Done At Last.

The Siblings.

I’ve finished my painting of two siblings on the beach at night watching the bioluminescence. It’s been a long haul. I don’t often work from photographs and I don’t find it easy, I prefer to work from life, but this was a good exercise. I did a lot of the painting upside down – the canvas and the photo not me 😀

Here are the stages I went through, starting out by recycling an old canvas with a couple of rough layers of acrylic gesso, to get a textured surface. I covered it with an opaque Cadmium Orange ground and then blocked in some areas with Mars Black, before working on the details, upside down. I used Liquitex Heavy Body acrylics.

Detail from The Siblings.

Kitty Print Experiments.

Lots of little cats.

I’m experimenting with making my own stamps from Toyobo photopolymer letterpress plates. I had a try the other week with a different make, which didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped, but this material is much better, much crisper with more detail. I tried out three exposure and three curing times and then printed them up with Intaglio Printmaker’s Etching Ink Shop Mix Drypoint Black. I printed them onto a page from my sketchbook and made notes.

Notes in my sketchbook.

I used a photograph of Sparta Puss as my source material, put it through the Threshold function in Adobe Photoshop and did an Invert to make a negative (I also tried out a positive as well) and printed out onto acetate to get a transparency.

The Return Of BogArt!

Women by Women.

Back in the days before Covid19, remember those? Back in the days before Covid19, I used to exhibit regularly with my friend, fellow artist Patti McKenna. We’re both working class women and we are committed to democratising art and where art is displayed. And there’s nothing more democratic than a toilet. We all need to pee. So we put on exhibitions of art in the rather nice and quite spacious toilets at Swansea’s Cinema & Co.ffee. And we called it BogArt! Because it was in the bogs 😀

Detail by Patti McKenna.

We were locked out of the bogs during Covid19 and life has sort of got in the way a bit too, but now we’re back on track and we’ve just put up our first post-Covid BogArt in time for International Women’s Day. It’s a collection of drawings featuring women from our sketchbooks: women dancing; women demonstrating; women performing; women listening; women chatting. Pop in for a coffee and cake, or check out their events, and visit our exhibitions in the bogs.

Patti and me.

#StandingStoneSunday – IT’S PUBLISHED!

Hunting The Wild Megalith.

FINALLY! The book of the journey of the Boar Hunt (Y Twrch Trwyth) has been published. I spent three years traipsing across the hidden (and mucky) places of South Wales with pre-historian Dewi Bowen and filmmaker Melvyn Williams, drawing and painting along the way, while Dewi researched and Melvyn filmed.

The book is based on the theory that the route of The Boar Hunt in the Mabinogion includes most of the major Neolithic and Bronze Age stone monuments across South Wales. Dewi has painstakingly mapped them and co-written this book (with Olwyn Pritchard) which is not just learned but also full of entertaining stories, humour and art. Many of the works I did out in the field – literally – are in a full colour centre spread (see first picture).

Detail from the front cover.

The book is beautifully printed and available for £15.00 GBP plus postage and packing. Please contact me if you want to know more. And there will be a proper book launch in Swansea SOON!

#Caturday Archives 17

Sparta Puss Sulking.

It’s #Caturday Saturday again and here’s a blast from the past, Sparta Puss back in 2016. She has a range of expressions but this sulky, slightly annoyed one is a favourite of hers.

Scribbling, Visiting And Bara Brith.

At GS Artists today.

I dropped by GS Artists on High Street this afternoon. It’s a fab gallery and community artspace and every Friday afternoon there’s the 9 to 90 Creative Community art club, with different art activities each week. Of course I had to have a scribble!

Traditional Welsh Bara Brith.

Then I went home and made some Bara Brith after tea. I’ll be visiting over the weekend and it’s always nice to take some cake when you visit, isn’t it?

The Fiddler.

Another sketchbook drawing from the lovely gig at Elysium on Saint David’s Day. Singer, composer, musician Angharad Jenkins thrilled us with her wonderful set. I had to have a scribble, of course, but haven’t done her justice. It’s not easy drawing people moving around a lot, but it’s really good practice.

Dydd GwÅ·l Dewi Sant Hapus.

The Young Pianist.

Happy Saint David’s Day. Husb and I went to a celebration of Welsh culture at Elysium this evening, with poetry and music and song, Welsh Cakes and Cawl Cennen a Thatws (Leek and Potato Soup). Of course I had to have a scribble, of talented young pianist Eddie Gripper.

Experimenting

I’ve been experimenting with a material new to me, Toyobo photopolymer plastic plates, to make my own stamps. It seems like a fairly easy process, but of course it isn’t. My first try (above) didn’t turn out as well as I hoped, but that’s life. It might have been the exposure time or maybe I didn’t get the optimum black / white balance on the negative. So I spent this afternoon trying out different combinations of exposure and curing times. I didn’t have enough time to print them – I’ll save that for the end of the week and see which timing combo works best.

Sparta Puss stamp – first attempt.

Green Man And Wild Garlic.

The Green Man On The Hill.

Husb and I have had two very outdoors days, loads of exercise – I’m aching. Yesterday we went walking up Kilvey Hill and came across this Green Man in the forest. I’ve tweaked him in Adobe Photoshop “Posterise” filter. When I was a kid, Kilvey Hill was black and barren, ruined from 200 or so years of heavy industry, but now it is a beautiful, lush forest. Nature has reclaimed it.

Home Made Scones.

Then this morning we were up bright and early to put in a couple of hours on the allotment. I gathered some of the first wild garlic, Ramsons, in the woods around the site and made them into scones with parmesan when I got home. I’m always looking for new ideas for using Ramsons each year and this is the first time I’ve tried this – they’re lovely even if I say so myself 😀

The Wild Man of the Forest.