Last weekend in London was freezing and loads of people wore hats, great for scribbling. I like sketching on the Tube because people generally don’t look at each other so I can scribble away without being noticed. I find it hard to draw hats on heads, difficult to get the proportions right so it’s great to get a chance to practice. The guy had a fab hairdo and a nice Rupert the Bear scarf.
Drawn in my A5 pink silk recycled sari sketchbook with a Pentel V5 pen size 0.5mm.
Husb and I have just come back from a few days in London being culture vultures. Top on our agenda was The British Museum. I always get in a visit whenever I’m in London. It’s one of my all-time favourite places. I’m embarrassed that it’s full of plunder from our imperialist past but it is so awesome to have all these magnificent cultural treasures in one place. And it’s free – well, mostly. We managed to get tickets for the Ice Age Art exhibition. It is truly amazing.
I’m often asked why I work mainly with the nude. It’s because it’s a very old tradition in European art, starting with the Greeks about 2,500 years ago (and a millenium or so before that, in Mesopotamia). But as I’ve just found out, this tradition was well established in Europe way back in the Stone Age. These magnificent sculptures of the female nudes (above) go back 20,000 to 30,ooo years in European culture. They are very voluptuous and celebrate pregnant women or those who have had a number of children. The figure from France was very influential on Picasso who had a copy in his studio.
By the late Stone Age, about 13,000 years ago, the style of representing the female nude had changed to a more streamlined and abstract form, much less voluptuous. These could almost be Modiglianis. I was glad to see other people sketching at the exhibition, as drawing the artefacts helped me to connect with those ancient artists; trying to understand how they worked gave me a depth of analysis that I wouldn’t have achieved by taking photographs.
Husb has a brand new smart phone so I’m trying to blog from a South London pub where we’re celebrating a friend’s 60th birthday. I did some scribbling on the tube on the way over and another in the old pub in Southwark. This phone is a bit of a pig to use so that’s all from me. Goodnight.
I’ve been having lots of discussions about rabbit skin glue with local artists recently. It seems that some art colleges don’t bother teaching about technique and materials any more. Well, there we are then! Anyway, rabbit skin glue is a very versatile and cheap size for applying to canvas, paper, wood and cardboard before painting, drawing or doing traditional or digital printmaking. It forms a barrier between the surface and the material you are applying. This is important because the surface might contain chemicals that will damage your pigment, such as cheaper papers, some kinds of wood, and also because your pigment might rot the surface, such as oil paints on canvas or paper.
It’s largely been superceded by acrylic gesso, printmaking papers with internal size, and commercially prepared art papers for digital printing. These can be very expensive. To prepare rabbit skin glue I use one teaspoonful of glue granules to 12 teaspoons of cold water, leave overnight to set into a revolting grey jelly then stand the pot in a bain marie (I use an old saucepan) to melt the glue. When it’s thin brush it quickly over the surface you want to prime. It leaves a lovely satiny sheen and is a joy to work on. I usually do 2 coats and stretch papers first, although some heavy-duty artpapers can take the strain.
This piece started as a digital photograph I took on my travels to the Hunza Valley in Pakistan when the millions of apricot trees were in Spring bloom. I tweaked it a bit in Photoshop (just very slightly with Cutout filter) and then printed it out using a good quality inkjet onto an A3 piece of Somerset I’d previously sized and dried with rabbit skin glue. The piece has a beautiful velvety quality that doesn’t really come over on the screen.
ps Toulouse-Lautrec did loads of paintings onto cardboard, usually with gouache and oil.
I tried something a bit different at life drawing tonight. I’d prepared some small scraps of card with white acrylic gesso and Indian ink before I went to Iceland a few months ago but I didn’t use them all. “Waste not, want not” as my Nana used to say. I started with black and white chinagraph pencils but the effect was too translucent so I switched to black and white conte crayons. Much better. Because they’re quite chunky, I had to ditch my usual fine-line style, but that’s OK, I like to get out of my comfort zone.
“Snug as a bug in a rug”, my Nana used to say. Little nephew is staying the night and watching Avengers Assemble on the big screen. He’s enthralled and just a little bit scared so he’s wrapped himself up in a big spotted blanket on the settee, snug as a bug in a rug.
It’s not easy drawing in the dark, with just the flickering light from the film, but I like a challenge. Small children have alien proportions, their heads are impossibly big. How come they don’t fall over? Scribbled with a Pentel V5 pen into an A5 recycled sari sketchbook.
It’s tempting to try and do a complete drawing during the weekly Life Drawing sessions as I use so many of these sketches to develop into monotypes and mixed media pieces. But I also want to use the time to practice my craft and sometimes I focus on different parts of the model rather than the whole body. I’ve always found it hard to get a good portrait likeness with this particular model, but this one is quite reasonable. It’s always good to practice hands and feet too. Drawn in Faber Castell Pitt pens directly into a large Somerset sketchbook, 30cms square. I don’t use pencil to sketch it out first – I like to live dangerously 🙂
It’s meat-free Monday so we went to our favourite curry house, The Vojon, for some sag ponir and garlic rice, sag aloo and tarka dal. Lovely. Restaurants are a good place for a quick scribble and I spotted these two chaps opposite, chatting and i-podding. Scribbled into my A6 blue silk recycled sketchbook with a Pentel V5 pen size 0.5mm.
I spent a busy morning at the print workshop, making a small edition from a photopolymer intaglio plate for the excellent Leftovers IV. It’s a little portrait of Sparta Puss, my furry feline felon.
When I got back, I settled into my comfy chair with a modest cheese sandwich and a mug of tea for a late lunch. I was idly channel-hopping and locked onto a programme that was simultaneously revolting and fascinating. It’s called Man vs Food. O!M!G! People actually eat like THAT?!
My little cheese sarnie had two skinny slices of brie. This guy had THREE AND A HALF POUNDS of 14 different molten cheeses in his toastie. YCHYFI! (That’s Welsh for GROSS!). I’d never seen this programme before. I’ll definitely watch it again 😀
I was walking back throught the city centre this afternoon and revellers were already piling into Wind Street, Swansea’s notorious nightclub area. I wandered behind a group of women celebrating a birthday and got a close up view of legs staggering along on ridiculously high heels, making them look very muscly and quite bandy. I stumbled along with my bags of groceries, scribbling as I went. I couldn’t work out where they kept their money.
scribblah 