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.
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.
This month we have a Wall Of Lurve for the public pop-up work as it’s Valentine’s Day.
I 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.
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.
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!
I’m continuing to practice from my book of Renaissance drawings using my Samsung Galaxy tablet. This is after a sketch by Raphael. The original was obviously done quickly and it’s very free. I haven’t tried to copy it exactly, line for line, because that would make it rather stiff. I started off by installing a mottled background because paper in Renaissance times tended to be a bit rough and pure white paper would be rare and expensive. The baby is very stylised and typical of the period. I think that these days, he’d probably be considered a bit too chubby.
This marvellous blog shows how people are working together to improve the quality of their lives and employment prospects in a part of Pakistan that has been terribly affected by terrorism. Terrific hope for the future.
In Pakistan there is a big debate every year over whether we should celebrate Valentine’s Day or not. The debauch liberals are all in favor. The enlightened moderate ones (ah Musharraf … you made the term famous) say sure, but only with your spouses. The flag-bearers of our morality, the ones who have sworn to save their brethren from hell-fire are strictly against. Either way, here is 2014’s V-Day just a few days away. And this brings me to my new love.
Basecamp is a co-working space in … wait for it … PESHAWAR! Yeah ok so 2 weird things there. The name, Basecamp, itself. Isn’t that an online project management website? Then second even CRAZIER thing. It’s in Peshawar!!! Isn’t that the crazy city at the Afghan border hit by the worse strain of terrorism of any urban area in Pakistan?
Hang on. Let me get to each…
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I use top quality art paper in my work and I like to recycle my own and other people’s cast offs. Here’s a piece of Somerset I found in the waste bin at the print studio. It had been prepared with cyanotype chemicals but not used. It’s been hanging around in a draw for a couple of years, waiting for a subject to present itself. I had it in my bag at life drawing last week and it suited this 10 minute pose. The model was reflected in the mirror and the vertical drawings fit the large upright blocks of dark blue. I used black Indian ink with a traditional dip pen which is smudgy and blotchy, like the cyanotype.
It’s day 10 of the Facebook February daily drawing challenge and I’m posting this. I’ve just drawn it on my Samsung Galaxy Tablet using the free Markers app. I started out by laying down a background colour – if you don’t it goes weird when you save it and does a funny sort of negative thing. Then I added splodges and spots of texture with the translucent tool in greys and white. The background texturing is similar to the abstract patterns in many examples of European Paleolithic cave art.
The drawing is a study made after Piero di Cosimo from my book of Renaissance drawing. I’ve been wanting to do a bit of academic practice lately and the drawing challenge is a good way of spending a few minutes a day studying some of the greats. I’ve enjoyed drawing this fragment of landscape. I’m not a big fan of landscape drawing but this is giving me a handle on it. So thanks, Piero.
It’s been a busy weekend with our two 9 year old nephews staying over and a lengthy business meeting ths afternoon. Yes it’s a Sunday but I’m freelance so I don’t work regular hours. But I try to do a drawing a day for practice and discipline and I’ve been dipping into my Renaissance drawing book by Hugo Chapman and Marzia Faietti. I spent a few minutes with my Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen, size F and my A5 clothbound sketchbook working from this da Vinci sketch.
It’s interesting to draw from another artist because you can appreciate their technique. While I was sketching this, I realised how sparse the linework is; how much is filled in by the viewer. I also realised, although I’d looked at the original many times, that he drew the head slightly too large. I don’t know if that was deliberate or perhaps the model was like that. Apparently, film stars with slightly larger heads look better on the big screen than those with ‘normal’ heads.
Been busy all day having fun with 2 little nephews having a sleepover so just managed a very quick digital sketch of a face from my Renaissance Drawing book by Hugo Chapman. Did it in about 4 minutes on my Samsung Galaxy Tablet with a free Marker app. You have to lay down a background before doing the drawing otherwise it saves as a negative, which is a pain in the neck. Took me quite a while to work out what the problem was. Spent a big part of today cooking because it is SHOCKING how much two nine-year old boys can eat!
Here’s another one from last night’s life drawing session at Swansea Print Workshop. I love drawing models in a foetal position. There’s a terrific tension and movement in the pose as well as some great foreshortening. I precoloured a canvas sheet, size A3, with Rodamine Red oil pigment, squeegeed on with a cheap window-cleaning squeegee and left to dry. I did the initial drawing with a white conte crayon, drawn over with black conte and then rubbed some cerulean blue oilbar onto it. It’s a long way from finished but it was only a 30 minute pose and the basics are there for me to build upon.
