It’s been a hard day, finishing painting the walls in the new studio and I haven’t had time to do any sketchbook drawing so far. Did loads of cooking when I got home and then the cats started behaving like mad things – chasing each other all over the place and ripping stuff up. Little furry felons.
This is a page from one of my life-drawing sketchbooks from a couple of years ago. I was going through a watercolour phase, using them to add colour to ink drawings. I use Windsor and Newton artist-quality half pan and Faber Castell Pitt pens.
About 4 years ago we visited Pakistan, an amazing country, and travelled around in a minibus. We did an incredible 2 day trip up the Karakoram Highway, from Islamabad to the North East mountain region – Pakistani Kashmir. We managed to avoid altitude sickness because our journey took so long, we became acclimatised as we slowly travelled higher and higher. The Karakoram range has eight of the nine highest mountains in the world, including K2. Only Everest in the Himalayas is higher.
We stayed in the lovely village of Karimabad, around 5 thousand feet and built around the ancient fort of Baltit. One day we piled into jeeps and travelled to ‘Eagle’s Nest’ a holiday complex much further up the mountain – about 9,000 feet. The road was punishingly steep and the jeeps crawled slowly, but much faster than we could have done. There was an incredible view of the valley below us, coloured pale pink by the blossom of hundreds of thousands of apricot trees in full bloom. I sat on a rocky outcrop to draw the jeeps, opposite the restaurant where we ate a delicious meal; the cuisine is a mixture of Pakistani and Chinese, we were only about 40 miles from the border with China.
Afterwards we travelled to the tiny village of Altit where the local head teacher had arranged a banquet in our honour. We were expecting tea and biscuits but the entire village had laid on a wonderful spread in the village hall, the only building large enough to accommodate our group and even then it was a tight squeeze. Their generous welcome was so touching because the standard of living in the area is very low compared to Western standards. Everyone has healthcare, education and employment but there are no frills, none of the things we take for granted in the West. For example, the village hall had the only television and video camera in the village, no individuals owned one.
The jeeps had left us in Altit and we all walked back to Baltit, only a couple of miles but at that altitude it was punishing. Elderly people whizzed past us, their lungs used to the thin air, and put us to shame. The garden walls were made of rough lumps of white quartz. As I looked closer, I saw tiny flecks of brilliant colours, green, red, blue, purple – emerald, ruby, sapphire and amethyst. I was incredulous. These rocks are rejected by the local gem mining and cutting industry because the fragments are too small to bother with, so people use them in their gardens.
Had a tiring day, painting the new studio walls in the morning and this afternoon, my last session with my small design group at the local drugs treatment agency. I’ve been working with people with drug and alcohol problems for many years and lately have been helping some people in recovery to design posters for heroin addicts. It’s great and I really enjoy it but I was shattered by the end of the day.
Anyway, I jumped into a nice hot bath with mango and passionfruit bubble bath and did this drawing of the end of the bath. People often say to me that they’d like to keep a sketchbook but they don’t know what to draw. DRAW ANYTHING! AND EVERYTHING! Why does there have to be something special to draw? We have a Victorian house dating from 1867 and the original bath is still here. The taps are HUGE with ceramic plaques on the top with HOT and COLD written on them. The bath is enamelled cast iron with a rolltop and lovely curvy legs. The white [well, off-white lol] enamel has formed thick drips over the edge underneath each tap and it’s been fired like that. The duck was bought in a very posh designer duck shop in ‘The Lanes’ in Brighton. Seriously, an entire shop of rubber ducks. How posh is that? Oh and my chubby toes gatecrashed the drawing.
Graphite pencils B and 9B into my absolutely favourite sketchbook at the moment, an A6 recycled, leather bound one by Artbox.
At last! My first full day in the new studio. Husb and I moved all my stuff over from the old studio, across the road and round the corner a bit, in between hospital and nursing home duties, Xmas visits and celebrating the New Year. Britain returned to work today and I started sorting things out and painting the walls white, from a dingy magnolia. This is the north aspect with a huge glass window wall overlooking the city hill and mostly Victorian housing, with the odd 1960’s building here and there, courtesy of the Blitz. It was pouring with rain when I took this and the gales were ferocious.
Digital photograph facing the door of the studio.
Here’s the south aspect, facing the door after I’d painted that half of the studio. Outside the door is a corridor and more studios, smaller and with south facing windows and an exit onto a large flat roof which will be nice to sit on in the summer. You can see the sea from the south-facing studios. It’s so exciting – these studios are so much better than the ones I’ve moved from – they were fine to start with as they were very cheap, but there are a number of us who are ready to move onto the next stage – to hold exhibitions, open-studio events and viewings to start selling our work and this new premises is much better suited to it.
Mixed media: male figure.
I haven’t forgotten a bit of art. This is a curious piece I did a couple of years ago when I was playing around with collage and text. I was working from a live model, an older man, and this is my interpretation at that moment. I often incorporate text into my work, whatever pops into my head at the time usually. I must have been in a funny old mood that evening 🙂
I love trains and I love drawing on them. People are usually very respectful and watch over your shoulder but don’t disturb you. It’s something to occupy yourself on the London tube because nobody ever talks to anyone else, unless they’re foreign – that is, from outside London. I don’t know why the London tube is like that; in my experience Londoners are not unfriendly. It isn’t too shaky either and that little bit of shakiness gives the line a nice little wobble. Here’s a drawing in Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens into an A6 spiral bound Cotman sketchbook.
It been a funny old year, lots of ups and downs. So many people – relatives, friends and acquaintances – have been seriously ill or have died but this is also the year that I took the plunge to let go of a successful career and move into a studio and become a full-time artist, 3 decades after my art college training. Big events and big decisions. Not an easy time and it’s not likely to get any easier. But I feel I’ve made the right decision, which helps to calm it all down. As the New Year begins, I’m moving into a new studio – I outgrew my first one in just seven months – and I think it’s going to work out.
Ink drawing: cat asleep in a drain!
I also started this blog earlier in the year. I was sitting with my lovely little tortoiseshell [calico] cat Bobbit, who was dying peacefully [she was 17 – a good age] and I’d been meaning to start a blog for ages but hadn’t found the time. So I did some drawings of her and her companion Little Ming and set up this account and started blogging. So I think it’s fitting that as the old year ends and the new one starts, I post a drawing of Bobbit during the summer. She was an eccentric cat [that’s an understatement – I should write a book] and she’d find all sorts of odd places to have a nap. This one fine day I found her asleep in a drain in our back yard. Never figured that one out, but she was happy enough. The drawing is in Faber Castell Pitt pens sizes S and M into a small square handmade ‘origami’ sketchbook.
I’m aching all over – husb and I finished moving all my stuff from the old to the new studio – down a long corridor and down one floor at one end, across the road and up two floors and along another long corridor at the other. I’ve been moving smaller items over the past week or so, but today was the big stuff. I hurt in places I didn’t know I had [though I should as I study anatomy!!!]. Anyway, move completed although there’s a lot of filling, painting and sorting before I can do any work. Shall spend all of next week at it and post a photo of my new space. It’s lush.
It’s been a busy couple of weeks, with the hectic holidays to get through and poorly relatives to visit and I hadn’t gotten round to clearing away a jug of wilting lilies that had been composting away, well past their display-by date. When I went to consign them to the compost bin, I noticed how interesting they were and how rarely I see flowers in this state, because I normally get rid of them when they begin to wilt. So instead of throwing them away, I sat down and sketched them. Sometimes I wonder if my sketching is just a little bit OCD 🙂 . Husb thinks I should add a touch of colour, but all my watercolours are down at my studio and I’m not going out on this cold, rainy, windy, dark night, so I’ll do it some other time. This is done in Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens, sizes S, F and M into my Artbox A6 recycled leather-bound sketchbook.
Just occurred to me what kind of weirdo finds rotten flowers ‘interesting’? No wonder my family thinks I’m bonkers lol.
We went off to West Wales to the Presceli Mountains today to visit old friends, intending to go for a bracing walk in the beautiful rugged countryside. Then the gales and rains came in torrents, so we stayed in, eating lovely home-cooked food and sharing delighful conversation. I had itchy fingers and really wanted to draw something. Bella wandered in and snuggled down on a rug in front of the fire. She’s a blue merle collie who wandered into our friend’s lives one day, cold, bedraggled, starving and abandoned on a mountain. They took her to the local police station and the bobby asked them to look after her for a day or two while they made enquiries. That was fourteen years ago and although she had a sad start in life, she’s had a wonderful home ever since.
There are two cats in the household as well; Smudge, a tiny smokey grey former feral cat and Sidney, a grand elderly tom cat who is rather ….. well ….. big-boned 🙂 . I’m always drawing cats at home so I thought I’d give a dog a try. I can’t remember ever drawing one before. She’s a good and patient model, despite her worried look. She’s a very old lady now with arthritis and cataracts but she has a lovely life, in the beautiful countryside in a loving household.
I used a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen [size S] into an Artbox A6 recycled, leather-bound sketchbook. I like the drawing very much and it might just become a direct-line monotype sometime soon.
I’m using some of the time I’m doing hospital and nursing home visits to catch up with some sketching. It’s been stressful seeing people I care about so frail and ill, but there’s usually an upside to every situation if you look for it. One good thing is that it gives me a chance to just sit still for a while and not dash around all over the place trying to get everything done by and for Xmas. Some time for reflection and time to concentrate on my sick relatives rather than on myself. It is also an opportunity to draw people and places that I don’t normally have access to.
This evening we went to visit Dad-in-law, who is now so much better that he’s been transferred out of the High Dependency Unit and onto a general ward, walking a little bit, eating and chatting away. So much progress in the last 6 days. All the other men in the ward are looking pretty fit and are likely to be going home in a day or two, so the atmosphere is so much more relaxed than in the HDU and the place isn’t filled up with machinery and tubing.
I drew Dad-in-law’s neighbour as he read his newspaper. Sometimes I realise that my drawing style changes slightly according to the subject. Some models have inspired me to Northern Renaissance, some to Schiele or Klimt and today it seems to me that I went a little bit George Grosz when I was drawing this chap. Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen [size S] into my current favourite sketchbook, an A6 recycled leather bound by Artbox.
It’s been a funny old week, all the routines disrupted by the holiday and fitting in daily visits to elderly relatives in hospital and nursing home so today I fancied a bit of peace and quiet. My quiet place is Waterstone’s cafe in the bookshop in the old cinema in the city centre. I like to sit in the window table with a pot of tea and look out into the street below and sketch. There are seats outside the shops opposite and all sorts of people stop and rest there, making them ideal subjects for a surreptitious scribbler.I don’t spend long there, just a quick pot of tea, a rapid sketch and my batteries are recharged.
Today, a very large man sat on the bench, dressed in black with sparkling white shoes and carrier bags full of sale goods. There was so much black on and around him that the sketch looks a bit Frank Miller, but that’s not a bad thing.
scribblah 