Still babysitting and we took the two little ‘uns to the beach at Burryport today. It’s a funny little town which has been a bit rundown for many years, yet has a beautiful harbour with Georgian cottages, a lighthouse and a lovely beach. The car park had a coupke of vans selling seafood and icecream and the sprogs munched their way through a pot of cockles each and finished their repast with a traditional Mr. Whippy. Then off for some beachcombing where I did a couple of sketches. You have to work fast when kids are running around but it’s surprising how much you can get down in a hurry. I love sketching these ordinary little moments in my life; the memories are so much more vivid than they would be with a camera. I just have to flick through my sketchbook and it comes back; the salty taste of the air; the popping sound of the seaweed underfoot, like nature’s bubblewrap; the vivid blue sky and the dark grey ‘Granny’s Custard’. Here’s Husb above with our little great-niece and below our great-nephew exploring a rock pool.
It’s been a varied holiday week, saying goodbye at the funeral of a teacher and mentor, Pat Briggs; saying hello to a new little great nephew, as yet unnamed but in the Welsh tradition already nicknamed, Ffredi [which is Welsh for Freddy :)] and two days babysitting small family sprogs. Not a lot of time for art but what the heck, it’s holiday week. Yesterday my sprog-sitting duties took in the latest exhibition by Claire Morgan at Swansea’s Mission Gallery and then off to the old Swansea Museum, forever known to the family children as ‘The Mouse Museum’. While they explored the old Victorian building on the museum’s mouse hunt, I sketched some of the contents of one of the cabinet of curiosities. Dylan Thomas once described it as “the museum that should be in a museum” because it’s so traditional and that’s what I like so much about it. No high tech novelty stuff, just a proper old-fashioned respoitory for curiosities, a relaxed ambience and friendly, slightly eccentric staff [in the nicest possible way].
As I was sketching the collection above, one of the staff wandered past, showing a small group of people around and telling a rather scary story of all the supernatural sightings that have allegedly happened in the very room I was in. I don’t buy into the supernatural at all but I can understand why people think there’s something a bit strange going on at the museum, it’s a very spooky place. There was nothing at all linking the three objects I drew, a South American pot, an African statuette and something labelled only as ‘A Curious Object’ that looked like a cross between a scabbard and a bean pod. I used my Pilot Hi-Techpoint V5 pen size 0.5mm into my A6 Paper Blanks cat-themed sketchbook.
Today was one of those days where I experienced the meaning of the word ‘bittersweet’. I went with many others to the funeral of Pat Briggs, a Swansea-based artist, printmaker and sculptor who taught me in my first year at Swansea Art College, on my Foundation year, almost 40 years ago. We both stuck around Swansea [apart from a few years I spent over the border] and I grew to know her as a fellow artist and great eccentric as well as a valued teacher and mentor. She was born in 1930 and was one of the very few women of her generation to gain a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art, a great achievement and one of those amazing women that paved the way for my [and subsequent] generations of female artists. Her final illness lasted just a few months but before that she was still an active practitioner, making prints and drawings, using digital media and wandering around the city with her ubiquitous shopping trolley, collecting found objects for her witty and often bizarre sculptures. Here’s a link to the Swansea Print Workshop Facebook page, with Kara Seaman’s photograph of Pat making a print in her final year.
It may seem a bit odd doing a drawing at a funeral, but this is the second one I have done recently, both at funerals of artists. I feel it’s my way, as an artist, to honour their memory. I’d like artists to draw at my funeral. Here is the view from my seat at Swansea Crematorium earlier today. People of all ages came to pay their last respects, from babes in arms to octogenarians. Even the vicar is a former student of hers. It’s a great thing to have a good teacher, something our politicians should take note of. A good teacher will inspire you for life, not just cram you through exams and Pat, a VERY blunt Northerner who didn’t mince words, taught me in my first year at art college about the value of constantly criticising and reevaluating what I’m doing and I’ll always be thankful to her for that.Today was bitter because we’ll miss her but sweet to remember a woman who lived her long life to the full and achieved more than most could even hope for.
I’ve not done much artwork the past couple of days, it’s holiday time and I’m trying not to fall into the trap of not taking time off, which is something a lot of self-employed people do. I had a lovely time with an old friend, lunch at Bizzie Lizzies and an afternoon pot of tea at the legendary Kardomah Cafe, beloved many years ago by Dylan Thomas and his bohemian chums, The Kardomah Gang. It’s still as it was when I was a child, very retro and original. Coincidentally I went for a curry last evening to celebrate a friend’s birthday and met a lady who has leased Dylan Thomas’ old house in Cwmdonkin. You can’t go far in Swansea without tripping over Dylan.
But I couldn’t keep away from the studio and wandered in around teatime just to sit down and chill out and do a little drawing. I’ve posted photos of my studio before but today I’m posting a sketch of my studio, sitting in my comfy chair, looking at the big window with the hillside in the background, a couple of large drawings on my table. Just can’t keep away from this arty stuff.
When I’m at life drawing group I prefer poses that turn the body in on itself in some way, I guess that reflects me and my somewhat dystopic view of life, the universe and everything. I like to draw ‘off-the-page’ and have done so for as long as I can remember, since I was a small child. It’s as if I’ve always felt that people are boxed in, that there are invisible boundaries around us. Some of my lecturers at art college used to try and persuade me to draw an entire figure within the one page, but I rarely managed it. It doesn’t matter how big the piece of paper – and I’ve worked on some huge ones, the figures are nearly always cut off by the edges at some point.
This is our soldier model. I’ve drawn him in two different grades of graphite – 6B and 9B into an A3 Bockingford sketchbook over the double page. I’m pleased with this and I think it may make a good full-colour monotype so I’ll take it into the studio tomorrow and work it up into a full-size drawing, probably onto some Somerset Velvet or Fabriano paper. Our model is exceptionally fit. This was a tortuously twisted pose, rather like a contraposto in Mannerist art and he held it for a full hour. At the end, he had weals across his thighs from the edges of the chair.
These are large monotypes I did from original drawings from the life drawing group at Swansea Print Workshop. It takes me a full day at the print studio to do each, plus about half a day to work up a scale drawing from my original sketch, which is usually done into a sketchbook. The middle one will be in an exhibition at Art Matters in Tenby in May and the one on the right will be showing in Walcot Chapel Gallery in Bath, July 9 – 15. Other monotypes will also be included in both exhibitions.
I’ve been nominated for a WordPress Versatile Blogger Award by Drew Kail and and Jackie McSween at Pointsthruprose. This is lovely – thanks so much Drew and Jackie. Drew is an exceptional printmaker working mostly in block printing – amazing work. Jackie coordinates a collective arts blog.
The rules for the award indicate that I must nominate 15 blogs I think are deserving of the Versatile Blogger Award. All of the blogs I have listed are tremendous and I recommend checking them out.
My nominated blogs are:
1. Rayya the Vet Moving diary of the life of an Australian vet and her varied patients
2. Doodlemum – Daily drawing blog about a Welsh Mam and her husb, three children, cat and dog. Funny and whimsical.
3. Charcutier – fascinating blog about starting a high class charcuterie business in a remote part of rural West Wales
4. Dave Cropley – lovely life drawings from this talented printmaker
5. Lemon’s Tree – fun and quirky drawings and cartoons about life and stuff
15. J Hladik Voss – absolutely bonkers Barbie tableaux and other stuff
It was very hard choosing just 15 out of the 90 blogs I follow but I tried to pick those that publish regularly and have the most varied content. Please forgive me if I didn’t include yours.
Here are the rules:
If you are nominated, you’ve been awarded the Versatile Blogger award.
Thank the person who gave you this award. That’s common courtesy.
Include a link to their blog. That’s also common courtesy — if you can figure out how to do it.
Next, select 15 blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly. ( I would add, pick blogs or bloggers that are excellent!)
Nominate those 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award.
Finally, tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself.
versatile blogger award
Nominated bloggers don’t have to participate. I nominated each of these because I feel their blogs deserve to be recognized, read and followed.
Seven things about me:
1. I’m a mad cat lady
2. I love living by the sea – I love it’s smell
3. I’m a rock chick – old school, prog, metal, grunge – love it all [except 1980’s poodle rock]
4. I love making cakes but I don’t like eating them
5. I like watching world-class rugby
6. I’m a tea addict
7. I find weather fascinating [just realised how very British the last three are lol]
A little relative had her 5th birthday today so we had a family day out at Folly Farm in West Wales, which was grand, although freezing cold. Of course it was, it’s a British Bank Holiday – too much to expect fine weather. At least it didn’t rain. We are lucky to still have four generations in our family and we made up a group aged from 15 months to 80 years and it was lovely. There was a very high wooden walkway going right up into the air and we were level with the giraffes. They are such strange creatures – I’ve never seen them close to before. Their hips face forward and they have these ridiculously skinny legs with nobbly knees. And very lumpy heads. I had my fingerles mittens on but my fingers still froze! We also saw meercats, mongooses and a foosa. Brilliant day out.
The drawing I posted yesterday of one of our male models from life drawing group got quite a lot of comments, so by popular request here are some more drawings of him. He’s a young soldier who has seen action in Afghanistan and when he’s home he likes to relax by doing a spot of life modelling. Being young and fit he’s able to get into some very awkward poses and also hold poses for a long time. He even posed in a handstand once!
Ink drawing: in the life studio.
I’m thinking of turning this drawing into a silkscreen print, I think it’s quite funny and a nice snapshot of a life drawing session :).
Just a quick blog tonight as I’ve only just got back from life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop and I want to go to bed! Here’s out fabulous model who is also a soldier in the Territorial Army [army reserves]. He’s just become a ‘poster-boy’ for the TA’s and we walked around the corner the other day and saw his face plastered over a telephone box on a large recruitment poster. Quite a surprise. Being a fit soldier, he holds some extraordinary poses and I did some drawings I’m really pleased with tonight that I will work up into large completed drawings and full-colour monotypes.
I got carried away with this one and it’s come out quite 1930’s, a bit Art Deco, maybe even a bit Tamara de Lempicka. It was fun – I did it for my warm-up before I got stuck into some serious stuff, before we squished him up into some horribly contorted poses. Poor guy suffers for our art :). It’s drawn with a 9B graphite block into an A3 Bockingford sketchbook.
Ming The Merciless is a rescued cat. She was liberated from someone who neglected her so badly that she nearly died of starvation and untreated infections. She was about 10 months old when we rescued her and we had a terrible four days and nights where she was touch and go at the vets, but she pulled through and she’s now 10 years old and an absolute joy to live with. I detest people who are cruel to animals. If they can be so appalling to animals, they can also be equally appalling to their fellow humans. I would like to make animal abusers suffer the same fate as their helpless little victims.
She’s a tiny little thing, a pretty tortoiseshell [calico] semi-longhair kitty with one eye, she lost the other because of one of the infections she had due to neglect. Her fur is mostly a pale pinky-beige with brown markings and white socks and bib. But she’s really scruffy. No matter how much I brush her [and that’s taking my life into my hands!] she scruffs up again in seconds. Her favourite place is on top of the boiler in the kitchen, with a view into the garden. Here she is earlier this evening, looking at me drawing her and resting her head on one of the central heating pipes. It was almost too hot for me to touch but it didn’t bother her at all.
So here’s the problem – drawing such a hairy little scruffy furball of a cat. I used a very fine pen, size 0.5mm into an A6 sketch book and scribbled. Then scribbled some more. And a bit more scribbling. It’s not a bad likeness at all.
scribblah 