The Gym On The Beach

Have a couple of young relatives visiting from abroad and being a pair of old fogeys, we’re at a bit of a loss what to do with them, so we took a picnic and headed for the beach which has an outdoor gym courtesy of our local council, thinking it might wear them out a bit. The gym equipment trails along the promenade and off into an area next to woodland, so it’s a lovely scenic walk too. The sun was shining, although we saw huge storm clouds that dropped torrential rain just a few miles away.  I stopped for a scribble, walkers and their dogs with the twin breasts of Mumbles in the background.

Did they get worn out? No! Did we? Oh yes! Shattered now.

For The Wheelie King

Social networking media get a lot of criticism, but I’ve loved them from the start. I have to be strict or I could spend my entire life playing Scrabble on Facebook or hash tag games on Twitter, but I’ve made many interesting acquaintances and professional contacts as well as meeting up with long lost relatives on the other side of the world. I met an intriguing character on Twitter called Willy Wheelie Bin, who purports to be king of all the wheelie bins in Britain and lives in the green mountains of Norfolk. A very entertaining Tweetychum.

I recently took part in a two-hour public art event called Disruption II – I drew a record of the goings-on. One of the performers was telling stories of people’s pasts through a megaphone. She was stationed behind a rather fine grey wheelie bin. I thought of King Willy and how unacknowledged wheelie bins are – they are everywhere but how often do we stop to notice them and their stalwart work, keeping our streets clean? So here’s a drawing dedicated to King Willy Wheelie Bin and all the other wheelie bins across the land 😉

Ruskin And Chocolate

Here’s one I scribbled yesterday when I took my little nephew to the top of the Swansea Tower, Wales’ tallest building. I’m getting a bit better at drawing the cityscape; I’m developing a shorthand of marks that are individual to me so I don’t slip into doing an architectural drawing. I did a short course on the Ruskin style of topographical drawing a few years back and although it was interesting (it was in his house, Brantwood, in the Lake District) and also good discipline, that style of drawing isn’t for me. I had a fair bit of time to sketch – the boy took ages to come to terms with his huge glass of hot chocolate and chocolate brownie. He bounced for hours after.

Stripey Jimjams

One of the good things about keeping a daily sketchbook is that no two days are the same and as I flick back through them, all the memories flood back in a way that is much more real and emotional than looking at photographs. A couple of days ago I was sketching at the funeral of my dear aunt; early this morning I watched my little great-nephew fast asleep in his new snazzy stripey pyjamas. Two days, two entirely different set of emotions and memories. Both precious.

Drawn with my Pilot V5 pen into an A6 ‘artbox’ leather-bound recycled sketchbook.

Orchids and Lizards

This is one of our wonderful models from Swansea’s life drawing group. She’s a retired teached who has the most marvellous tattoos over her body; ants and flies running around being chased by lizards; pitcher plants and orchids trailing over her back and shoulders. I’ve used some of her tattoos as motifs in other parts of the drawing. She has a whole new career since she retired, inspiring artists.

Sad Day, Happy Flowers

Yesterday was a sad one, the funeral of my dear aunt who died after a long illness, aged 87. Although we had been expecting it for some time, it’s still a shock and grieving is hard. She’s the last of her generation on that side of my family, which means that my cousins and sibling and I are now the elders. That’s a sobering thought for a bunch of baby boomers who still feel like we’re 25 – well in our heads anyway. She lived through World War Two and before that had suffered terrible poverty during the Great Depression. Her husband of 66 years and childhood sweetheart had gone to school without shoes or socks, whatever the weather. We, thankfully, have no idea of that level of poverty anymore. They created the welfare state after the war, the National Health Service, free universal education, decent housing, social services, pensions, all done for our benefit, to make sure we didn’t suffer the deprivation they had. And now we see selfish millionaire public-schoolboy politicians trying to dismantle what that brave generation worked so hard and so selflessly to achieve. I have no words to describe my contempt.
As we waited in the watery sunshine for the hearse to arrive at the pretty little church in Waunarlwydd, I noticed a small group of pale purple pansies growing out of a crack at the base of the step leading into the church. Nobody had doused them with weedkiller and people stepped over them carefully. I love pansies, they have those daft little faces in the middle of their nodding heads with big ears. It cheered me up to see them surviving in such an unlikely place, so I drew them in my sketchbook.

 

 

Etched Out!

Had a full-on intaglio week – made three new solar plates and proofed seven. This is one I based on a much larger life drawing. I’m using text repetitively in some of my work because I like the pattering effect it gives. I drew this onto Mark Resist rather than Truegrain as it’s cheaper – I’m pleased with the result. I have black etching ink ingrained into my fingers and I’m shattered. So much time on my feet and then the allotment today on top of it all. Never mind, picked 4 pounds of blackcurrants – they’re cooking away in the kitchen for jelly, butter and cordial; three pounds of redcurrants – they’ll be jellied too; some luscious spinach and beetroot for tea tomorrow.

Trad & Mod

I’ve spent the best part of the last year working on a large-ish scale, mostly A1 or A0 drawings and monotypes, but the past couple of months I’ve been enjoying these tiny, A6, ink drawings in the life drawing group I attend. I’m using a traditional dip pen and Indian ink onto handmade paper, bought from the Tate gallery shop, coloured with splatters of sepia ink. I’m adding tone to the drawings with black, sanguine and white conte crayon. I like this pose, it looks very modern and contrasts well, in my opinion, with the traditional drawing techniques. This was a one-hour pose [great, dedicated model] and I worked directly onto the paper with pen – I guess I’m a masochist 🙂

Etch-A-Cat

Sparta Puss here! I’ve taken control of the furless monkey’s pooter-box again. They’ve been out for a curry and an ice-cream and now they’re lying around like large sea-mammals out of water. Why any mammals would want to live in the sea is beyond me! Anyway, I’ve been busy hunting lately; a few dead ones but mostly bringing them in alive because it’s such a laugh watching the baldapes running round in a panic, shrieking the place down. It’s enough to make a cat laugh! They had some of their furless monkey-pals around for tea the other day – chicken and bread and butter pudding – I licked the pud, it was full of custard. I brought them a live mouse to spice things up a bit and they got terribly annoyed; said I was upsetting their visitors. Wusses!

The she-monkey has been doing etching stuff again. Keeps her out of trouble and off my case. Here’s one she did of me – it’s called a solar plate and she’s printed it in Intaglio Printmaker’s etching ink – Drypoint Shopmix with a smidgen of Easy Wipe in black onto Somerset 250gsm paper. I knew that.

Magpies And Ming

After three months of torrential rain, we have a heatwave. Normally I’m not a sun lover but I’m not complaining about this because the early summer weather has been so brutal. Unfortunately, I’m a gingery Celt and burn to a frazzle in strong sunlight so I’m keeping out of the sun throughout the day and getting outside in the early mornings and the evenings. I was sitting in the garden about 6am today, the cats and the local magpies were winding each other up, magpies screeching raucously. Of course I reached for my sketchbook and had a scribble, catching the young magpies on the roofs.

As I stood and drew, Ming The Merciless came and sat at my feet. So I scribbled her as well. It’s a very odd angle, I was almost directly above her, but it’s a good exercise to draw from stange angles. I picked some blueberries from the plant in the large pot and had them for breakfast with yoghurt and tea. Lovely. By 9am I couldn’t stand it any more and spent the day sheltering in my studio, like a vampire 🙂