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 🙂

I’m back – St. Paul’s – The Aftermath

Ink Sketch: St. Paul's Cathedral, London.

 

I’ve been away for a couple of days and really missed blogging. Had a chance of a quickie visit to London and couldn’t resist the lure of buying some new supplies at Intaglio Printmaker and immersing myself in The British Museum. But that was the next day. I travelled up late afternoon and went for a lovely meal in Chinatown with Husb – Morning Glory with garlic mmmmmmmmmm! Then we wandered over to see what was happening at the anti-capitalist camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral. There had been an eviction the night before and we stood outside at around 9.30 pm but it wasn’t dark. There was a heavy police presence and all the exterior lights were blazing, but the atmosphere was calm enough and knots of remaining protesters chatted with small groups of police.

I know that some of the protestors were people with jobs and homes, but quite a lot are genuinely homeless and / or vulnerable and these have now gone to the other protest camp in Finsbury Square, which is in a much poorer borough. Couldn’t The City, with all it’s wealth and huge banker bonuses, afford to do something for such unfortunate people instead of shunting them off into a part of the city that already has a disproportionate amount of social problems?

This was drawn very quickly and what struck me was the abundance of vertical and horizontal lines, an effect created partly by the bright lighting. I thought the police caps were very hard to draw.

An Exploding Corpse In Charcoal

Charcoal and pastel drawing.

 

Today I was forced right out of my comfort zone. I normally scribble away in tiny ink pens into tiny sketchbooks but this morning I enrolled onto a creative drawing workshop led by Keith Bayliss, whose exhibition, The Enclosed Garden is at Mission Gallery in Swansea. After some warm-up exercises on A1 paper using nothing but charcoal and our hands, Keith set us the task of drawing one of his beautiful, ethereal sculptures, using charcoal and chalky pastels, again onto A1 paper [it’s actually bigger than that as I added another half a sheet to complete it]. About as far from my comfort zone as it’s possible to be.

I really got into the challenge, although after an hour I realised that opting to sprawl on the floor to draw was not a good idea with my aged arthritic knees – serve my own right for tearing round on motorbikes in a miniskirt in my wild youth. It’ll get you in the end. Or in the knees in my case lol.

I like the result, although it looks like an exploding corpse, not at all like Keith’s  delicate gentle soul. It says a lot about me. That’s a bit worrying 😉

 

Freezing In Berlin: Dots On Film

.”].A couple of years ago I visited Berlin during one of the worst winters we’ve had in a long time. Of course, while Britain more or less shut down at the sight of snow, the German’s just threw more clothes on, gritted the roads and pavements and carried on. The temperature was awful – the coldest I’ve ever been, -15C at lunchtime and -20C at night. We wandered up Potsdam to look at the Memorial in  to the Murdered Jews of Europe in the deep snow. It was even more breathtaking than usual, under a deep layer of muffled ethereal snow that formed deep white pathways between the granite stelae. The brilliant sunshine threw the most incredible shadows across the whiteness, setting up a vibrating monochrommatic shimmer.

It was too cold to draw [although I tried] so when I came back I worked from photographs to produce this drawing. Although it looks quite abstract, it is based on life. The challenge was in what to use to draw it. I don’t particularly like graphite and I found charcoal too clumsy for what I wanted to do, so I used my FCP pen, size S and F and constructed the drawing out of marks that represented half-tone dots. It took me ages. It’s size A3 on Mark Resist film [Mylar].

The Artist Speaks And Wales Wins

Ink sketches: heads at the gallery.Above: Scribbled heads and notes on installing artworks in a three dimensional space and how it alters them.

Husb and I visited the Keith Bayliss exhibition at the Mission Gallery again today for a talk by the artist. It was a good opportunity to scribble plenty of faces as well as to listen to a very experienced artist explaining his work and his art practice. Keith is a warm, practical and very dedicated artist who has moved away from his usual practice as a painter to create a site-specific installation combining painting with sculpture and sound collage.

The interviewer sits in front of one of Keith’s wall-mounted sculptures.

I often find installations very hit or miss, but Keith’s expertise and artistry have created a work of beauty, serenity and exceptional craftsmanship. He spoke with humour and humility about the exhibition and the experience of being an artist, emphasising the need to draw every day, because drawing is the artist’s ‘writing’, it’s how we express ourselves. He also cautioned against becoming complacent, “When you think your pencil drawing looks really good, stop and switch to charcoal.” I find it’s too easy to stay in my comfort zone when I’m drawing and book onto drawing courses because other artist / teachers force me to try out different drawing methods and it always benefits me.

 A Bayliss sculpture in the foreground, some avid listeners and a Bayliss painting behind.

There were several large moustaches in the audience. More than you’d normally see at any one time. Then we came back for the Wales vs England rugby match. Very tight game and England played very well, but Wales won in a nailbiting finish. Husb is a happy man!

Cat Goddess At The Old Museum

Ink sketch: Head of Bastet.

Babysitting again today so took my young nephew to Swansea Museum, the one that the poet Dylan Thomas described as ‘the museum that should be in a museum’ because it’s such a quintessentially Victorian museum, so very typical of its era. We went up to the Egyptology exhibit, because small children seem to be fascinated by mummies – I can remember feeling the same when we had primary school trips to visit the museum. While the young sprog drew the massive sarcophagus, I scribbled away at a small head of the cat goddess Bastet, dating from about 400 BCE. When you look at it, the unassuming little sculpture seems very simple but when you try to draw it, you realise just how complicated and beautifully made it is. It’s a lovely example of craft in art and the craft of art. I’m a big fan of Grayson Perry and this little sculpture reminded me of his exhibition at the British Museum, The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, which venerates all those long-dead craftsmen who made great, wonderful art. My quick little scribble doesn’t do it justice.

Silent Heads And A Silent Movie

Ink sketch: heads.

 

Didn’t get a chance to blog yesterday because after the studio, I went with Husb to Cardiff for a seminar on social networking research. Interesting data, surprising how YouTube is far more popular than Twitter in Wales. Seminars and conferences are great places for head studies, because people tend to be very still and quiet, listening rather than chatting as they are at the theatre, cinema or gigs. I like these two men’s heads, they’re full of character. Drawn with my favourite new pen, a Pilot V5 Hi-Techpoint 0.5 into my A6 cat-themed sketchbook.

Then we went down to Cardiff Bay for a bite to eat and to the Odeon to finally see The Artist. What a fabulous film. I was totally immersed in it. A wonderful piece of cinema, funny, moving and beautifully filmed. I hope it gets some Oscars. We’ve seen quite a few good films recently – The Woman In Black [terrifying], Hugo [amazing], The Muppets – don’t knock it – Miss Piggy is AWESOME! And there’s a cameo appearance by Dave Grohl! Unfortunately, we also wasted money seeing the second of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movies. Tripe IMHO.

Experiments On The Dark Side

Fragment of an experiment in oil on board.

I’m an unashamed printmaker and scribbler and I don’t paint. Don’t get it, don’t understand it, don’t like canvas and brushes. Give me squeegees and rollers and barens and presses any day. So I thought I’d enter an international painting competition. Yeah, I go looking for trouble. So I decided I’d try and construct a painting using printmaking tools, materials and techniques as much as possible.

I’ve been experimenting by coating smallish offcuts of thick mounting card with several layers of rabbit skin glue. When it dried, I used a squeegee to apply a layer of printing ink in Rhodamine Red, thinned down with linseed oil [Gerhard Richter often ‘painted’ with squeegees] and then I used the Direct Monotype technique to put drawings and text onto the surface and let it dry over several days. Today I applied a second layer of printer’s ink in Lemon Yellow, thinned with medium plate oil, again using a squeegee. I didn’t do it over the whole thing as I’m exploiting colour theory and I want to get different colour mixes by using transluscent glazes. While it was wet, I wrapped rags around my fingers and removed some of the yellow, exposing the pink below in areas of patterning.The Welsh painter Nicholas Evans used a similar technique, although he only worked in black and white [I think].

When the yellow area is dry, I will apply a coat of Pthalo Blue, again thinned out to make it easy to squeegee and so it’s translucent. I’m hoping for a similar effect to the 3 colour-separation monotypes I’ve been working on recently. Is it painting? Well, it’s not printmaking because a print is an image that has been taken indirectly from another surface, or matrix. This is being applied directly using pigment suspended in oil, which is the same as paint.

Watch this space ……….