Just got back from the life drawing session at Swansea Print Workshop and I’m still persevering with digital drawing on my Galaxy Tablet. The first pose took about 40 minutes and the head was a quickie, about 10 minutes. I used the Magic Marker app.
Prelims
I spent the afternoon at Swansea Print Workshop, doing some preliminary studies for a small series of work I want to finish by the end of the month. I’ve been doing some sketches and photographs and I developed a working drawing from these. I scanned and printed it out to fit one of my perspex monotype plates and today I inked the plate in a black litho oil-based ink and did a reduction monotype. The photo above shows me drawing into the ink – I’m using scrim there but I also use cotton buds (Q Tips) and cocktail sticks (toothpicks) to make marks.
Once I finished drawing, I dampened a piece of WSH & Co British Handmade Paper and took a print on the giant Radcliffe Press using a collagraph setting. I’m not sure if this paper is still manufactured, the only reference I can find to it online is of a handmade book from 1927. I was given some by a kindly benefactor and I tried it out today. It’s a beautiful wove paper but I think it may have been too textured for this technique; I normally use a very smooth paper like Zercall.
I don’t normally do preliminary prints; I generally work straight from a drawing but the series I’m planning has quite complex imagers so I’m going to press on and do a few more prelim prints to iron out any wrinkles before I start in on the major full-colour monotypes.
Technical Thingy
Nearly didn’t blog this evening because our box thingy that gives us the Internet has an intermittent fault and Husb has had to connect my tablet to his smartphone so’s I can blog. I haven’t got a clue. I realise that’s terribly sexist but I go through life on a ‘need to know’ basis and if there’s someone else around who has the interest to get on with it, I’ll get on with something else.
I thought I’d have a go at drawing a kitteh on the tablet,using Magic Marker. The advantage of this over conventional materials is that I have quick and easy access to colours and textures which is convenient when I’m drawing something that can’t be relied upon to hold a pose. Here’s Ming the Merciless having a rest on my chair. She moved around a lot; she’s very fidgety.
Husb’s having a row with the Internet providers on Twitter. I pity them lol 🙂
Quick, to the rescue…
Another instalment of this weekly spoof about superheroes in Wales from the acerbic pen of NotsogreatDictator Smith, featuring the Golden Badger of Wrexham dn the Sleeping Giant of Abercraf –
Blackberry Vinegar
Feeling a bit under the weather today so I had a cup of hot blackberry vinegar this evening. Husb and I managed to get a final pick late in September and put the fruit into large jars, packing it down lightly,and covered the fruit with white wine vinegar. After a few days,we strained the fruit through a jelly bag and for each pint of liquid,added a pound of sugar. The whole lot was brought to the boil then immediately poured into warmed clean glass bottles for storage. At the first sign of a cold,put a couple of teaspoonfuls into a cup and top up with hot water. It’s an old cold remedy and very soothing.
Here’s a digital drawing I did when I was out and about earlier,of a couple of street people.
Big Hair And Jimjams
Husb and I were in Cardiff yesterday to go to the opening of Sarah Hopkins’ new exhibition of screenprints at the Fountain Gallery. As we drove through the city at lunchtime, I spotted this chap out in the street,chatting on his mobile phone in his pajamas. I took a sneaky snap and drew from it with the Magic Marker app on my Samsung Galaxy S8. He has very big hair.
Taking It Further….
A while back, I did some sketchbook scribbles of performance artists in the street at an event called Disruption II in Swansea. I’ve been developing new work from some of the sketches and a couple of months ago, I did a massive drawing installation based on one of the tiny scribbles. Here it is.
I’ve developed it further, into a small, approximately A5, drawing on Bockingford paper.
It started life as a ‘transfer’ print created from a digitally altered photograph, which gives me a random, coloured background to build the drawing upon. The line work is done in Indian ink and an ink wash using traditional dip pens and I’ve used a hint of Winsor and Newton watercolour to highlight a couple of areas in the building. This isn’t the end for this image…….next, I’m developing it into a small drypoint etching.
Finding A Husband
Last week, Husb and I crossed the Shannon River a couple of times on the Tarbert Ferry, connecting County Kerry to Clare. It’s become my favourite ferry. It’s cute. It crosses the Shannon in about 15 minutes, between power stations on each bank. On the Kerry side, in Tarbert, is a fab little cafe in the local jail and they make really nice rhubarb tart. Once we got off in Clare, we turned left onto the coast road and a succession of lovely small towns, with great food and scenery.
We pootled across The Burren and ended up in Lisdoonvarna, which was absolutely mental with bunting all over the place and throngs, yes throngs, of people surging raucously through the sunny streets. We’d gone there to find the smokehouse – I’d crawl to hell and back for the promise of smoked salmon – but we’d ended up in the middle of the biggest matchmaking festival in Europe! Most of the potential husbands looked a couple of decades older than Husb, so I didn’t bother trading him in. We found the smokehouse and the honey roasted hot-smoked salmon is to die for.
Here’s a sketch done on the ferry, with the Tarbert power station and lighthouse in the background. It’s drawn with Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens into an A5 cloth-bound sketchbook, prepared with ripped brown wrapping paper stuck in with Pritt stick. I haven’t found any glue as good as Pritt.
Lost!
I went to the life drawing session at Swansea Print Workshop this evening and did a long,involved digital drawing on my Galaxy Tablet. I’m trying to get to grips with the Magic Marker app. About 5 minutes from the end I accidentally pressed the ‘off’ button and lost it ! So I did a 5 minute scribble and to be honest I’m happier with this one. I think there’s such a lot of things to play with on the app that the drawing can become overworked and lose the immediacy of the scribble.
Corvids And Erratics
On our recent trip to Ireland, Husb and I began exploring The Burren in County Clare. We stopped at Doolin Pier to look at the slumped sedimentary rocks in the cliffs and the glacial erratics, massive rocks from far away, dunped on the ground by ancient glaciers. As I was drawing Husb near one of the huge erratics, I noticed loads of crow-like birds trotting around all over the place. I’m not a twitcher, I could tell they were corvids but couldn’t be more specific than that. They came up really close, making a ‘clicking’ sort of clucking noise and scrounging food. When I threw them some scraps of sandwich, they stored the pieces in their lower mouth and their necks swelled up very clearly. They completely distracted me from the landscape and I filled the paper with them instead. Like all the other birds I’ve drawn, they didn’t stop fidgeting!
I drew them into my A5 cloth-bound sketchbook with Faber castell Pitt drawing pens in various sizes. I prepared the paper with torn strips of brown wrapping paper stuck on with Pritt stick glue.
scribblah 