Haven’t done a scribble of Sparta Puss for a while, mainly because she’s so consistently naughty that we spend most of our time with her chasing the mice / rats / birds she brings in to rescue them and get them out of the house! But this evening she was in a very sweet mood and cwtched up next to me on the settee – where she was promptly scribbled!
Drawn with my Pilot Hi-Tecpoint V5 pen (size 0.5) into my purple silk recycled sari A5 sketchbook.
Husb was sitting in a dark corner using his laptop earlier and the screen was reflected in his specs, making his eyes look quite square. So I scribbled him.
By the way, he chose to sit in a dark corner. It isn’t some sort of naughty step type punishment. Honest 🙂
We had a new model at life drawing tonight. She’s great but I always find it hard when I start to draw a new model, until I get used to them. I generally use different drawing materials with different models so it takes a while to work out what I’m going to use.
There’s a lot of tecchie stuff to do when you’re an artist and today I started scaling up some sketches onto the large pieces of paper I’ve prepared for a series of ‘manier noir’ drawings. I started by soaking some Fabriano Accademica 240gsm and stretching it onto one of my studio walls (good idea to soak the wall a bit first) and when they were dry, gave them 2 coats of acrylic gesso. Then when that was dry, I rubbed the two outer ones with compressed charcoal and the centre one with graphite block and turpentine.
I’ve been sitting looking at them for a couple of weeks now, frustrated because I couldn’t think what to do with them. Then inspiration finally hit today as I sifted through loads of sketches. I now have a good idea of how I want to progress with the series. People sometimes ask me where my inspiration comes from? For me it’s sitting and thinking, searching through reference material; researching from books and t’Internet, but mostly sitting and thinking and not beating myself up because I’m not constantly working on the making of the art.
Only time for a very quickie sketch today so I scribbled my boots which are a bit wonky now that I’ve worn them in. I’m not a shoe person and I don’t like shiny, pristine footwear so I like my boots best when they’re a bit battered. I don’t get the shopping for shoes thing at all. However, I have far more pairs of boots than I let on to Husb 😉
Had a fun weekend with lots of visitors staying and a friend’s birthday celebration curry to go to. My little great-nephew made himself comfortable on a very large bed and played with his Wii, cwtched up with his beloved Garfield hot water bottle. Normally he fidgets and wriggles, but give him a computer game and he’s quiet and still for hours. Great for me – a free model :).
Had a day trip to Cardiff yesterday on the train, which is a great place for scribbling. I spotted these two opposite, the young woman with headphones plugged into her ears and the older man with a hearing aid in his.
Sometimes when it isn’t raining (that’s not often round here) I leave the studio a bit earlier and wander into the city centre to do some quick scribbles. I saw these three ladies chatting on the street corner and just a few yards away, huddled in a doorway, one of the street drinkers who hang out on the fringes, so sad.
It’s getting cold, it’s very rainy and the poor pigeons are huddling together, ruffling their feathers against the awful Autumn weather. They’re clustered on the parapet next to the landing at the studios, opposite the old Albert Hall. They also hang out on the pavement outside the flower shop below, because people feed them. Some mean people call pigeons rats with wings. I think they’re sweet. I go through phases of sketching them; they’re not easy because they keep fidgeting.
And here’s another one in my series of block prints ‘Voyeur’. Here it is inked up just before printing, using Daler-Rowney block printing medium and Georgian lamp black oil paint, ratio two thirds to a third, taken with a bamboo Japanese baren onto Fabriano Accademica 120 gsm.
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