Friday The 13th!

I’m up in Bath and it’s a lovely morning, sun shining and birds singing. Poured down yesterday when I was invigilating our exhibition, Commensalis at Walcot Chapel, but I guess that encouraged people to come into the dry. I did this drawing from the inside looking out. Drawing architecture is challenging because I don’t want it to look like an architect’s drawing so, like with drawing plants, I have to develop a shorthand of marks and a distinctive style. When I was a kid and tried drawing in my own style, some teachers and older relatives used to tell me off because I wasn’t drawing ‘properly’, which meant drawing as copying, using academic techniques.

The Walcot Chapel is an early eighteenth century mortuary chapel in one of the older parts of Bath. In the past, many sick people came to the city to take the waters at the spa. Some didn’t make it and died here. Walcot was one of the mortuary chapels where they were laid out and buried. The small steeply sloping grounds are crammed with old, worn gravestones and tombs. I’m doing an artist-in-conversation here this evening at 6.30 – it’s Friday 13th. That’s going to be a bit spooky!

But before all that, Husb and I are having a day out in Bath with a nice brunch and a visit to the amazing Baths. We found this excellent guide book yesterday – it’s fascinating and also very witty so we’ll let it guide us round the city today. The author has the marvellous name of Gideon Kibblewhite.

Sun, Stars And Short Sightedness

It’s SUNNY!!!! The deluge of biblical proportions has stopped for a couple of days. It isn’t warm, but the sun is shining. So Husb and I went for a walk on the beach yesterday and finally went for a coffee at the top of ‘The Tower‘; we’d been promising ourselves for ages. It’s a fairly new building on Swansea Marina and is the tallest building in Wales. It’s right on the edge of the beach and the views across the sea and over the city are incredible. And the coffee was pretty good too.

I scribbled the view along the beach to the East, taking in the Swansea Observatory. This is also a fairly recent building, built in 1989 and previously on loan to the local astronomical society. Unfortunately, about 3 years ago, the local council demanded a rent increase that the society couldn’t afford, so they moved out and it’s been empty ever since. The council were trying to sell it off, but I don’t know if there have been any buyers. It’s very short-sighted in my opinion to turf community groups out of subsidised buildings and sell them off for short-term gain – if they can be sold at all, especially in a recession. Wouldn’t it have been better to let community groups keep these places open? The city is full of empty premises falling into disrepair and the previous council seemed determined to add to the problem. Let’s hope the new, recently-elected council have a more proactive policy towards buildings, community groups and culture in the city. Fingers crossed.

Art, A Mortuary and Beautiful Bath

Yesterday was incredibly busy and tiring; I’m part of a group of six artists from Swansea who travelled to the lovely city of Bath to put up and launch our exhibition, Commensalis. We started packing the car at 7.00 am and arrived back home just before midnight. PHEW! It’s on until Sunday evening and includes poetry, storytelling and Swedish Jazz/Folk, along with two artists in conversation (I’m one of them) and it’s all FREE. So if you’re anywhere in the area please look in – the programme is on the website.

Just before we opened I sloped off outside for a quick scribble. The venue, Walcot Chapel, is an extraordinarygothic mortuary chapel dating back to the 1840’s. At the front is a massive porch so I sat outside for a few minutes, looking through the archway on my right, sketching the old, yellowy Bathstone buildings across the graveyard. Bath is such a lovely city and one of my favourite places in the UK. I was given a copy of a marvellous book of photographs and quotations, Beautiful Bath: A souvenir in words and images that marries gorgeous photography with pithy quotes from the last 1000 years. Lovely.

Sedum And Spartapuss

Today there was sunshine. Lots of sunshine. No rain. I was up and about really early and took a cup of tea into the garden to sit in the sunshine. Sparta the puss had the same idea [without the cup of tea, she prefers milk]. She was sitting sunbathing on a little brick wall behind an enormous clump of sedum. I like the sedum because it provides flowers quite late in the year which is really good for insects. I try to make the garden friendly to wildlife. We have bats visiting each evening, hoovering up the insects over the pond and there’s a good range of birds.  I quickly sketched Sparta and the sedum. I don’t particularly like drawing nature, it’s hard to draw plants without making them look like botanical drawings. I find it challenging to come up with a visual shorthand for them but this drawing isn’t too bad, I’ve never drawn the sedum before.

Sparta and I had a big argument just before I did the drawing. She ran into the kitchen with a newly murdered sparrow. I took it off her and gave her a row. Like she was bothered! That’s why she was sitting with her back to me in the garden. Sulking.

Bath And Voyeurs

In between all the photopolymer [solar] plate etching over the last couple of weeks, I managed to proof three blocks I’d cut. They’re the first three of a series based on the concept of the artist as voyeur. I lean out of my second floor studio window and take surreptitious photos of people walking below, then I do drawings from them, transfer the drawings to signwriter’s foamboard and cut and incise the image. I’m very pleased with the results – I like the way each figure is restrained within the black square. There will eventually be nine in the series and I’ll probably do an edition of fifteen prints from each block. The foamboard isn’t as robust as wood or lino so the editions can’t be particularly large.

Tomorrow I’ll be finishing off some framing for the exhibition I’m having in Bath with a small group of artists. We’re calling ourselves and the exhibition Commensalis, so if you’re anywhere near Bath next week, please pop in and see us. The opening is on Monday evening and there will be cake! It’s in a spooky old mortuary chapel that’s been converted to a gallery in the ‘Artisan’ quarter of the city. There will also be performances of poetry, storytelling and Swedish Folk/Jazz throughout the week and fellow artist Melanie Ezra and I are ‘in conversation’ on the Friday evening. After all that, I’m going to have a few days off and wander around with my sketchbook, chilling out.

Come Up And See More Etchings [parental guidance]

Here are two more photopolymer plate [solar plate] etchings I did a couple of days ago. I’ve been told that technically, they should be called intaglio prints, not etchings because the metal isn’t actually etched. The male nude is redrawn from a sketchbook study I did about four years ago and I’ve reworked it several times in different monotype techniques. I like the awkwardness of the pose, the painful stretching of the head thrown back and held for quite a long time.This is our young soldier model; he likes to be challenged. He suffers for our art.

I’ve been incorporating text into my drawings and mixed media work for some time, but it’s much harder to do so with most printmaking techniques because you have to work back to front. One of the joys of this method is that you don’t have to draw and write a mirror image. I know da Vinci could write mirror text beautifully, but frankly, there wasn’t much else to do in those days – no TV, no Facebook, no Internet Scrabble, no blogging – so he had plenty of time on his hands 🙂

Tomorrow is the final day of the Swansea and Cardiff Printmakers‘ exhibition in Oriel Canfas, Cardiff – I’m invigilating from 10.30 – 4.30 if anyone’s around – pop in and have a look. And it’s the first of Ros Ford‘s 4-day Open Studio event at Swansea Print Workshop – please do go see the amazing work she’s done during her residency – the time has flown!

Come Up And See My Etchings

Finally, here they are, two of my newest little [A6] photopolymer etchings. There are more to come but I’ve just got back from life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop and it’s my bedtime, so I’ll post the rest over the next couple of days. Goodnight 🙂

Pooped And Proofs

 

Just pulled a nine hour session at Swansea Print Workshop; exposed three new polymer [solar] plates and did 20 proofs from 7 plates and 3 blocks. On my feet all day and completely shattered now. And I forgot to take my camera so I can’t post the proofs I did. So here’s a drawing I did a while back of Husb and his kitteh, Ming the Merciless, asleep. Which is what I am going to be very, very shortly 🙂

Finding the perfect pig…

Fascinating blog from the Pontyates charcutier

charcutierltd's avatarCharcutier

I returned home a few days ago with a van full of butchery equipment, another high street butcher has closed and I was there picking the carcass of knives, hooks and trays like a vulture. Although I was pretty chuffed with my haul (and a wooden block and some stainless steel tables were to follow), I drove home in silence, there was no radio blaring, I didn’t hum a happy tune or sing to myself. I felt pretty bad to be honest. I don’t know the full ins and outs of the business in question – whether it was the right site, whether it was staff problems, whether they’d expanded to soon but it’s a horrid thing seeing a business come to an end.

I’ve had some troubles these past few weeks myself – the breeder that I’ve been sourcing my animals from has decided to concentrate solely on breeding, rather…

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Addicted to Solar Plates!

After the recent two-day course in photopolymer intaglio at Swansea Print Workshop I’ve become a bit obsessive to say the least and I am going into the workshop tomorrow to proof print the 4 A6 plates I completed last week and to expose another three plates from scratch. I’ve been experimenting with a different drawing material; the original plates were exposed from drawings done on Truegrain, but I’m going to use drawings on tracing parchment for the next three plates, which will be 10cm squared as that’s the maximum size of so many miniature print exhibitions nowadays. I’ve adapted these drawings from my sketchbooks – I don’t want to split up my sketchbooks and this might turn out to be a good way  to develop the work in them – I have thousands of drawings!