Legs At Elysium: 1

Two line and charcoal drawings of back views of legs. The legs on the left wear tight black trousers tucked into the top of white trainers with a tag at the back. The legs on the right have dark cropped trousers ending mid-calf and very large bulky black high top trainers.

Husb and I were at the Elysium Gallery bar the other evening, for an evening of raucous Punk and Metal, really LOUD! Loved it. I took my tiny leather-bound sketchbook into the audience, there wasn’t much room to draw so I scribbled the legs around me. I did that at another gig a few weeks ago and I’m really getting into it. I drew with a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen and Nitram charcoal stick.

Charcoal Drawing: A “How To” Film.

A charcoal drawing of a female figure with her right hand in the air. She is wearing a spotted t-shirt and dark trousers with stripy flares at the bottom. In the background are lots of different textures.
Drawing big and messy.

Here’s a short “How To” film from a recent drawing session I ran at GS Artists in Swansea, as part of their 9to90 Community Arts programme. We did HUGE charcoal drawings onto big rolls of paper on the wall and the film shows all the mark-making we did. It was MESSY 😀 Here’s the film in under 2 minutes.

I really love the 9to90 Community Arts programme, it’s rare to have free public art sessions that include many people who might not normally go into art galleries. Jane Simpson and her colleagues at GS Artists have made the gallery so welcoming and informal. The film was made by Melvyn Williams.

Orange #Caturday.

It’s Saturday #Caturday and here’s a blast from the past, a little reduction linocut of Sparta Puss when she was a kitten, dating from 2010. She’s looking a bit cross, as usual.

An Old (Young) Head.

A drawing of a young African woman's head. She is facing to the left and away from us so we only glimpse her left eye and the tip of her nose and mouth. She has brown skin and very curly black hair and wears a large drop silver earring set with orange and yellow stones. The drawing is in a scribbly style with soft chalky pastels overlaid on top of each other.

Here’s another blast from the past, from one of my old life drawing sketchbooks. I drew this beautiful model at Swansea Print Workshop’s Thursday life drawing group about 11 or 12 years ago. At the time I was going through a phase of sticking coloured papers onto the plain white sketchbook pages to add interest, colour and texture. I drew her with soft chalky pastels and compressed charcoal.

An Old Head….

A portrait drawing of an elderly man in profile looking to the right. He has curly hair and a muscled neck. The drawing is on cream and blue soft pastels onto a mid-brown paper and the style is very scribbly and textured.

I’ve been looking through old work, it’s surprising how much I’d forgotten about. Here’s one from 2010. I was enjoying working with chalk and soft pastels onto dark papers back then, on a large scale, this is size A2.

A Quick One.

I caught this quick sketch the other week at a birthday party, great place for a scribble because people are usually concentrating on chatting or listening to a band.

I drew with a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen and a stick of Nitram charcoal into a small leather-bound sketchbook.

WTAF? Revisited.

The photo shows five antique wooden typeface blocks that spell out the acronym W T A F and a question mark. The letters are set back to front in a metal frame, a chase, and various pieces of metal furniture and a couple of groynes have been used to hold the letters firm ready for printing.
Setting The Type.

A couple of weeks ago I had a session on the Columbian Press at Swansea Print Workshop, using some antique and vintage wooden Letterpress. It didn’t work out too well, the letters were very dirty with a build up of ink and gunge over many years. I cleaned them up with vegetable oil and fine wire wool and had another go, rainbow rolling Cranfield Safewash Relief inks. Much better results – compare for yourself here.

Oil-based relief ink over a background of silkscreened acrylic.

The ink is much more even with fewer flaws. The letters are still quirky, the edges are a bit wobbly after many years of use, but the print quality is so much better now after a good clean. It’s a lesson learnt. Clean before printing as well as after.

A rich patina.

The cleaning process is gentle so while it removes the accumulated gunk of decades, it still leaves a lovely rich patina on the wood which is beautiful to look at in its own right.

More Big And Messy.

The photo shows two large paintings with one female figure on each. The figures are in action, playing tennis. They are very bright and colourful. The one on the left is more representational and is about to serve, holding her ball and racket high on a background of varied green shrubbery and a bright blue sky. The figure on the right is more abstracted and the figure flows across the paper against a background of peach, blue, green and orange swirls.
Fun With Full Size Figures.

Here are a couple more paintings done by participants at GS Artists in Swansea, as part of their excellent 9to90 Community Arts programme. We did BIG and MESSY acrylic paintings with tennis-themed life size figures. Paint was applied with sponges, bath scrunchies and occasionally even big paint brushes.

A detail showing overlays of acrylic colours.

Big And Messy!

A large painting of two people, one man with a Mohican haircut and a woman with a grey bob hairstyle. They wear brightly coloured tshirts, mostly reds and yellows and dark trousers. They are both raising their right arms with tennis rackets. They are standing in front of a background of green with blue sky above and the painting is splattered with bright colours.
Massive paintings at GS Artists.

I did some teaching this week, with a group of adults at GS Artists in Swansea as part of their excellent 9to90 Community Arts programme. We did BIG acrylic paintings with life size figures and a tennis theme for Summer. And it was MESSY! Loved it! I started out by getting people to draw around each others bodies to get outlines in place and then we went at it with runny colours, sponges, bath scrunchies and even the occasional paintbrush which we used for splattering!

Flowery Frocks.

A drawing in pen and charcoal of two women in flowery frocks. One is drawn in profile, she has long dark hair and she is looking to the left and holding a balloon aloft in her left hand. The other is a half figure, up to the edge of the page, shown from behind. She has shoulder-length blonde hair.
Frocks in the wild.

Husb and I went to a birthday party at the weekend and there were lots of flowery frocks in the room. I never wear frocks and I’m not used to seeing so many of them in one place, so of course, I had to scribble them in my tiny sketchbook with a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen and Nitram charcoal stick.