The Hunter

27 sparta

Another dead rat in the hallway this evening and one very proud psycho-kitteh strutting around, well pleased with herself. We’ve had a spate of dead rats in recent weeks, some of them quite large and we found out last week where they’re coming from – our compost bin. Husb noticed that our kitchen waste was breaking down very quickly – too quickly! He poked around and found a network of tunnels through the compost. Rats have been burrowing in and scoffing our kitchen scraps…..and Sparta has been lying in wait and killing the rats. Well, that’s what our species domesticated the little furry ones for; protecting our homes and food from rodents.

14 my chair

Although I sometimes think that WE’RE the ones who’ve been domesticated! Husb has secured the bottom of the bin and there doesn’t seem to be any more rat action inside the compost, but this evening’s corpse shows that they’re still coming round to take a look. I’m amazed that she can drag a rat through two cat flaps, across a large kitchen and down a long corridor in her tiny little jaws. She’s a very small cat. The top image is a photopolymer plate etching of Sparta and the lower one, a drawing from one of my sketchbooks.

Waiting And Brownies

06 waiting

It’s cold and sunny and I’m feeling well enough to go out for an hour or so as long as I don’t overdo it so today I popped down to County Hall to renew our parking permit. I spotted these ladies opposite while I was waiting. They had very similar distinctive noses and chins and I think they might be sisters or even mother and daughter. Drawn with my Pentel V5 pen into my little A6 blue silk covered sketchbook, used across both pages. Came home absolutely corpsed but after a snooze wrapped up in a blanket and then a cup of tea, I got up and made a tray of peanut butter chocolate brownies for The Husb 🙂

 

Oddities

05 oddity 1

These will give landscape artists a heart attack! I don’t often go out into the ‘wilderness’ and I don’t often use watercolour. Here’s what happened when I did.

05 oddity 2

I think maybe I went to too many wild parties back in the 1980’s 😀

The place is Mewslade Bay on the Gower Peninsular. Absolutely gorgeous valley and beach.

Coming Up With Cake

04 grand 1

Still got the lurgi but managed a couple of hours out of the house this afternoon with my fellow artists to set up our group show in Swansea Grand’s Artswing, which opens this coming Friday from 7pm. I’ll be making some lush cakes for the event.

04 grand 2

Sylvie Evans, Graham Parker and yours truly form a small artist collective, 15 Hundred Lives, and we’re exhibiting with guest ceramicist, Heather Lithgow.

04 Warrior Boxed

I’m exhibiting a substantial amount of my large monotype nudes that I’ve been working on for the past couple of years. About half of them are in the show and it’s great to see them hanging in one place. Here’s some geeky stuff about how they’re made…..

If you’re in the Swansea area on Friday evening, please come and join us for a drink and some cake and art. The show runs for the following week as well.

Have a cake 😀

chelseas cake

 

Cat And The Pencil Museum

03 cats an pencils

Still wrapped up in a blankie indoors getting more and more fed up, which probably means I’m on the mend. I’m fed up drawing the cats and fed up with my drawing pens so I had a scribble with Ming The Merciless into a larger A3 sketchbook and used some Derwent Academy watercolour pencils for the scribbling action. Now I’m not a big fan of pencils, or watercolours, but it’s a good exercise to break out of your comfort zone occasionally.

Derwent makes its pencils in the lovely Lake District town of Keswick and it is the home of the national pencil museum. Seriously, it’s a great place with the country’s longest pencil, some World War II RAF covert pencils and a factory shop. It’s brilliant. And so’s the Lake District.

 

More Old Life

02 maris

The dreaded lurgi is getting a little bit better each day but I’m still finding it hard to do much and that includes drawing. My brain’s like mush and doesn’t want to tell my hands what to do, so I’ve been searching through my old sketchbooks to blog some blasts from the past. About 5 years ago I went through a Marvel / DC phase of life drawing, putting my models into a comic book format. I liked the effect but it was a hack of a challenge to draw because if I made a mistake, the whole thing was ruined. Good discipline! Here’s our tattooed model who is a retired science teacher, drawn into an A3 sketchbook, using the double pages.

Old Life

31 old life

This horrible lurgi has lasted so long that I’ve missed three weekly life drawing sessions at Swansea Print Workshop. I’ve been cataloguing old work and coming across stuff I’d forgotten about. I went through a phase of drawing with oil pastels into A3 canvas pads, mainly because I’d been given canvas pads for a present. Here’s one from about 5 years ago. I was surprised that I was using such decorative backgrounds. I still have quite a few canvas sheets left – I think I’ll dig them out and use them – when this darned lurgi lets me get back to work!

The Cat And The Hat

30 catnhat

Ming The Merciless spends most of her time on top of the boiler in the kitchen so she doesn’t feature as much as Sparta in my sketchbooks. But this evening she cwtched up on the footstool, shoving my feet out of the way, so I put Husb’s hat next to her and did some scribbles. She only has one eye; she lost the other when she was very young because of serious neglect – she was a rescue cat. She’s very tiny and her semi-long hair sticks up all over the place. Husb and I try to brush her every day, but she’s a complete psychopath and our hands are covered with scrams and her fur still sticks up all over the place!

The antibiotics are starting to work but I’m still quite ill – not able to go out for another couple of days. I’ve resigned myself to not being able to do much and I’m catching up with some novels, newspapers and arts documentaries on YouTube. The antibiotics make me very drowsy which helps.

Wobbly Lurgi Man

29 doctors

I finally went to the doctor today because my lurgi just wasn’t shifting. I had to wait a while so I got stuck in, drawing the chap opposite me in the waiting room. Unfortunately, it was boiling in there and that set off my hideous hacking cough, which made the drawing very wonky. I had to keep putting it down to go out into the corridor where it was cooler and my cough calmed down a bit.

Turns out it isn’t seasonal flu, but a bacterial infection that snuck into my lungs when my immune system was successfully fighting off a viral throat infection, which is what I first went down with almost a fortnight ago. I’ve been hanging on thinking it’ll go, as viral infections do, but it was just getting worse. Anyway, I’ve started on antibiotics this evening and I’m already feeling better with hardly any cough. Hopefully I’ll be back doing some non-wonky art in a day or two. Sparta’s getting into posing with my sketchbook now.

Big Paw, Little Boots

28 big paw

I’m past the exhausted, bed-ridden phase of the lurgi and I’m quite alert but the downside is that I’m awake to feel every miserable symptom. The medications don’t seem to be helping much any more so I’m trying to take my mind off it by sketching Husb and his boots. Sparta likes this little blue silk sketchbook because it has a ribbon with a glass bead to mark the pages. It keeps her entertained for ages. Tomorrow, I’m throwing in the towel and going to see the doctor. I normally let things run their course but I’ve had this lurgi for 10 days now and it’s not getting better. I’ve got too much to do – I can’t afford to be ill.