Cake And Contrapposto

My hobby is baking cakes. I don’t particularly like eating them but I love making them. I usually make one for life drawing group at Swansea Print Workshop on Thursday evenings and tonight did a classic sponge cake filled with home-made strawberry jam and vanilla buttercream. None of it made it back home – these artists take no prisoners! 🙂

Tonight’s model is in her forties and has strong features and a powerful body. I love drawing her because she’s very fit and flexible and holds some terrific poses. I did three drawings of her tonight and this is my favourite, a thirty minute pose in conte and oil pastel into my Bockingford sketchbook. I like the foreshortening and the awkwardness of the left arm. It’s a pleasing composition and it’s definitely going to be reworked as a more complex drawing and then made into a large monotype.There’s a terrific twist going on, a sort of horizontal contrapposto.

Fracking unbelievable

Oh dear, another bonkers diatribe about poor little Tenby from the witty pen of this master of drollery :). It hurts when I laugh this much.

Fracking unbelievable.

Stir Crazy Celtic Knots

I was ‘babysitting’ the current show at Elysium Gallery earlier this afternoon, doing my volunteer stint for the day and a shy young man wandered in, wearing a Big Issue seller’s tabard. He asked if it was alright to come in, he was very nervous. I made him welcome and he really liked the exhibition. I chatted to him and he said that he loved art and when he finishes selling the mag each day, he goes back to his tiny room and spends hours drawing Celtic Knotwork. Celtic Knotwork!!!! Have you ever tried drawing Celtic Knotwork? I have – it’s really hard. And this guy is absorbed in it for hours each day. It’s so easy to judge people by their appearances and fail to see the human being behind the stereotype. He said he’d call in again. I hope he does.

When I left the gallery the sun was streaming down, rare for Swansea and I didn’t want to go back to my studio – I’m getting a bit stir crazy and the place smells of rabbit skin glue at the moment – horrible. So I went walkabout and sat on a wall by the Big Issue office in St. Helen’s Road. I sketched the people using the traffic crossing. It wasn’t easy because they don’t stay still for long and dart across the road really quickly, so it was a good exercise for me. They weren’t bunched together in a group – I drew them singly and tried to fit them together as best I can. Back to the smelly studio tomorrow – hope it rains.

The birth of Lego

Another droll spoof about the little seaside town of Tenby. What did Tenby do to deserve this? Very funny writing from a talented comedy writer.

 

The birth of Lego.

Beep Gospel And Nude

Has a very productive day in the studio and did lots of preliminary drawings for a very large piece I’m working on for an international painting competition, BEEP. The deadline is the end of next week so I’m working flat out. I’m not a painter but BEEP wants artists to challenge traditional notions of painting, so I’m approaching it as a scribbler and printmaker, constructing it mostly using printmaking equipment – squeegees and rollers – and also drawing into it extensively with oil bars.

Husb and I went to Taliesin Arts Centre this evening to watch the Dave McKean directed film, The Gospel of Us, featuring Michael Sheen. It’s extraordinary, moving, powerful and the visual quality is superb. I’ve long been a fan of McKean’s comic book art and his film collaborations with Neil Gaiman. This is very much an independent art film type of thing so I’m not sure how widespread it’s cinema release will be, but it’s worth tracking down.

The drawing above is one I did last week of an older female model. It took about ten minutes and it’s in Faber Castell Pitt pen into a Bockingford sketchbook. I like the composition very much, especially the way the drapery falls and I might reconstruct this as a scaled-up drawing ready for turning into a monotype.

A tale of two would be cities

Another completely bonkers, tongue-in-cheek spoof about the little Welsh seaside town of Tenby from a very funny writer.

A tale of two would be cities.

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.

Castle Square scribbles

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.

Ink sketch: young boy.

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!

Life drawing in ink and compressed charcoal.

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.