Did some sprog sitting over the weekend with a gaggle of small nieces and nephews, so I grabbed the chance to do some more scribbles of children’s heads. Weird little alien bonces are very hard to draw. The proportions are so difficult – they have impossibly huge eyes. I’ll get there …. one day ….. if I can stop them fidgeting so much. I suppose tying them to the chair isn’t allowed any more …… 😉
I’ve been working on some very large manier noir drawings, based on life drawings from my sketchbooks, The drawings are on paper about 120cms high, Fabriano Accademica, coated with acrylic gesso and rubbed all over with compressed charcoal. I thought I’d do a series of male nudes – there are loads in my sketchbooks so might as well use them. Here he is sketched out with a bit of white chalk and I’ve started to develop the tones by rubbing the charcoal away with wire wool and sandpaper. Another day or so should do it.
Life drawing tonight – really lovely pose except for the hands! I tried to draw them twice and they ended up looking like one good hand with a couple of sausages attached. Floppy sausages. With nails. aaaaarrrggghhhh! So frustrating. The other pose was nice too – some severe foreshortening – love it.
I used a dip pen with Indian ink and an ink wash with sable brush into an A3 cartridge sketchbook.
There’s a brothel at the end of our street and sometimes the ladies sit in the window, looking out. Sometimes I surreptitiously sketch them. If they see me, they draw back and close the blinds. Locally, the policy seems to be to let them be, although technically it’s illegal. The brothels masquerade as ‘gentlemen’s health spas’ and other euphemisms. I would like to see them completely legalised, but as that’s not likely to happen anytime soon, I think it’s a good idea to live and let live. It gives public health officials a chance to offer healthcare to the ladies, many of whom are drug addicts and as they’re visible, it’s easier to make sure that they’re not being kept prisoner. Also, it’s safer for the women to be together in a building, rather than on the street and better for other women who don’t have to put up with kerb crawlers. I was kerb crawled a couple of times and it was horrible…..and frightening.
Eventually, these drawings will feed into a bigger, more structured piece in a body of work I’ve been planning for a long time, but I’m a long way from getting to grips with it. I’ve drawn them into my A5 recycled sari sketchbook with my Pilot v5 hitechpoint drawing pen.
Marvellous spoof on the Gangnam Style by dissident artist Ai Wei Wei – all power to his elbow!
Tonight I went to Swansea Print Workshop for an artist talk by the new printmaker-in-residence, Fiona Kelly from Cork in the Republic of Ireland. She works mostly in block (relief) printmaking technique, basing her practice on drawing. Fantastic stuff. But best of all for me was a collaboration she showed us with some other Irish artists who hired a steamroller to print enormous woodblocks! Here they are. That’s it now – I want a steamroller to print my blocks too!
Had a chance to scribble a few faces while I was at it 🙂
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.
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.
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………
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.
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