Gravity! Wow!

13 gravity

Husb and I just got back from the cinema. We saw Gravity in 3D. It’s easily one of the best films I’ve ever seen. If Sandra Bullock doesn’t get an Oscar, there’s no justice. I caught this couple next to us during the adverts. They don’t turn the lights right down during the trailers so there’s just enough to draw by. I’m still drawing into my clothbound A5 Laura Ashley sketchbook, it’s lasted really well and still plenty of pages to go. As usual, I’ve stuck in a ripped bit of brown parcel wrapping paper, using a Pritt stick and drawing with my Faber Castell Pitt pens, sizes F and M. It’s definitely put me off space tourism.

 

Oh and this is my 800th blog post 🙂

Recycle and Reed

12 mari

Here’s the last drawing I did at the most recent life drawing session at Swansea Print Workshop. I worked on a piece of paper that had an image by an artist who has been working at Mission Gallery. Shaun James had produced a load of drawings and was giving them away. So I took a couple and thought I’d recycle one by working his abstract imagery in with my figurative drawing. I like to work onto paper that’s had something done to it – I don’t like the tyrrany of white space. I did a quick drawing of our model using a thick reed pen and Indian ink. The paper is about size A3 so the pen was rather big for it, but I like the way that forced me to keep the detail to a minimum and the line simple.

Practice And Pineapple Pud

11 mari

Here’s another page of drawing I did at last week’s life drawing session. It’s  a practice piece where I tried sketching different bits of the model for practice. Her hand was particularly difficult because of a lot of jewellery and she was clutching a handkerchief. The foot was much easier to draw. I used a variety of media; compressed charcoal, willow charcoal, carbon, white oil pastel and graphite block onto a sheet of canvas prepared with a yellow ochre oil bar to break the tyrrany of the white.

pineapple pud

Today was horrible outside, cold and rainy, so I made a proper Winter pud for Husb and Teenage Niece’s dessert, a steamed pineapple and golden syrup sponge pudding. With fresh pineapple. Which counts towards our five a day. So it’s healthy really.

Use It Or Lose It!

10 who

Yesterday, Husb and I joined family members and assorted Whovians on the Doctor Who Locations walk’n’talk, organised by the Swansea Library Service. It was a part of an excellent programme of free events coming up this month. I sketched one of the Who companions outside the Kardomah Cafe in Portland Street, that has a number of links to the programme as well as to Dylan Thomas and his contemporaries. It was a most excellent tour around the city, but a shame there were not more people there to enjoy an event that our local council has put on for free for its citizens. Come on people, use it or lose it!

I drew this with Faber Castell Pitt pens, sizes F and M into my Laura Ashley clothbound A5 sketchbook that I’d prepared with some ripped brown wrapping paper stuck in with a Pritt stick. It’s got to be Pritt – accept no substitute!

 

Digital Male Nude

 

Ben portraitI took my Samsung Galaxy 8 Tablet to life drawing a couple of weeks ago, partly to keep practicing with it and partly because I was too lazy to get my paper and drawing materials together; it’s so easy to slip a tablet into your bag and away you go. I’m not enjoying it as much as ‘proper’ materials like paper and pens because it’s very uniform and varying the pressure on the stylus doesn’t make any difference to the line. Traditional materials are much more physical and the experience is more ‘real’ in some way. Well, that’s how I feel about it anyway. But I’m quite happy with the portrait and it actually looks like the model. Which is always a plus.

ben 1 resized

I’m not so happy with this detail of the body though. I tried colouring the background before laying down some linework and the result is a bit too messy for my liking. Never mind, I’ll persevere. I used a free Magic Marker app.

In The Zone

08 wip2

I’m working flat out to make 20 new small drawings for a group exhibition at The Brunswick in December. I’m making transfer prints from digital photos I’ve taken and then drawing on top of them in Indian ink. I print out a digital photo in standard inkjet inks (good quality ones don’t work) on cheap paper and put the image face down onto good quality art paper on an etching press. I quickly rub cheap nail-varnish remover (good quality ones don’t work) onto the back of the printed photo and put several sheets of tissue on top and put it through the etching press on a tight etching setting. This transfers the image to the artpaper but it the process the colours change considerably and also randomly so you don’t know what you’ve got until you peel back the tissue. Oh – and open the windows because the fumes are smelly.

Here’s a detail of one of the drawings. I’m using dip pens and Indian ink and I’m getting into the mark-making; it’s very repetitive and meditative once I’m in the zone.

Freeing Up

07 mari

Just back from life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop. I try to get there every week for practice. I don’t go to produce a perfect drawing; it’s a chance to loosen up and try out different things. I’ve been working on some small, very detailed ink drawings lately and I felt like freeing myself up a bit. I worked on A3 paper with charcoal, carbon, oil bars and oil pastel, enjoying the feel of the materials on the paper and the movements of my arm and hand. I like getting into the physicality of drawing when I can.

Ghosts

06uglvghosta06uglvghostb06uglvghostcI’ve been making full-colour monotypes the past couple of weeks and the technique gives one intensely coloured print and one lighter, ghost, print. This is because after you’ve taken a full-colour print, you put the plate back through the press with another sheet of paper to mop up the ink remaining on the plate. Here are the three ‘ghost’ stages of the last piece I did. If you want to know more about the process, have a look at the Techie section on my website, here.

Husb and I are just back from the cinema; went to see Thor 2, The Dark World. We loved it! I was a bit strange when I was a little girl. All the other girls in school read girly comics, but I’d be devouring Marvel and DC imports – Thor was one of my favourites along with the X-Men, Silver Surfer and Doctor Strange.

OOH! AAH! Fireworks!

05 lad

Bonfire night! Husb and I went to the municipal firework display this evening. It was fantastic! Best one I’ve seen. Kudos to Swansea Council – a grand job. When it finished we crossed the road to the beach for the feral fireworks; thousands of teens and twenty-somethings packed onto the beach lighting bonfires and setting off fireworks in a very narrow strip of sand as the tide was fully in. Dangerous but a terrific atmosphere.

05 dad

The little kid in the top sketch was wearing a hat almost as big as his body. It had enormous flapping ears. The big Dad in the bottom drawing was dancing with his tiny daughter perched safely on his shoulders. There’s a long tradition of a fire festival at this time of year’ the Gaelic Samhain and the Celtic / Welsh Calan Gaeaf. Guy Fawkes night is relatively recent, only about 4 centuries old, The word bonfire is supposedly derived from ‘bone fire’. Apparently our ancient ancestors liked to burn people in big wicker men every winter. Not very nice at all. Bonfire night is great fun now though.

Reality And Virtuality.

03 uglv 2c

I’ve been at the Print Workshop grafting on some  full-colour monotypes for the new exhibition. Here’s the second one finished. I posted stages one and two yesterday; this is what it looks like after the final, Process Blue, layer. I’ve used Intaglio Printmakers relief/litho oil-based pigment onto BFK Rives 250gsm paper. Back in the summer, I wandered with Husb along the Lower Swansea Valley river path, sketching and photographing industrial ruins. I noticed that most of them had graffiti so I merged some drawings I’d done of characters around town with the buildings and created my own tag, #uglv. I’m posting updates onto that hashtag on Twitter. I like the idea of linking the traditional art of printmaking (the Impressionists used this monotype technique) with 21st century social media, so that the work has a life in reality and virtuality.