Sick ‘n’ Bad

That’s an old saying round here if you’re unwell, you’re sick’n’bad. I’ve had one of these horrible vicious stomach bugs that has laid me low for the past couple of days. It’s meant that my creative output has been zero; I spent all yesterday and most of this morning zonked out in bed. Things improved this afternoon and I’ve been able to do some mindless grunt work, resizing and watermarking images of my artwork for the website I’m developing. Mind you, it’s been in development for about 4 years, but the end is in sight. Most of making a website is boring, mindless, repetitive tasks like I’ve been doing today, but that’s ok when you feel too poorly to do much else.

 

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So as I haven’t been able to draw while I’ve been ill, I’ll post one of my old ones. It’s a rare landscape using the 3-colour monotype technique. I was hiking down on the Gower Peninsula to the beach at Paviland. There’s a cave there, the site of an ancient burial, but it’s only accessible to experienced climbers. The rocks on the tricky path look like they’ve been melted by a celestial blowtorch. The geology is so strange that I was able to give my imagination a free rein.

 

Drawing Aliens

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Sprogs still here and I’m still trying to draw them. It’s easy enough getting them to pose – just stick them in front of the computer or playstation and they stay quiet. If they start fidgeting, give them sweets. I’m still struggling with their impossibly huge heads, little snub noses and massive eyes. They’re aliens really.

Drawn with a Samsung Galaxy Note 8 using the Magic Marker app.

Sprog!

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We have some little relatives staying overnight so there’s a scribbling opportunity while they watch cartoons. Unfortunately, they’re really hard to draw, with weird heads and ridiculously oversized eyes. I did a couple of digital sketches of the 6 year old but I don’t think either looks like her.

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But that’s the way it goes. You can’t expect to do a good drawing every time, the important thing is to keep practicing. I hope that I can get a good likeness before she grows up.

Window Dressing

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I’ve spent a couple of days working with the 15 Hundred Lives art group on a big draw at the Creative Bubble artspace in Swansea’s City Centre. We were joined by a number of artists, art students and members of the public as we drew over cardboard-covered walls. It was a challenge to draw on cardboard and I found it frustrating at first, I just couldn’t get to grips with what I’d planned. But then I gave up and decided to go with the flow of the materials and started pulling bits of the cardboard open along the folds. I put drafting film into the spaces and drew spooky faces onto them. It looks a bit like a sinister advent calendar now. But with Halloween coming up it sort of works. I drew the main figure from a sketch of a ‘sagger’ that I’d made some time ago and the spooky faces from sketchbook scribbles I made during Disruption II, a performance art event in Swansea back last year. There’s also work from Graham Parker and Daniel Leek in this window.

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At the end of the 2 days, we cut the cardboard up and put some of the images in the windows. It’ll stay there until our next event in November. The window above includes work by Jenny Chisholm, Viv Howell, Sylvie Evans, Chris Harrendence and Lucy Read, amongst others. Creative Bubble has given our artgroup the use of the premises for two days a month up to Xmas. We’re running events called ‘What Do Artists Do All Day?‘ so that people can wander in and see us at work and see what it takes to produce a piece of art from scratch. This month we had guest artist Jenny Chisholm and we hope to have a different guest artist each time, to show a range of artistic disciplines.

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W.I.P.

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Work in progress on a very big drawing at the Creative Bubble artspace where there’s a 2-day Big Draw going on. This figure is based on a quick sketch I did recently of a ‘sagger’, you know, those lads who wear their trousers almost around their knees. I’ll be adding some more figures tomorrow.  I’m working in the window, shame to waste the space.

Pink Plaster

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Here’s a digital drawing I made from a photograph. I like to draw people on the street but sometimes they move too quickly and I need to take photos for reference. I’m going to be working on a large drawing at the Creative Bubble shop in the city centre tomorrow and Saturday and I want to do a number of figures. I’ve been practicing and here’s one of the figures. He was walking briskly despite his crutches and his leg plaster was bright pink.

In the background is a mural of pink hearts representing Swansea City Council’s Cwtch the Bid, the campaign to make Swansea the city of culture in 2017.

More prelims

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I’m working on a preliminary series of 4 reduction monotypes. These are not final pieces; they’re stages on the way of deciding what works and what adaptations are needed before I do the final pieces. Unusually, I’m working from photographs as my starting point. I’ve taken a photo of one of the graffiti-covered industrial ruins in the Lower Swansea Valley and I’ve digitally merged it with a drawing I did from a photo I took a couple of years ago. I’m working on incorporating my own graffiti into the pieces but I’m a long way from perfecting it yet. Graffiti lettering is much harder than I was anticipating and it’s also difficult to render in the medium, reduction monotype, where I’m working with negative space using a cotton bud to remove the ink on the plate. But I’m getting there.

I used black litho/relief ink mixed 60:40 with thick plate oil ontop a perspex 12″ square plate printed onto a creamy T.H. Saunders hand made paper, around 140gsm, using cotton buds (Q Tips), scrim, cotton rags, cocktail sticks (toothpicks) and wooden kebab skewers to do the mark-making.

Princess Pea

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I spent several happy hours at a friend’s smallholding today, up a mountain, out in the fresh air and sunshine, shovelling horse manure! I also hung around while she fed her delightful pea fowl. Most of them are adults but there is one little chick. I’ve nicknamed her Princess Pea.  The adults are huge; Princess Pea is about the size of a Sunday roast chicken. Her parents have elegant headresses but hers is like a stubby Mohican! It was great to have a chance to draw birds up close; for me it emphasises their dinosaur-like qualities. They’re not easy to draw though; like other birds, they don’t stop moving and speed sketching is unavoidable.

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After a while they became very agitated and started making a strange sound that they use to warn of predators.  I suppose that predators would stare at them like I do. I’ve found that dogs don’t like me drawing them either, probably because of the staring, but I’ve yet to find a cat that was bothered. Drawn into my Laura Ashley cloth-bound A5 sketchbook with a Faber Castell Drawing pen size S in sepia.

Big Banners

oppsFor the past few weeks, I’ve spent a couple of afternoons at a local drugs project, working with service users and volunteers to make banners for their Open Day. They’ve been on a series of educational courses and the project wanted banners to reflect this so we started by asking the service users to come up with a list of words that represent their feelings about the programme. We used ‘Achievement; Reachable; Opportunities; Confidence and Purpose’ and also included the name of the programme, ‘Links Coastal’.

I sourced some very cheap rolls of primed canvas, about 2 x 8 feet, in a local cut-price store and Swansea Print Workshop donated a load of used acrylic paints that had been mixed with screenprint medium; this made them very easy to use.We did a practice session on the first afternoon using cheap chalky pastels and sheets of newspaper stuck together and then chose the best designs to reproduce onto the canvas. I really like the results, they should look fab when they’re put up on the project walls.

The Hat Party

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We’re in Bath at a friend’s birthday party. It’s a hat party. His little boy has the best hat. Here it is. Now, let’s party!!!!