Another completely bonkers, tongue-in-cheek spoof about the little Welsh seaside town of Tenby from a very funny writer.
A Renaissance Romp
A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to be invited onto an intensive course in Renaissance drawing, using materials and equipment typical of that era. I couldn’t say anything about it at the time, but now it’s all gone public. The drawings done by the group of artists and students are to be used in a new drama series, Da Vinci’s Demons, based on the life and times of Leonardo da Vinci. It’s being made by the production company Starz in collaboration with BBC Worldwide. The company has bought an old factory near Swansea and are refurbishing it into a film studio, spending about £60million on it. It’s so exciting!!!!
Our tutors were very strict in keeping us to authentic Renaissance style because the drawings will apparently be used on set as part of da Vinci’s studio set-up. They’re all very tiny because paper was very expensive back then, so artists typically drew very small on tiny scraps of paper, cramming several drawings into the space and using both sides. It was too expensive and precious to waste.
We are hoping that we’ll be able to go to the film set when our drawings are up, to get a glimpse before they start filming in a few weeks. As yet, I have no idea which, if any, of my drawings will be used. The group produced several hundred over four days so the competition will be high. Fingers crossed 🙂
Avengers And A Fidget-Free Sprog.
Had a very family filled day yesterday with LOADS of relatives calling, so I made a big batch of Welsh cakes on my griddle. They didn’t last long. They never do! I haven’t done any sketchbook drawings for about a week, so, having agreed to babysit a couple of small relations for the afternoon, we strolled around the city centre and stopped in Castle Square for a few minutes, where I scribbled these drawings. The family group was interesting as I usually draw single figures, so getting them in proportion to each other was a good exercise. We took the sprogs to the ‘Mouse’ Museum, which is the old Swansea Museum. It has a mouse trail for children and they never, ever tire of going there to search for the Museum Mouses. Then we popped into the Waterfront Museum round the corner, which had a science club going on – so the little’uns spent a very happy hour making ice cream in plastic bags. It was fantastic, tasted delicious AND kept two small boys occupied for ages.
We kept one of the sprogs for the evening and he desperately wanted to go and see Avengers Assemble in 3D. We saw it last week but the little lad hadn’t and frankly we loved the film so much that we were happy to go see it again. It was just as excellent second time round. It’s now my second favourite film of all time; ‘Some Like It Hot’ being my absolute favourite. We had a few minutes to kill before the show started so I practiced on the sprog – I find it very hard to draw children, they are a weird shape. Just when you think their heads couldn’t be any bigger, they ARE. Anyway, it isn’t a bad likeness and he’s a good model, doesn’t fidget.
Hard Feet And The Best Curryhouse
It’s the end of a tiring week; I’ve had a very productive time in the studio and a good session at the life drawing group, but that means I’ve been on my feet continuously every day and I’m looking forward to some chilling-out time this weekend. We started this evening with a curry at our local first-best-curryhouse-in-the-world, The Vojon, which is just one letter away from the third-worst-poets-in-the-universe, The Vogon [you’ve got to be fans of Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy to get that one].
This is one of the life drawings I did last night. Sometimes when I’m faced with an intimidating expanse of pristine white paper, I just get handful of pastels and SCRIBBLE ALL OVER IT! Then it’s not intimidating any more. You’ve got to show it who’s Boss. Then I drew over it with compressed charcoal. It was a great pose, I love foreshortening and I used a very free and expressive style with the linework, but her feet…….. oh dear, they were SO hard. I kept drawing them until we ran out of time and I’m still not happy. Sometimes with foreshortening, no matter how accurately you measure and draw some bits, they don’t look right in the drawing because they don’t look right anyway.
Now I’m going to watch The Big Bang Theory on catch-up TV. Goodnight 🙂
Senôr Momento Is Stalking Me!
After yesterday’s encounter with Senôr Momento where I wandered through the city centre with my skirt hem tucked into my tights I resolved to wear trousers today. I put a pair of leggings on and because it was so chilly this morning, wore a pair of loose-fitting, cropped trousers over them. Halfway through the morning I popped into the loo at the studios and came out with my trousers around my ankles. I completely forgot they were there and nearly fell over them. And almost fell over another artist waiting outside, to compound my embarrassment. I get the feeling that Senôr Momento is stalking me now that he’s found me!
I’ve just got back from life drawing group at Swansea Print Workshop, so Thursday is a very long day for me and I’m pretty much scribbled-out. This model is a retired lady with a voluptuous body. I admire her confidence and self-assurance and I love drawing her. It took me ages to get a good drawing of her, perhaps a couple of years but I persevered and now she’s one of my favourites. I like drawing models who are older and whose physical types don’t conform to the current fashions of ‘beauty’. I admire the work of Lucien Freud who worked with models of all shapes, sizes and ages and showed that beauty is inherent in us all and that we don’t need to be young, permanently dieting or retouched by Photoshop.
The drawing is in Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens, sizes S, M and B and compressed charcoal into a 30cm squared Bockingford sketchbook. I stood very close, hovering above her to emphasise the foreshortening.
Metric mistake for Tenby
This is a new blogger who dips his pen in drollery to lampoon the hitherto innocuous little seaside town of Tenby. Sooooo funny…..
Senor Moment And Still Life
Well, I had my first encounter with Senor Moment today. I walked all the way through the city centre and started climbing the hill to visit my reflexologist and noticed my skirt looked a bit funny. I looked harder and saw that it’s hem was tucked into my tights! NOOOOOO! I haven’t done that since I was 5! Memo to self: check in the mirror before leaving the house from now on. It’s a bit of a shock; I managed to push the boundaries of youth to almost forty and I was hoping for at least three decades of middle age but seniority seems to be sneaking up on me.
I’ve been collecting things I find in the street [that would horrify my late Nana] and today I decided to start drawing a still-life with them. Here’s what I’ve done so far. I found an empty cheap extra-strong lager can left on the Studio doorstep by a street drinker; two goldie-coloured metal leaves; an icon. An eclectic mix from the mean streets of Swansea. I put them onto a page from the Independent newspaper. The drawing is in Derwent pencils, B and 5B, onto 90 gsm watercolour paper and I’m toying with the idea of using watercolour wash when the drawing bit is finished. I’ve been wanting to do some still life for a while but also wanted to do something contemporary, so collecting rubbish off the street seems to fit the bill. Or am I having another Senor Moment?
Tenby, Nelson’s original resting place
Very droll commentary from a very tongue-in-cheek blogger. Why does royalty take a dim view of a little Welsh seaside town? Is this really the world’s first sarcastic statue? 🙂
Three Stages Of Man
Back to reality after last week’s Renaissance drawing course and ploughing on with a new large drawing in my studio. I had a life drawing in my sketchbook as a starting point and I worked it up on a piece of stretched Fabriano which had been prepared with rabbit skin glue and washes of thinned acrylic paint in yellow ochre, permanent rose and pthalo blue. I sketched it up with white chalk which took AGES! I’m working to the size of my perspex monotype plate, because this drawing will eventually be used as a template for a full-colour monotype, so I had to distort the original to fit the space. I’m much more comfortable about distorting figures now, after spending some time with Egon Schiele and the Renaissance Masters [in my dreams LOL :)].
Anyway, Stage 1 took about four hours. I’m a pacer; I have to keep turning my back on my work and walking away to have a think about what I’m doing, then walk back, staring at it, trying to work out what to do next. Sometimes I prop it against the wall outside my studio and walk down the entire length of the corridor to the far end, then walk back slowly scrutinising the piece of work, analysing it from different distances. Consequently I’m on my feet for hours at a time and I wear out a lot of carpets. Eventually I was ready to draw in the final linework in willow charcoal [in the middle picture] and then block in around it, again with willow charcoal. Stages 2 and 3 took less than ten minutes.
Now it’s ready to be worked up in compressed charcoal and oil bars and it’s also ready to be traced as a template for the monotype process. A good day’s work, but my feet are awful sore 😦
Too Modern For My Own Good!
So anyway, this is the last I’m going to write about the Renaissance drawing sessions I went to last week. I did this drawing towards the end of Day 2, when I was getting pretty frazzled and tired. The aim was to try and draw as the Renaissance masters did, using mostly materials and equipment that they used. The paper was interesting, none of it was white so I was already starting with a mid-tone, which I really enjoyed. I liked this model; I’d never worked with him before, he has a rather Renaissance type face and hair. I started the drawing using delicate lines in willow charcoal, drawing gently so the lines were very light. Then I worked in some highlights with chalk. And THEN I went and spoiled it all by getting my charcoal and scribbling hard all over it, far too modern!
I found it very difficult to go against my inclinations and stick rigidly to someone ele’s set of rules. The main pre-occupation with Renaissance artists was to capture the underlying ‘divine truth’ that lies behind what we call reality and what they regarded as an illusion. However, I am much more influenced by twentieth century European Expressionism and the urge to let myself go and indulge in all that surface mark-making was just too much. I couldn’t help myself. Ho hum. Never mind. I learned a lot from the course, particularly in the use of tonal subtleties and drawing drapery. So back to the studio tomorrow, after this sodden Bank Holiday, and straight back into the 21st century 🙂
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