Open Studios Coming Up.

Charcoal and chalk drawing.

 

Getting into some serious drawing lately, using fairly large discarded prints because the paper is good quality, usually Somerset or Bockingford, along with charcoal, compressed charcoal, chalk and transparent oil bar. I worked up this large [A1] drawing from a tiny life drawing in my sketchbook. I covered the paper with loads of random scribblings before starting to shape the image within it. It’s one of the ones on my wall for the Grand Opening of the Mansel Street Studios this coming Friday. If you’re in Swansea between 7 and 9.30 pm, be sure to come up and see my etchings 🙂 . The main stairwell and corridors have been filled with an exhibition of work from the two groups of Elysium studio artists, there’ll be wine and nibbles in the exhibition and I’m serving cake and mocktails at my studio. Would be lovely to see you.

Chooks At The Vetch.

Had a nice diversion this afternoon after picking up my niece for babysitting. We went down to The Vetch Field, Swansea’s old soccer ground in the city centre, which has now been cleared and turned into allotments. There are chickens there too and the sprog and I spent an hour with sketchbooks, charcoal and pastels drawing the allotments and especially the chickens. Vetch is a type of wild legume and the field was transferred from The Swansea Gaslight Company in 1912 to the newly formed professional football team. It’s nice that now it’s been cleared, plants flourish there once again. Not all of it is allotments so maybe vetch will reestablish itself once again. The drawings are done in charcoal and oil pastels into a heavyweight cream Somerset sketchbook. I’ve never drawn chooks before – they don’t stop moving!

A Comb-over In Tenby.

Ink sketch: A combover in Tenby.

Had a busy day today visiting Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire with an old friend. It was a glorious day and after stopping off in Pontyates, Carmarthen and Narbeth, we ended up in Tenby, walking along the lovely beaches and strolling through the old town, which is partly Medaeval, Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian. We stopped for a nice pot of tea in a little cafe and I immediately started scribbling in my usual antisocial way. There was a family sitting by the window, father and son both had spiky hair and some of the old buildings were visible through the open door. The chap at the front of the drawing had a radical comb-over, fair do’s. It takes dedication to keep hair so firmly in place. I’ve never managed it. He was lost in thought as his wife chatted to him.

The Furry Face Of Evil!

Pastel sketch: Sparta the kitten.

 

Sparta Puss here. I’ve snuck onto the computing box while no-one’s looking. I’m a feline goddess and I share my life with another feline goddess called Ming The Merciless and two fur-less monkeys who serve us. The monkeys are strange creatures but quite entertaining. Do you know, they clean themselves by immersing themselves in a tub of ….. WATER! Yes. Can you believe that? I pace around the edge of the tub shouting at them ‘Get out you idiot. You don’t clean yourself like that.’ They laugh and flick bubbles at me. Damn cheek. I try to show them how to clean themselves by washing on top of them while they’re in bed, but they don’t get it. I’ve even tried licking them myself, but they taste of ……MONKEYS! Quite horrible. I tried licking a dog once. It tasted of …… DOG. Also quite horrible.

Anyway, the fur-less she-monkey wastes a lot of her time smudging paper with bits of coloured earth instead of doing something sensible like sleeping for 22 hours.  I sort of recognise the smudges she makes. They look a bit like me. The monkeys tell their monkey friends that I have very beautiful markings and then they all do their excited monkey chattering over me and smooth me. I approve of this. Apparently the markings on my forehead look like an evil Death Head Mask. I have no idea what that is.  It’s Spring here in Wales and the mice families are out and about and I’ve caught two mice over the last two evenings and brought them in and thrown them onto the big pretty floor cushions the monkeys put on the floor for Ming and me, so we don’t have to tire ourselves out jumping onto their comfortable vintage furniture. They don’t half screech and chatter and run around when they see a mouse. HAHAHAHAHAHAAH. Such good sport.  Then they catch the mice and put them outside. What a waste of a perfectly good mouse. Don’t they realise how good mice taste? Unlike monkeys……………

In The Footsteps Of Marco Polo.

Ink drawing: The Old Silk Route.

I travelled around Pakistan about five years ago in a bus with a handful of other artists from Wales, some Pakistani friends and a sizeable group of Vikings. It was wonderful and it was the first time I had made a real effort to use a travel sketchbook instead of  taking photos. I’d had a digital camera for a while and I found that I was using it less than I used to use my old Minolta SLR. Digital  just doesn’t seem as selective or satisfying as a film camera, but it gave me the kick up the backside I needed to record my travels with drawings.

We were travelling up the deadly Karakoram Highway on our way to the Hunza Valley and stopped at a roadside cafe for some tea. We sat on some rocks looking down the dry river bed, it fills when the glaciers melt, and in the distance saw a ‘ribbon’ on the mountains opposite. It’s part of the old silk route, the one Marco Polo travelled along on his way to China. Ancient history there in front of us.

Reduction monotype: The Old Silk Route.

Returning to Wales, I did a masterclass in three-colour reduction monotype with Vinita Voogd and used my original sketch to produce the print above. It was my very first one using this technique and I’ve been developing my style ever since. It’s in Intaglio printmaker Litho ink in process yellow, red and blue, onto BFK Rives 350gsm paper. You can see how to do this technique on my blog.  It’s very geeky stuff 🙂

Little Orange Kitty

Lino print: orange cat.

 

Mostly I work with human figures but now and again, for a bit of light relief I use animals as my subjects, usually cats because they have enslaved me and I get plenty of practice drawing them. This is a small lino block print I did of Sparta. It’s a reduction block print, a technique that printmaker’s often call the suicide method because you cut all the colours from the same block which destroys the block in the process. If something goes wrong, you can’t go back and redo it. I’ve used three oil colours on this on top of a creamy coloured Zercoll 145 gsm paper.

Sparta is a small tortoiseshell [calico] cat who specialises in doing high fives, being cute and wholesale murder. She also likes to dump dead [and sometimes not dead] animals on top of me when I’m asleep in bed in the early hours of the morning and sitting on the stairs and smacking people in the head when they walk past.  And biting my toes. And sneaking into bed on cold nights and sticking her icy paws in the middle of my back. And persuading local pensioners to spend their pittances on her. Maybe it’s my fault for calling her Sparta. Perhaps I should have called her Tiddles. Or Fluffy. Whoever heard of a serial killer called Fluffy?

 

An Assyrian Kneecap

Ink sketch: An Assyrian Kneecap.

 

So this is my last sketch from my trip to London last week. When I’m in the British Museum I like to wander around and just happen on stuff. I was having a good look around the Egyptian section and turned a corner and discovered The Assyrian stone friezes. Totally mind-blowing. Such beautiful and perfect carvings from, what – about 3,000 years ago? How did they achieve such remarkable beauty without all our mod cons, workshops, power tools etc… It bears out what Grayson Perry goes on about, extolling the extraordinary virtues of craftspeople throughout the ages.

At each end of every section of the frieze stood a guardian eagle spirit, with an eagle’s head, wings and human torso. However, although they had human legs, most of them has an eagle’s claw instead of a kneecap and a couple had a human fist in place of a patella. I drew one of these – I wonder what it signifies? The hand has only three fingers alongside the thumb, which is a convention used by modern cartoonists.

 

Spying and Scribbling

Ink sketch: Museum Kids.

Here are some more sketches from my London trip earlier in the week. I had a great afternoon at The British Museum, but tramping round galleries is really tiring. I know, people will be thinking, “Yeah. What a wimp. Try some real work!” 😉 But you’re on your feet for hours, pacing and looking at stuff. So obviously you need lots of tea breaks. So I had a bit of a rest in the coffee shop – had a nice pot of tea – and sketched these children at the next table. They were totally absorbed in looking at the things they’d bought in the museum shop. They sat under a HUGE totem pole.

Ink sketch: man at the tube station.

But all good things must end and I had to leave the wonderful museum and head back to Paddington for the train home. Had a bit of a wait at Notting Hill tube station so I sketched this man reading with the Victorian brick arches in the background. I’ve never had a problem finding people to sketch because most are so engrossed in their own little world that they don’t notice me spying and scribbling them. I wonder if any of them will ever see this blog and recognise themselves?

Masks At The Museum

Ink drawing: Masks at the Museum.

 

Had a quickie visit to London earlier this week and spend an afternoon at one of my favourite places on the planet, The British Museum. Oh Joy! I’ve visited many times and still haven’t seen it all. What to choose? Where to go? I started off in the African section, downstairs. Beautiful. Exquisite art, especially the bronze sculptures. I was really taken with these masks. Larger than life, one female, one male and both beautifully carved in wood and decorated with paint, raffia and fur. The male mask, on the right, had three fur protuberances coming from his head that looked exactly like giant Taratula legs.

I strolled through the Sutton Hoo exhibition in the Medieval section, amazing metalwork, tiny jewellery – how did they make that with such basic technology? One of the museum experts was sitting at a table with some artefacts on it and you could just go up and find out about them. I had a long chat with her about medieval Limoge enamelled reliquaries – how geeky is that? It was brilliant. And all free. We’re so lucky to have all this culture to experience. More about my British Museum visit tomorrow 🙂

Footsore And Florentines

Ink sketch: Ruskin's Tea Rooms.
Ink sketch: Ruskin's Tea Rooms.

Had a busy morning in London earlier in the week and ended up at one of my favourite places, a tiny tearooms called Ruskins tucked away down Museum Street, opposite one of my other favourite places, The British Museum. I was footsore and tired and badly in need of a nice cuppa tea tea and one of Ruskin’s delicious giant Florentines to pick me up. The tea was lovely and came in a big pot. The Florentine was just fabulous. I’m not normally too keen on sweet things but I make an exception for one of these. I sat back and sketched the table but I couldn’t resist picking away at the Florentine. I like the way my reflection is distorted in the pot.It fortified me after a morning shopping for printmaker’s supplies and got me ready for an afternoon at the British Museum. But that’s for another blog 🙂