A few weeks ago I did a short online art course, the Saturday Sketch Club with the Royal Academy of Arts. The session was about drawing from the imagination with the artist Emyr Williams. It was so good for me because it’s something I just don’t normally do, I like to work from life.

In this exercise I placed 4 dots onto the paper, roughly in the position of two eyes, tip of the nose and mouth. Next I scribbled randomly across the paper without taking the pencil off it. Then I started emphasising and filling in areas to represent the features of a face, using the lines that are there, not making new ones. I like doing this, it looks like something that could be developed into machine embroidery.

Seeing What’s Happening Again…

I’m cutting a second Mari Lwyd lino block for this week’s adult teaching session with the 9-to-90 Creative Community at GS Artists. Once again I checked how my block was coming along with a piece of tracing paper over it, rubbed hard with a block of graphite and I now have a better idea of what else I need to cut. It’s nearly there.

Blast From The Past: Life Drawing.

I’ve been going through my art cupboards and drawers sorting out tools, materials, storing old work properly, boring but necessary. I found this old life drawing that had lost its sketchbook (size A3). I used to draw like this all the time, using Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens, enhanced with graphite blocks. I guess this could be about 15 years ago.

A Bit More Kitty Fun.

I had some fun with Photoshop yesterday, for #Caturday, but I didn’t want to stop so after I produced the greyscale image I whacked it through a Gradient Map to get this hot version.

And today I made a pear and chocolate upside-down sponge cake for Sunday Tea. Husb and I had it hot with some vegan cream drizzled over it.

#Caturday: Fun With Photoshop – More Bill…

Here’s little Bill aka William ChatNoir aka Phoebe, our new-ish elderly rescue cat. She’s been with us about 4 months now and things are settling down between her and our OG Naughty Tortie, Sparta Puss. It’s costing us a fortune in bribes – all sorts of kitty treats. Sadly, Bill’s human died and she went from the home she’d spent all of her 13 years to a cattery and finally to our home, with a resident Tortie Tyrant!

The original photo was shot in colour but a black cat silhouetted against white voile with sunlight streaming through the window made for a black and white digital photo (taken on my Samsung phone). I put the photo through a colour pencil filter and here she is.

Seeing What’s Happening.

Graphite rubbing (left) and lino block (right).

I was doing some adult teaching with the 9-to-90 Creative Community today, working up some little lino blocks from the drawings we did last week of the Mari Lwyd down at Swansea Museum. I wanted to check how my block was coming along so I put a piece of tracing paper over it and rubbed it hard with a block of graphite (top of picture above) and I now have a better idea of what else I need to cut. You can do this by printing up a proof print, but that’s messy and I don’t want to get my ink and roller out for just one print. Using graphite and tracing paper is easier and cleaner.

Sketching The Mari.

I did a few scribbles of a Mari Lwyd to get some ideas for a new lino block. I’m running a series of sessions for the 9-to-90 Creative Community at GS Artists so I need a couple of references to work from, to demonstrate the technique. I generally start with a sketch, rather than a fully-worked up design, so that I can have a degree of freedom when I’m cutting the block. This is the one I’ve decided to use tomorrow for my teaching session.

It’s Mari Time!

Traditional grey lino with Flexcut tools.

It’s that time of year to start the annual Mari Lwyd lino cut, for my New Year greetings cards. I’m cutting two blocks this year, because I’m also running some lino-cutting sessions at the 9-to-90 Creative Community over the next few weeks, using the Mari Lwyd as our theme and I want to demonstrate the 2 different ways of cutting lino.

With this first block I’m cutting the lines I’ve drawn so that in the final print these lines will be white and the rest of the print will be black.

Squeegee Rescue

Today I was down at Swansea Print Workshop and one of the little squeegees gave up the ghost, the old rubber blade split. No problem, it can be repaired. I removed the three crosshead screws holding it into the wooden handle and prised the broken blade out with a flathead screwdriver, wriggling it at both ends until it came out. Then I measured and marked a section the same length from a roll of squeegee blade. It was tough and needed a sturdy Stanley knife for the job … the craft knife wouldn’t touch it. Finally, I tried to fit the new blade into the old slot. It wouldn’t go!!!!! It may be that the new blade is in Metric and the old handle Imperial. So that’s as far as I got today. The slot in the handle needs a bit of sanding, or maybe a router can do it.

Cat Cut Outs

I traced a drawing I did recently of Bill, our new rescue cat, and used it as a template to cut some cat shapes to have a play with. I recently recycled some textured papers, old prints that had been rejected. I squeegeed some acrylic inks across their surfaces to see what happened.

Bill’s silhouette is simple and effective against the different backgrounds. There’s such a difference between the two works.