Cosy Couple At The Blood Clinic

Ink sketch: at the blood clinic.

Today I accompanied a young relative to an appointment at a hospital in a nearby town. The whole process took around two hours, shifting around the hospital to different departments, but I had my sketchbook and a couple of pens so I made good use of the time and no-one was safe from my scribbling. This elderly couple sat opposite in the blood clinic, which was packed out with people waiting to have their skin pricked and their blood tested. There was a little machine dispensing numbered tickets like the Deli department in Sainsbury’s supermarket. It seemed a bit odd but I guess it ensures fairness. She was a lot older and I guessed he might have been a relative accompanying her – or her him. The skin on her face was stretched very tightly across her skull. They both kept their rather natty hats on while they waited, despite the hospital being over-heated and he had loads of layers on under his puffa jacket, while she wore a rather nice Duffle coat. I’ve always like Duffle coats, although I haven’t had one since my student Duffle finally fell apart when I was in my ’30’s. It lasted well. In fact, I might get myself a new one; there are some sprauncy ones around this winter – maybe wait for the sales?

Drawing Miss Buns.

Ink sketch.

I spent some hours today with my delightful 12-year old great niece, Miss Buns, who hung out in my studio after school. I thought it might be a good idea to draw her so she settled into a big armchair and I started scribbling. Unfortunately, a 12-year old’s idea of ‘keeping still’ is very different to mine and she fidgeted, wriggled and giggled her way through a half hour or so and each time she moved or pulled a face, I had to start a new sketch. Then she got bored so I suggested that she draw me and we swapped places. I snuggled down into the chair with my little sketchbook and drew her drawing me. It was much better because she was concentrating and was quite still.

I find children and young people difficult to draw because their faces and features are very soft and don’t really suit my pen drawing, but frankly I’m too lazy to do delicate tonal values with pencils and they’re generally unwilling to stay still for any decent length of time, which leaves photos, which I’m also not keen on. I preferred one of the quicker sketches I did of her while she was fidgeting, but she squealed in horror when I showed her the one I wanted to blog and made me promise to put this one up, because it’s the one she likes. She did quite a reasonable drawing of me too.

 

Getting a new viewpoint

Ink sketch.

I try to draw every day but it can get boring drawing the same things over and over so Husb is now being reinvented from different angles. I’ve done a few drawings where I’ve been seated and he’s been standing but he hasn’t been too keen of me drawing up his nose so this time I’ve drawn him from above while he’s at the computer. It gives me a good view of his ear and some great foreshortening on his arm and hand. I’ll have to find some more weird angles. It’s fun.

Filthy Weather And A Civilised Pot Of Tea.

Ink sketches in the bookshop.

 

Filthy weather today. We were promised snow but as usual, the bit of the Guf Stream that swirls around in the bay made the temperature just slightly too high for the rain to freeze out into snow. So we had freezing rain and driving winds instead. Horrible. Spent the morning at Swansea Print Workshop but was thoroughly fed up by the afternoon so sloped off into the city with husb and took refuge in the lovely cafe in Waterstone’s bookshop. I love this cafe. The bookshop was originally an old cinema, built in the very early days of the movies and it’s a beautiful building. It survived the WW2 blitz and the 1960’s town planning atrocities and Waterstones took it over and lovingly restored it. I love the idea of a cafe in a bookshop. You can buy your book and then cwtch into a comfy chair upstairs with a nice pot of tea and a toasted teacake and start reading your purchase without setting foot outside into the vile weather. Lovely.

I sketched a couple of people at nearby tables. The elderly man in braces had his head down, reading his book in his lap. The younger man kept his hat on over his very trendy haircut [does anyone say trendy these days?] while he chatted to the young lady he came in with. It was on the news today that sales of teapots in Britain have fallen because we’re all making our tea with teabags in mugs. Not in Waterstones – the tea comes in lovely little fat white china pots with matching cups and saucers.

Another Pal Scribbled!

Ink sketch: another friend drops by.

I’ve signed up to the 28 day drawing challenge on Facebook and I’m trying to draw a person each day instead of an inanimate object. I don’t want to repeat myself so I’m going to try not to do husb and myself more than once. However, in this age of social networking and given the freezing cold dark nights, it might be a bit difficult to see a new person to draw every day for a month, unless I start hanging about in cafes ; it’s way too cold outside at the moment. So any hapless friends who texts me to pop in for a cuppa and a blast off my heater while they’re trudging round in the freezing cold are going to be scribbled! HAH!

 

The Illustrated Man

Ink sketch. Man and tattoos.

 

Not an original blog title – I remember the film with Rod Steiger – but it seemed apt. This is a friend of ours who has fabulous tribal tattoos covering half of his body and I’ve been wanting to draw them for ages so we fixed a time for him to drop down to my studio. Unfortunately it was the coldest day of the winter so far today. I borrowed another artist’s convector heater to work alongside my fan heater to try and get the studio warm and when my model arrived yet another artist lent me her directional heater and between the three, and a nice hot cup of coffee, we managed about an hour and a half. I did a few quick, warm-up ink sketches into my little ‘cat’ sketchbook [ the one I had for Xmas] and then I worked in graphite, charcoal and white gouache onto an A2 piece of cardboard I had previously primed with rabbit skin glue. I’ve never worked on cardboard before but I’ve been studying Toulouse-Lautrec’s technique recently [I’m a big fan] and he did loads in cardboard and gouache. The piece on cardboard is nowhere near finished but I have enough visual information from my sketches to do a lot more work into it, before I need my pal to come back for another sitting.

The Final Proof [female nude]

Full colour drypoint.

 

Today I went back to Swansea Print Workshop for the final session of drypoint training. Yesterday I managed to pull a first proof [on the left] and this morning I used it to guide me while I did a lot more mark-making into the paper drypoint plates. I added a lot more cross hatching and some patterning along with some lively linework on the figure and then repeated the technique of inking up and printing the three separate plates [I explained this in yesterday’s post]. I’m pleased with the result [on the right]. I’m not sure if I’m pleased enough to edition this particular print – it should be possible to get an edition of 15-20 prints from these paper plates. I’ll sleep on it and decide whether to edition them on Saturday. But I really like the technique and I have some paper drypoint plates in my studio, so that’s what I’ll be doing for the next couple of days. I’ll see if I can get a series of four prints in this technique over the next couple of weeks and see what I think then about doing some more.

It’s easy to get carried away talking about the technical stuff and forget to say what good fun it is to go on these courses. There’s a good mix of professional and hobby artists and the standard of tuition is very high. I was in with a great group of people this week and we had loads of interesting and stimulating discussions ranging from the government’s failure to recognise the worth of the extended family in modern child-rearing to whether Grayson Perry is one of our greatest living artists. [Probably] 🙂

Come Up And See My Etching [female nude]

I spent today at Swansea Print Workshop learning how to do three-colour separation drypoint, which is similar to etching. You transfer a drawing to three separate, identically-sized paper drypoint plates. You use a drypoint needle to scratch your drawings into the plates, using your original drawing as a guide. Each plate is inked up with a different colour – Process Yellow, Process Red and Process Blue.

Three colour drypoint plates.

 

Starting with the yellow plate, a print is taken onto damp paper, we used Snowdon today. This is then overprinted with the red plate and finally the blue. I did a proof print today which I’m reasonably pleased with and I’ll do more work on the plates tomorrow with the drypoint needle, take another proof and hopefully I’ll do an edition on Saturday.

Printing the yellow, red and blue plates.

A Man Ablaze With Energy [male nude]

Monotype: Purple Hair.

 

One of my favourite methods of printmaking is the three-colour separation monotype, which is quite involved. I explain the process on my website if you want to read more about it. This image [printed onto A1 BFK Rives paper] started as a life drawing of a male nude model; he is of Asian heritage and had purple hair at the time. The pose and the model’s personality inspired me to be very free with the drawn elements, the mark-making of the process and the resulting piece is probably far more abstract than most of my work, but I like it. He has a very Egon Schiele type of body so I cropped the image at the legs and head as Schiele often did with his figures.

Mauled By Ming The Merciless

Ink sketch: relaxing with Ming the Merciless.

 

Ming The Merciless is a small fluffy tortoiseshell [calico] cat who tolerates us and shares her home with us. Because she is so fluffy, she needs to be combed, especially at this time of year when the kitties are moulting off their winter coat. Honestly, you’d think we were murdering her. It took husb and myself and a giant bath towel, a lot of courage and sheer foolhardiness to tackle her. I know that people say that if you train cats to be combed since they were kittens, they’ll be OK but I’ve never found this to be true and I’ve had five longhaired cats over the years. They all turned into psychokitties at the sight of a comb. We managed to comb her all over but very little fur came out with the comb. It manages to appear all over the house, enough to knit into a jumper, but after all that effort – and injury – we only had a few wisps off her. And then we had to put up with her being in a huff all day. And the puncture wounds. Ouch.

She looked lovely and sleek though, but she went storming off to the kitchen and deliberately scratched herself all over to scruff up her fur – just to spite us! This is her last night, snuggled up to my slipper on the footstool. My feet were perched on the edge while she hogged the stool and the blanket. This is the way of the world when you share your life with cats.