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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Husb and I spent a few days in Ireland last week and travelled up to County Clare for the first time. The scenery is spectacular but to be honest, I don’t like drawing land / sea scapes. I like to photograph them but drawing them leaves me cold. So I scribbled a cow instead. Here she is. She’s pale brown and creamy white.
We visited the Cliffs of Moher in the Burren Geopark and walked along the windswept clifftop path. It has been lined with large Liscannor flagstones, made from siltstone, that are covered with fossils; some are ‘trace’ fossils, the tracks of ancient animals in the soft mud; others are ripples from the bottom of the sea. I noticed that some of the fossil patterns look a bit like Celtic knotwork.
Husb and I spent some of the night on the ferry from Ireland to Wales. We finally got to bed at 3am but had a nice lie-in and just chilled out today. It was a smooth crossing and I didn’t vomit once! The Irish Sea can be really rough but it was behaving itself last night. Husb can sleep through a hurricane and I sketched him as he snoozed on my Samsung Galaxy S4 using the Magic Marker app.
I like travelling but it’s soooooo good to get home and sleep in my own bed. The cats have been really glad to see us but Sparta looks like she’s been getting double rations. Kitty diet for the rest of the week!
Husb and I spent some time in Killarny in Ireland yesterday and wandered into a very posh hotel that had live music in the bar. It’s a good opportunity to scribble as people are engrossed in the music. Here are a few of the people there . It’s also a chance to draw an interior that I don’t normally see; I don’t get to go to posh bars normally 🙂
I drew them into my clothbound A5 sketchbook that I’d prepared with some ripped paper stuck in at random,using Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens.
We’ve been having a few days in Ireland and doing a bit of touring. We crossed the Shannon River from Kerry to Clare on the ferry from Tarbert . On the Clare side is a ruined jetty that’s been colonised by cormorants . They sit quietly and wait for the right opportunity to dive for prey . Not easy to draw,like most birds I’ve drawn they don’t keep still, so I have to capture a quick impression.
Husb and I started travelling late last night,all the way to the West Coast of Ireland,via ferry and lots of hard driving. We’re in a tiny village near the Shannon river and this scruffy little feral cat has persuaded my relatives to feed him. He’s unapproachable but content to hang out in the garden in this unseasonably warm weather.
He hasn’t been neutered and he’s obviously been in lots of fights and has a deformed ear. So my family call him van Gogh. Or Scabby Cat. He stayed still just long enough to do a bit of a scribble on my tablet using the Magic Marker app.
scribblah 