#HomeKeyToHome : Going Large 1.

Fragments of collaged gel-plate prints.

I’m an educator as well as an artist and I work a couple of days a week for a national homelessness charity as an arts tutor. Over the past few months I’ve been working with a group of other staff and our members (service users) to develop an exhibition for The Senedd, the Welsh Government building in Cardiff. Amongst other things, we’ve made a giant display of collages that are exhibited on 4 enormous panels, about 4 metres high. The starting point for this process was back in the summer, when I introduced the technique of gel-plate printing and over the weeks we made gelprints from random textures, wooden carved blocks, local plants, whatever would make an interesting impression. See more here.

#HomeKeyToHome

Sketchbook Archives: 22

Here are a couple of rare landscapes from way back in 2012. I hardly ever portray landscape, I don’t feel much of a connection to be honest, these were done quickly with watercolours during a late summer walk at Mewslade on the Gower Peninsula and I had fun with the shapes and colours, rather than trying to copy reality.

#Caturday Archives

Back in 2008, I was working with a professional life model, creating a mixed media piece and a very young Sparta Puss walked in the room and hung around, so I drew her too.

A Bit Grinchy.

I haven’t posted for a couple of days because I went and did my back in on New Year’s Eve. OUCH! I’ve never had back pain before, what a shocker! It really stopped me in my tracks for 48 hours and it’s still a bit grinchy. Is that a technical term? 😀 That’s what it feels like now. Anyway, here’s the last sketch I did at The Westbourne just before Christmas, a musical fundraiser for a children’s cancer charity. It’s hard drawing hats on heads, separately they’re fine but together they’re difficult.

Heads And Carols.

Here are a few more heads I sketched at last week’s Christmas Carol and other music performance at The Westbourne pub. There was a great atmosphere with lots of audience participation. I scribbled these quickly with a borrowed Schneider pen, I forgot my usual ballpoint. It gives me a very different line, which took some getting used to, but I think I might invest in one.

Christmas Carols In The Pub.

I went to a nice festive do at a local pub just before Xmas, an evening of live acoustic music. Husb belongs to a choir, Cor Aderyn Du (the Blackbird Choir) who gave a rousing set of medieval carols and there were other performers too. Of course, I had to have a bit of a scribble. Here’s a young singer songwriter who performed a short set of Christmas carols that he’s written, I didn’t get his name, they were lovely. I had forgotten my pen so a friend lent me hers and it was weird drawing with something different. It took me a while to get used to it, but I liked it in the end.

#Caturday: Sketchbook Kitties.

It’s #Caturday Saturday again and here’s a couple of pages from my sketchbook in 2012. Husb and I had four cats then, so it was easy to find a constant supply of feline models.

Two Minute Head: 4

Christmas has been put to bed for another year and I’m chilling out after the mayhem. I hope everyone has had a nice time. I’ve been doing 2-minute sketches of heads from my scrapbook, just enough time to get the basic features nailed, but not enough time for faffing. It’s good practice.

Two Minute Head: 3

A quick, 2 minute. speed sketch from a load of heads I cut out from newspapers and stuck into a sketchbook. I don’t generally like to draw from photos, but doing it at speed makes it seem more intuitive and less like copying. Well it does to me anyway.

Two Minute Head: 2

I recently started to do quick sketches of heads from newspapers that I’d cut out and stuck in my scrapbook. Just 2 minutes for practice at getting down the essentials of a face, not the details. It’s good practice. I used to sketch out and about all the time, but I’ve become more reclusive since Covid lockdown.