What A Lovely Day – Twice!

Today was brilliant. Today made me feel like all these years of plugging away at my arts practice is worthwhile. Today I won a prize at The Workers Gallery Open (in Ynyshir) and the GSA 9to90 Open (in Swansea). The Workers Gallery has awarded me a voucher for art materials and a gallery show towards the end of 2026, for my linocut “Mari Madarch Abertawe” (above).

I won First Prize in the Alan Curtis portrait category of the GS Artists annual Open, my work was chosen by the man himself. He’s a football legend. I’m very flattered. It’s the first time I’ve taken a cartoony approach to portraiture, obviously made an impact. GSA has awarded me a voucher for art materials as well, so I think I’ll be spending them on lino blocks as I am planning a lot of lino printing in the New Year.

At The Swansea Fringe: 4

When I start a sketching session, I usually do a few quick warm-up sketches, to get in the groove. Here are some from Thursday and Friday at Swansea Fringe, at Elysium. I generally do these on cheaper cartridge paper with graphite, and I don’t normally use colour on these. Their purpose is to get up to speed, not to produce anything particularly polished.

At The Swansea Fringe: 3

 I was one of the “Live” sketchers at this year’s Swansea Fringe, and here’s one of the musicians at Elysium on the first night, in a band called Whilbur. I used graphite onto a thick vintage paper (not watermarked), a water reservoir brush and Derwent Inktense blocks. That violin was REALLY HARD to draw.

At The Swansea Fringe: 2

 “Live” sketching at this year’s Swansea Fringe, and here’s one of the Rainyday Rainbow musicians at Elysium on the first night. He looked a bit like a cartoon character in real life, I thought, so I drew him like that. I used graphite onto a thick vintage paper (not watermarked), a water reservoir brush and a Derwent Inktense block.

At The Swansea Fringe: 1

I did a lot of “live” sketching at this year’s Swansea Fringe, it’s the fourth year I’ve done it and I love it. I get to go to any venue I want, see any act I want and scribble them with official approval. It’s great. Here’s Tokomololo at Tŷ Tawe. I drew him in graphite onto a thick vintage paper (not watermarked) and I used a water reservoir brush and a Derwent Inktense block to do the background. Great act, really enjoyed. And I got to sit down in the warm and dry off because the rain between venues was torrential!

In The Market

I took a break from Swansea Fringe scribbling on Saturday and joined Husb and some friends for lunch at Swansea Market. There are some really good food places there and you can take it to a central food court to eat it. We had some gorgeous Greek food from Iokasti’s Kitchen. Of course, I had to have a scribble!

#Caturday Archives: 33

I was doing a lot of digital drawings of the 5-year old SpartaPuss back in December 2014. I was using a free Markers app on my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 tablet. I really enjoyed it for some time, it was very convenient, it slipped into a small bag, no faff.

One For Carving

My final 2 sketches at the life drawing session, numbers 7 and 8, both 30-minute drawings of the same pose. The last one if the best likeness and I drew these two in a 10 x 15 cm rectangle, so I can transfer straight to a lino block. And then get carving.

The End Of A Sketchbook

I came to the end of my lovely cloth-bound sketchbook last night, at a gig in Elysium by Matthew Frederick. He had an interesting technique for playing his guitar across his lap, I haven’t seen that before. I really enjoyed the gig, not my usual thing, a very lovely singer songwriter, not heavy metal! I scribbled him in ballpoint pen and HB pencil.

The sketchbook is A5 size and I started it 2 years ago. It has a “Pigeon Talk” logo in gold on the black cloth cover and also printed on the inside. I’m excited to start a new one now!

Tea And Cake, Of Course!

It was good to be back working with a model I’m used to, as I already knew the “shorthand” of her face, even though it’s been maybe a couple of years since I was last at life drawing. These are the “middle” poses in the session, two x 15 minutes and then a 30 minute pose before tea break. Of course there’s tea break, and often cake and biscuits too. This is Britain after all 😀