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!
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 😀
It’s yet another #StandingStoneSunday and here’s a drawing I made of the fabulous King’s Quoit monument in Manorbier, Pembrokeshire. It’s been overlooking the sea here for about 5,000 years. It’s a spectacular location for a truly magnificent dolmen and also a lovely place for a drive and a day out.
It’s #Caturday Saturday once again and here’s a drawing from ages ago when I was still using Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens. I don’t really know why I stopped, I generally use ballpoint pen now in my sketchbooks. I was chilling one evening with Sparta Puss stretched out on my lap, wearing some snazzy leggings and walking boots (me, not the cat). I liked the composition before me, so I had a scribble.
I’ve almost finished this painting of two siblings on Swansea Beach in the dark last summer. We went to see the bioluminescence in the bay and sat around a driftwood fire for a while, watching the stars. It was lovely. I took some photos and the painting is from one of those – many of the features are due to photographic effects, they’re not there in the eye. There’s just a tiny bit of tweaking left to do, I’m hoping it will be finished over the weekend.
I’m using Liquitex Heavy Body acrylic paints, mostly transparent and translucent, onto a recycled canvas.
I’ve been browsing through my files, looking at past work as I do from time to time. It’s good to get a bit of distance and take a second look at things, especially those I wasn’t too fond of first time round. I cut some small vinyl blocks, using random marks, about 4 years ago and overprinted them in Process Yellow, Magenta and Cyan. I thinned the inks a lot and was hoping for quite subtle colours, but they decided to shout loudly. I didn’t like these at the time, but now I love them – they zing!
I started cutting small lino blocks of text back during the first pandemic lockdown in 2020. I intended to record 100 words and phrases that summed up my experience of the pandemic and lockdown, and work them into a three dimensional piece of art, but I found the process so depressing. It was too much for me while we were still going through the pandemic and since then I’ve found it hard to look back on my feelings at the time.
But I’m finally able to look at and work with them and I went down to Swansea Print Workshop this afternoon to print some. I’m working mainly onto fabric but I tried them out on paper first – proof printing them as new unprinted blocks are best “seasoned” first.
scribblah 