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 🙂
The Hard Stuff.
I did a couple of days training in Renaissance drawing techniques last week and day two was taken up with drawung drapery. It was really HARD. Give me a naked body anyday! Renaissance artists tend to draw drapery as if it’s sculpted – I found out why – it often was! They used to dip cloth into plaster and drape it the way they wanted and then let it set before using it for drawings and paintings. I did the warm-up exercise and preliminary study above with pen, graphite and chalk. I wasn’t happy with it, way too far out of my comfort zone.
I’m happier with the one below; it took ages but I felt that I was starting to get somewhere with it, beginning to understand the tonal values. Normally I concentrate on line and studying and replicating complex tones in such a detailed way was very difficult for me. It made me realise that I need to do far more work on this.
Distorting To Fit [parental guidance, male nude]
Last week I spent a couple of days doing some training in Renaissance drawing techniques but earlier in the week I finished this piece which had started out as a smaller drawing in my sketchbook. I was working within a specific size, which is my printing plate for monotypes because this will eventually become one of my large colour monotypes as well. I struggled with it for a while because I couldn’t get it to fit the space, but I took some time out to study some of Egon Schiele’s drawings and it gave me the confidence to distort the body quite considerably until it fitted. Schiele did it all the time and so did many Renaissance artists. They constantly looked for the patterns and ‘truth’ underlying the visual world and weren’t averse to altering what was in front of them to conform to what they considered to be ‘divine’ rules of nature. So I’m in good company, eh? 🙂
I did a lot of preparation on the ground underneath the drawing, stretching a large piece of Somerset and priming it with several layers of rabbit-skin glue, which gave it a lovely satin sheen. I washed over it with three layers of watered-down acrylic paint in yellow ochre, permanent rose and phthalo blue respectively. Finally I worked over the surface randomly with willow charcoal. And only then did I begin to draw, firstly by rubbing away the highlights from the charcoal background with a bit of rag, letting the drawing emerge. Then I worked it up with compressed charcoal and oil bars. This is based on a life drawing done with a young soldier model.
Things To Do With A Seagull
I’ve been on a two-day course in Renaissance-style drawing at Swansea Metropolitan University – which used to be the Art College. It was very thorough and we used the sort of paper and drawing materials that were available back in the days of Leonardo and Michaelangelo. Paper was scarce and expensive so they tended to make little drawings, using both sides of the paper and cramming as much on as possible. There were no pencils [check out the history of pencils at the Most Excellent British Pencil Museum] so they used silverpoint instead. They drew in ink using nib pens and quills made from bird feathers. Swansea, being a seaside city, has an enormous population of seagulls and their feathers are a very good size for quill pens. And so we were supplied with a pile of seagull feathers that had been bleached to get rid of any lurking lurgis and cut with a scalpel and off we went. The quill was surprisingly soft and almost brush-like, flowing across the paper with a free and easy, albeit blotchy, line. It wasn’t possible to do any detail with it but it’s good for rough sketching and blocking out a composition. I used white chalk to add highlights to the drawing above.
Our teacher asked us to do a drawing with different media, using a rougher medium for the overall drawing and focussing in on a detailed section with a finer medium. I used a seagull quill and sepia ink for the main drawing above and a fine nib pen and chalk to develop the detail in the left hand. The local seagulls are a nuisance who rip open bin bags, cover cars with guano and steal food from small children, so it’s good to find something they’re useful for.
The Lego Riot Police experience an existential dilemma
This is a very funny short comedy animation from a very talented Welsh writer and filmaker. Made me Laugh Out Loud 🙂
Drawing With Silver
I’m very lucky to have been invited to study on an intensive two-day course in Renaissance drawing. Today was day 1 and I did some work in Silverpoint. I’d heard about it and admired reproductions but I’d never seen a Silverpoint tool before. The handle is a smooth barrel of wood like an etching needle but the point is a piece of silver wire, apparently 99% pure. It can be used flat or as a very sharp point, but you have to be accurate because it can’t be rubbed out. It seems that Renaissance artists didn’t use the technique for quick scribbling, it was for careful studies. The paper is coated with a special Silverpoint Medium; I don’t know what’s in the modern one, but back in the day it was supposedly ground bone in some sort of animal glue. Nothing wasted eh?
The drawing room was very full so I moved in close to the model. She wore a wig which had been elaborately plaited – daVinci was particularly fond of drawing plaits. I loved it. It helps that I normally draw directly in ink, without sketching in pencil first, so I had the confidence to get stuck in without worrying too much about accuracy. It’s a small drawing, about A5 onto prepared hand-made paper and took about 20 minutes. I like the technique so much I might put a Silverpoint tool in my letter to Santa. 🙂
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