Here’s another sketch from Aberdare last Friday on a cold Welsh Winter night with torrential rain. I’d gone to see a Japanese Jam cover band, The Jexit, perform at The White Lion, with my mate. It was a fantastic gig. The lead singer Yoshi Tokio had flown in from Japan a few days before but the rest of the band are based in the UK.
I couldn’t see the most excellent drummer, Simon Wagstaff, from where I was sitting but I had a good view of Rob Fellows, the really cool bassist and vocalist.
My pal and I went up to Aberdare, proper up the Valleys, on a cold Friday night in torrential rain (luckily she was driving, not me) to see a Japanese Jam cover band, The Jexit, perform at the small but perfectly formed local pub The White Lion. Of course, I had to have a scribble. I started a new sketchbook too, a very tasty black clothbound A5 number with some embossing in gold on the front.
On the left, my first warm-up, sketch and my second scribble on the right.
I’m not a huge fan of The Jam, to be honest, but this band ROCKED the place – absolutely outstanding. These sketches are of the lead singer Yoshi Tokio, who was fantastic. They were all fantastic.
I printed up a first proof from my latest Mari Lwyd lino block and then did a second proof with chine collé, using fine coloured tissue papers. I cut and ripped some tissue paper shapes than placed them on the un-inked block, just to see if they were what I wanted and where I was going to put them. Then I inked the block (Cranfield Safe Wash relief ink).
Next, working VERY quickly, I covered the BACK of the tissue pieces with glue from a solid stick (Pritt) and placed them STICKY SIDE UP onto the inked block – this bit is tricky because everything is sticky – the tissue, the ink and my fingers! Then I put my printing paper onto it and took a print using a traditional bamboo Japanese baren.
The Mari Lwyd, which is a life-size puppet made with a horse’s skull, is traditionally decorated with flowers, ribbons and bells.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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