It’s Not #Caturday … But …

Here’s Bill aka William ChatNoir, shoved through an Adobe Photoshop filter (Dry Brush). As you do ….

Covid Queueing.

I was flicking through some sketchbooks and saw scribbles done during the daily Covid19 walks that Husb and I did back in 2020. Honestly, we haven’t been as fit since. The little café had opened in Cwmdonkin Park (loved by Dylan Thomas) and people were queueing masked and two metres apart in the sunshine to get some ice-cream. They were pleasant, polite, orderly queues.

This Seagull Got Stuffed.

Now, a lot of people in Swansea, and other places too, don’t like seagulls. I don’t particularly care for them myself to be honest, except when they zoom down and pinch someone’s burger in the street …. or poop on Husb’s head, which has happened many times 😀

But I like drawing them. This is one from Swansea Museum‘s taxidermy collection, that’s why it held the pose so well. This is a screen print and I’m playing around with vegetable netting to add to the background. It’s a comment on the natural world being polluted by our rubbish.

#Caturday Saturday

It’s #Caturday Saturday on social media and here’s one from the archives. Sparta Puss when she was younger and slimmer, but no less lazy.

From The Archives … Friday Weirdness

Here’s one I did a few years ago, a mixed media piece full of weirdness. The background is a transfer print onto heavily textured Bockingford paper of a local building. And I have drawn a figure in the foreground. She’s a life size puppet made and inhabited by the North Wales-based artist, Wanda Zyborska.

A View Of Kilvey / Cilfai.

I posted a few days ago about Kilvey Hill / Bryn Cilfai, the iconic landscape that looms over the city from wherever you look. When I was a kid, it was a bare, desolate industrial wasteland. In my lifetime it has been reclaimed by nature, with help from Swansea University and thousands of local adults and children. And now our local council wants to destroy a large chunk of it to build a tourist attraction. Many Swansea people are opposing this development, please check out this link to find out more. Here’s a sketch I did from the park in Waun Wen, also on a hill, but a much smaller one than Cilfai.

More Little Quick Ones ….

Here are a few more speedy scribbles I did at the rugby match on Saturday. It was nice there, I was invited to share a box, which was warm and dry so I could sketch in comfort. That’s the way to do it.

Lots Of Little Quick Ones …

Yesterday I went to the Rugby, at the Swansea.Com Stadium to watch The Ospreys play the Emirates Lions from South Africa. Of course I had to have a scribble! There were a lot of people hanging out on the touchline watching the match, so I sketched them quickly. Good drawing practice. Ospreys won 36 v 21. Result!

I put this detail through a Spectrum Gradient Map in Adobe Photoshop.

And today, I made a big rhubarb crumble. It’s not the first of the season, I’ve been picking it for a few weeks now.

#Caturday “Look Into My Eyes”.

It’s #Caturday Saturday again and here’s Sparta Puss, digitally photographed and pushed through a Cutout filter in Adobe Photoshop.

Cutting Ideas …

While I was developing ideas for my recent prints about the Miner’s Wives in the Miner’s Strike (1984-1985) I drew sections of my ink and wash sketches onto small pieces of lino, to practice cutting different textures and effects. I haven’t tried doing such complex images into lino before, I usually work with very stark black and white images, so I have to develop a new visual language with my cutting tools. Here’s the start of this little piece, from a drawing based on a contemporary press photograph.