Get Out!

 

Get out and scribble! Come on. Let’s take over the streets with artists and sketchbooks. I did it this evening, leaving the studio about 10 minutes early and walking down to the city centre to have a scribble. There were loads of people around so it was easy to do some speed sketching. Some people stared. Some even hovered. But I didn’t care ‘cos that’s just how I roll 😉

Tecchie stuff- each scribble took a few seconds – people move fast when they’re cold. Drawn with a Pilot V5 into an A5 recycled sari sketchbook. The small child on the far right did indeed have an enormous hat.

Scribbling Kittehs

 

Constant practice is the only way to improve skills; that’s why I draw every day (nearly). It can get a bit boring though, especially on soggy wet Sundays like today when there’s not much incentive to get out and find something to sketch. That’s where the cats come in handy. I find them difficult to draw because they have such flexible skeletons and are so very different from humans, so it’s good practice for me to get stuck in and scribble them. Sparta has been lying along my legs as I’ve been catching up with some TV so she’s been scribbled (above) and I also did a couple of pages, mostly of little Ming, in the kitchen earlier.

That! Pesky! Kitteh!

 

My cat Sparta sometimes hijacks my computer and writes her own blog. This really annoys me because apart from the mucky paw prints on the keyboard, her blogs get about three times as many readers as mine! The CHEEK of it! And she manages to creep into my artwork too. I was working with an artist / model friend to develop this mixed media piece when Sparta, as a kitten, came charging into the room chasing a ball of paper. And ended up in the final piece (detail above).

And here she is again, creeping into a photopolymer plate intaglio print! The little minx! And she’s managed to get into the Winter Show at Oriel Ceri Richards in the Taliesin Centre. Next month. Maybe I’ll make some money out of her – to replace the curtains she shredded. And the rat traps we had to buy to catch the rodents she keeps throwing at my feet. And the toaster that Ming The Merciless (my other kitteh) threw up into. Maybe………

 

 

W. I. P.

 

Here’s my latest work-in-progress; a manier noir drawing in graphite worked up from a drawing in my sketchbook. I get very dirty doing manier noir drawings and my studio is covered in a fine film of graphite and charcoal – hoovering on Monday then 😦 . This evening I went to the opening of the Winter show at the Saith Gallery in Burry Port which had work featuring, amongst others, Swansea artists (and my chums) Alan Figg,  Helen Finney,and Melanie Ezra. Burry Port is a tiny seaside town just past Llanelli with a lovely old stone harbour fringed by Georgian houses.

Hard Hats And Hair Dos

 

Out tonight at the Tapestri arty bar for a gig by Fanny Holm and had a good scribble while I was at it. There were quite a few people with hats and unusual hairdos so I focussed on them. Hats are sooo HARD to draw.

Hair is so much easier. Goodnight 🙂

Something completely different…

 

I do some teaching with people who are clients of our local drug and alcohol treatment service, running a short course in creativity. Today we looked at native Australian art and did some dot paintings. I joined in and this is what I ended up with. Completely different and a very interesting process. We used acrylic paint although traditionally, ancient peoples would have used ochres and we worked onto brown wrapping paper.

Trying Hard

 

Sprog-sitting my adolescent great niece today and I get my money’s worth by making her pose for me. I find it very hard to draw kids – they have weird scrunchy faces in big heads (that’ll make me popular LOL) but the only thing to do is try harder and practice, practice, practice. The one on the RHS is the last one I drew and probably the one that looks most like her, but they all have elements of her. Hooray for laptops – kept her relatively still and quiet for ages. Better than bribing her with chocolate. There’s also the little tinkly bell attached to my lovely purple silk recycled sari sketchbook, drawn with my Pilot V5 – it sounds so macho doesn’t it? Like a jet engine 🙂

…The Cats Will Play

 

Hiya. Sparta Puss here. I’ve managed to get my paws on the Pooter Box again while the fur-less monkeys aren’t paying attention. I’ve been having such fun with one-eyed Ming The Merciless who shares the idiot apes with me. The simian slackers went for a day out yesterday and, well, to paraphrase a well-known saying, “While the apes are away, the cats will play.” And boy, did we play.

First off, we wee-ed on the kitchen floor …. tee hee …… And then, I caught a rat and let it loose in the house ……. hahahaha ….. And THEN, Ming the Merciless vomited all down the back of the central heating boiler, too far down for them to reach to clean it up …. WAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH…… 😀

It was sooooo funny when they came home and ran around flapping their arms and shrieking and mopping up cat wee and setting rat traps and cleaning up rat droppings and trying to get down the back of the boiler and failing and then burning scented candles all night so they didn’t retch. It’s enough to make a cat laugh. And we did!

A Couple Of Quickies

 

Husb and I had a grand day out today, with a roadtrip to Nottingham via Hay-on-Wye and Coventry. As we were sightseeing, I didn’t want to spend too much time sketching so I set myself time limits. Nottingham has an amazing geological rock formation that has been there for about 400,000 years. It’s called Castle Rock – it’s a large rock with a castle on it :).  The sandstone is very soft and over the years people have carved caves into it. I spent 8 minutes scribbling a section of it which contains three caves at the bottom.

Then we called into Coventry on our way back home. Close by the magnificent new cathedral and the old cathedral ruins is a small street called Cuckoo Lane and I scribbled this little medieval timbered house in 5 minutes. Both are in my purple silk recycled sari sketchbook with my Pilot V5 pen. And now we’re home and chilling out. Lovely.

Step One: Tea

The new blog by the new resident artist at Swansea Print Workshop – great stuff!

 

Step One: Tea.