“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.
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!
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!
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.
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.
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!
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 😀
I’m settling back into life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop after a long, long gap (see here) and I’m practicing portrait drawing. I’ve set myself some goals and I’ll be doing this every Thursday evening for the next year. Here are my sketches from week 4, of a model I worked with a lot in the past. Her familiarity helped, I remembered some of the “shorthand” from before.
Looking through my sketchbook archives for November and December 2014, there are a few animals that are not domestic cats. There’s a lion and some lionesses drawn at Folly Farm, a friend’s dog, and some cyanotypes of pigeons that I had sketched years before.
There’s an Open Weekend at Swansea Print Workshop coming up (see below) and I’m sorting out some of my work to put on sale. I’ve been doing some little linocut prints onto postcards so I’ll pop these into small frames and sell them at relatively low prices. They are all embellished with chine collé, using lovely foils from sweets (candies) to add some colour and texture. The cats are based on our little rescue cat Bill (aka William ChatNoir) and the horse is the Mari Lwyd, from Welsh mythology.
scribblah 