I’ve been out and about a lot today and dropped in to Central Library to see my chum, Doodlemum, doing a doodling session with parents and children. A little boy painted as Spiderman was very interested in what I was doing.
And here she is again being watched by two little sisters with their hair in bunches. Scribbled into my A5 pink silk sari recycled sketchbook with a Pentel V5 pen, size o.5mm. Then I went to a Demonstration to do some more scribbling, but that’s tomorrow’s blog.
Finally got to see The Hobbit at our local independent cinema, The Taliesin. I just had time to scribble this man and his hair before the lights went down, the glasses went on and I went back to my childhood. I read the Hobbit when I was about 10 and loved every word of it. I really like the film version and I’m looking forward to the other two parts. Though I couldn’t suss out which role was played by Barry Humphries until I got home and googled it. A far cry from Dame Edna! This is scribbled into my A5 pink recycled sari sketchbook that I bought really cheaply in a sale in WH Smith a while back, using a Pentel V5 drawing pen. It took about two minutes.
Another lovely day so we headed East over the border into England to visit friends and stopped awhile in Bradford-on-Avon, a bit beyond Bath. We’d often driven through and wanted to stop, because it’s ridiculously picturesque, so today we finally took a walk around. It’s very old and the buildings cling to the steep sides of the river valley, some of them going back to the seventeenth century. We had a traditional Sunday roast in a local pub and while we waited I sketched through the ancient window. It took about ten minutes using Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens, sizes M and B, onto a piece of mountboard, prepared with a white gesso ground with a random ink wash sponged over. Then a few white highlights added with conte crayon.
I scribble anywhere, me. Had a slow puncture in my back tyre so I took the opportunity to scribble some men at work. They do their jobs really quickly in the garage so each scribble was just a few seconds. But it’s useful to sketch some positions I don’t normally see, like using the jack and kneeling to fix the tyre. The angle of the leg and boot in the kneeling position I found particularly hard, but it’s all good practice. Drawn into my A5 pink silk recycled sari sketchbook with a Pentel V5 drawing pen.
I’ve been re-using some experimental work I’d been doing, that I wasn’t happy with. I’ve been taking the boards, prepared with rhodamine red and lemon yellow oil pigment, to different places. I took one to my weekly life-drawing session yesterday and drew this 30 minute pose in black and white conte crayon with a few highlights at the end in white oilbar. I like the foreshortening in this pose and I think I’ll probably be using it as the basis of other pieces of work, maybe a large monotype?
I love Rhodamine Red. I had a tin mixed for me, it was expensive but it goes a long way. When the pigment is applied thickly, it’s a very deep rich red but thinning with plate oil or linseed and it becomes a rich vivid pink.
So this evening I took myself off to life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop, bearing an abundance of cakes for our tea break. How civilised is that? I did a couple of sketches in oil bars that I was quite pleased with, then we had this pose to finish up with after tea and cake. It was the hardest pose I’ve ever drawn. The foreshortening was horrendous. It took me an hour to get this far. I’ve used Winsor & Newton oilbars and conte crayon to do the black line. I’ve worked onto thick card primed with two coats of acrylic gesso.
I HATE shopping. It’s my idea of hell, unless I’m buying books or tools. I had to buy some new clothes to replace some that were literally falling to pieces so I spent two hours in shopping hell (Dante knew nothing…NOTHING…) and bought two pairs of leggings, a t-shirt and a sports bra. Result. That’s me sorted for the summer.
So when I got home from shopping hell, I made the mistake of having a sit-down in front of the telly with a nice cup of tea. Note to self: do NOT watch reruns of The Great British Bake-Off during the day. I don’t particularly like eating cake but I LOVE baking. And Mary Berry led me astray. So instead of working diligently in my studio, I ended up baking a Victoria Sandwich and loganberry cupcakes. Husb scoffed two cupcakes then begged me to take the rest to life drawing this evening, to save his waistline. But that’s another blog……
So who was the mad woman on the freezing cold beach in a gale force wind this evening, drawing in a sandstorm? This crazy woman here, that’s who. Honestly, the things I do for my art. It was blowing so hard that my piece of card, around A3 size, was waving about like Rolf Harris’ Wobble Board. That dates me doesn’t it? I’ve been working my way through pieces of card I’d been experimenting with. They hadn’t worked out so I’m reusing them.This had a lemon yellow oil pigment ground and I worked over it this evening with Winsor & Newton oilbars.
I scribbled frantically in the gale for about 8 minutes, not easy and I certainly wasn’t happy with what I was drawing. Then the wind blew the board clean out of my hands and face down onto the sand, just like buttered toast. It started looking better. I got it home and, using a cotton bud (Q-Tip), scribbled into the sand on top of the wet pigment. I quite like it now. I think the sand looks very realistic 😉
It’s been a gorgeous bright, sunny day, although very cold, so Husb and I headed for the beach this evening for a spot of scribbling and fresh air. I re-used a board that was a failed experiment. It had some images in rhodamine red oil pigment overlaid with lemon yellow and I wasn’t happy with it so I dug it out of a cupboard and scribbled over it in oilbars – yellow ochre, white, ultramarine and black, thinned to varying degrees of translucency with the neutral oil bar. Finally I put in some marram grass with Hooker’s Green.
Now here’s where the artistic license comes in. This is Swansea beach. In Swansea weather. Under a Swansea sky. So if anyone’s tempted to book the next fight to this red hot landscape, forget it. I’ve substituted the searing pinks and oranges for various shades of grey. It’s not a bit like this really. But I’m an artist so I can do it. Ner ner nerner ner 😛
I’m preparing a whole new set of photopolymer plate intaglios. I’ve chosen the sketches I want to make plates of, mostly from my sketchbooks and now I’m drawing them onto small (A6) transparencies. These two here are onto Mark Resist. It’s considerably cheaper than TruGrain and more stable than tracing parchment, especially with wet media.
This is one of our group’s older models, a retiree with lots of tattoos. I’m using a traditional dip pen and Indian ink to do the linework and on the one above, I’ve used conte crayon over a sheet of rough sandpaper to get the textured background.
I’m using black oilbar to do the background on the second one, with a sable brush dipped in turpentine to work around the edges of the lines. The backgrounds need a bit more work then I need to do some tones on the bodies. In the past I used Indian ink wash but water-based media don’t seem to take too well onto acetate, so for these I think I’ll experiment with black oil paint, thinned to a wash with turpentine. It’s easy to remove if I make a mistake. Once the drawings are complete, it’s off to Swansea Print Workshop to use the UV unit to create the plates.
scribblah 