drawings in the early days – they just disappeared! The act of saving also gives you a little slideshow of the progression of the drawing too.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

A Quick Nude

1392926780797

Just back from life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop and I did this on my Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 (8 inch) using a free Markers app. The pose was 25 minutes long. Very tricky foreshortening, really hard.

With this app, I need to put in a solid background before drawing so I usually lay down an opaque white ground with my finger and then overlay with a translucent light grey and then a translucent beige and finish off with an airbrush white. Then I switch to the stylus and start to scribble. If you don’t put in a background, when you save it, you get weird stuff going on like the background goes black and some of the drawing switches to negative. Then you have top export it into something like Adobe Photoshop to correct it. It took me a while to work that one out. Much easier to lay in a background colour.

After da Vinci, with a cat

1392849615959

Another of my practice pieces copying Renaissance drawings. This time a little sketch by da Vinci of a small child playing with a cat. The original is very rough and sketchy, very lively. I guess it had to be that way because a cat and small child are not going to stay still for more than a couple of seconds. In fact, the kitteh looks like it can’t wait to get away. He did quite a lot of these sketches; I wonder if the child escaped without scratches? It’s tempting when copying another artist to tidy up the drawing, to ‘complete’ it but I tried to remain as true to the original as possible, given that I’m using 21st century instead of 15th century materials.

Drawn onto my Samsung Galaxy Tablet using a free Markers app. The reference book is ‘Fra Angelico to Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Drawings by Hugo Chapman and Marzia Faietti published by The British Museum.

Impact Assessment

Another instalment of Notsogreatdictator Smith’s hilarious spoof on superheroes and the civil service in Wales…. 😀

Impact Assessment.

After Filippo Lippi

1392759893440

Another quick digital sketch based on a drawing by fifteenth century artist, Fra Filippo Lippi. I did this on my Samsung Galaxy Tablet using a free Markers app. The drawing is in a British Museum book, ‘Fra Angelico to Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Drawings’ by Hugo Chapman and Marzia Faietti. I think it’s good to get some academic practice from experienced artists.

Colouring In

17 degenerates

I blogged a couple of days ago about the work I started at the Creative Bubble monthly event where I began some full-length portraits of fellow artists in preparation for an upcoming exhibition (here). I went back on Saturday to carry on. Progress was slow because it was very busy in the artspace and also I did a portrait head drawing (read about it here). Here’s how much I’ve done so far.

I worked over the willow charcoal line with a small round hoghair brush and acrylic System 3 paint in a dark grey. Willow charcoal is very unstable and the lines wouldn’t have lasted long. Once the paint was dry, I used my fingers and rags to squidge solid blocks of System 3 colours. The paint is mixed about 60:40 with acrylic pigment so it’s translucent. It’s not like anything I normally do, it’s like colouring-in. Very relaxing.

Blue Face

16 natieModel, artist and mate Natie popped into Creative Bubble on Saturday and posed for me so I could practice drawing a portrait. I’ve never been a formal portraitist, life drawing is about anatomy for me, not about getting a likeness of the model’s face. But I’m working on an idea for my next biggish exhibition and I need to get better at capturing likenesses. It’s better to practice with a professional model and / or fellow artists because you can come up with all sorts of weird stuff while trying to get to a likeness, and non-professionals can end up getting very insulted.

In this I’m trying to get the components of the face in the right place and familiarise myself with all the bits, so I’m not that bothered about subtlety and finesse. Luckily, Natie didn’t seem to mind. I used chalk and compressed charcoal onto a discarded cyanotype on Bockingford paper that I found in the bin at the print workshop. It’s about 20cm square. It will feed into a larger piece eventually.

 

The Yellow Shoes

1392327334327

 

It’s been a very long day and I’ve only just got home at nearly midnight. Good day though, but I need to do a quickie blog and get some sleep. Here’s the second drawing I did at Thursday’s life drawing session at Swansea Print Workshop, using my Samsung Galaxy tablet with the free Marker app. I like working with older models because their bodies are so interesting, so lived in. This model travels a lot and picked up these lovely yellow leather pointy-toed shoes on one of her trips.

The Wall Of Lurve

patme

Day 1 of another of 15 Hundred Lives‘ monthly public art event in Creative Bubble in Swansea. We invite other artists to join us in the artspace to work alongside; it’s very stimulating to have so many artists in one place all focussed and making art. We also invite the public to join us and make their own artworks.

love wall

This month we have a Wall Of Lurve for the public pop-up work as it’s Valentine’s Day.

portraits 2I started two almost-life-size drawings of fellow artists, Melanie Ezra and Patricia McKenna Jones. I’m working on rolls of primed canvas with willow charcoal.I am working from photographs to start with, using a grid to scale up the images.

portraits 1

This is how far I got today. I like the style, it’s quite comic book. Tomorrow I’ll start to work in some colour. Not sure yet whether I’ll use oil bars with linseed oil and rags or acrylic System 3 inks mixed with acrylic medium and applied with rags. I don’t do brushes.

Pink Kimono And Tatts

1392322141843

Just back from life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop. I made a spiced carrot cake for our tea break; I warmed it in the microwave for a few seconds before serving it. This is an older model who has some amazing tattoos; lizards chasing flies and spiders into carnivorous plants all over her body. She has a gorgeous pink, patterned kimono-style robe. This is a twenty-minute pose that I drew on my Samsung Galaxy tablet using the Markers free app. It’s dead handy for colour work because I’m a bit lazy and don’t really want to set up my watercolours or inks. It’s pretty packed out so there’s not much room anyway.

AND IT’S MY 900th POST!