The Baleful Look

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What a day! One of those when everything that can go wrong, did. I was hoping to get cracking on some design work first thing but ended up making a start at 3pm! Never mind, I managed to get quite a bit done in the end. It’s pretty boring stuff done on a *gasp* lightbox! Cheating!!!!! So as penance I did a scribble of Spartapus on the footstool next to my legs, clad in skull leggings (very seasonal) and new special lightweight walking shoes, which are killing my feet, and stripey socks. She’s throwing me a baleful look. She often does that. But I still worship the floor her paws walk on. As I should, well-trained monkey that I am.

It’s drawn with Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens, sizes S, F, M and B in sepia into my cloth-bound A5 sketchbook prepared with some ripped wrapping paper stuck into it with a Pritt stick. Sorry about the blurry photo, my digital camera is playing up.

 

Any Port In A Storm

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The expected storm has been building all day and Husb, Teen-niece and I went for a VERY bracing walk along the seafront this morning at high tide to see the raging sea. It was fabulous but really hard work walking against the gales so we took refuge in a coveniently placed ice-cream parlour in the Waterfront Museum where I scribbled the mother and baby opposite. When you only have a few moments to capture people in line, you have to focus on what’s important, the essence of what you’re drawing; in this case their heads and hands, which convey the tender moment they were sharing. There’s enough there to build on if I want, and the less important details like clothes, furniture and background can be fudged later.

Drawn with a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen, size F, into my A5 cloth-bound sketchbook with some brown wrapping paper stuck in with Pritt stick.

Drawing In The Dark……

26 dark……. and some cupcakes! I’m a bit out of practice with my sketchbook work, I’ve not really felt like doing any drawing while I had that awful stomach bug earlier in the week and yesterday I spent catching up on getting ready for exhibitions and admin and stuff like that. Today Husb and I spent with friends and family, visiting and celebrating a little friend’s 10th birthday, which meant a visit to The Vojon, our favourite curry house! And also a cupcake-making session this afternoon, turning out these pink cakes with lilac icing, her favourite colours.  So I settled down to do a quick bit of scribbling about 20 minutes ago, in the dark because everyone’s watching the X Factor. But drawing in darkness is good discipline. There’s just enough light from the flickering screen to make out some of the things in the room – Sparta the cat, my feet, the fireplace, some furniture, but barely any light to see the sketchbook. And that’s a good thing. It forces you to feel your hand and arm and the pen as an extension. You have to concentrate on the movement of the line, rather than the sight of the line on the paper. Does that make sense?

 

26 cakes

On The Mend

25 on the mend

The dreaded lurgi has abated and I’m on the mend, but really shattered and not feeling a bit creative and with a mountain of admin stuff to wade through that should have been getting done when I was ill. Exhibition season is coming up and I have to crack on and get stuff ready for Xmas shows. The trouble with being a skint artist is that you end up doing your own framing to keep costs down, but this eats into your creative time. Never mind, here’s the first little lot, going out to Oriel Ceri Richards gallery tomorrow, half a dozen etchings.

 

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.

 

24 pav

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

window 2

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.

other window

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.

window 1

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.