It’s that time of year again, the old year is fading out and in Wales the Mari Lwyd is starting to stir. For a few years now I’ve been making some New Year cards from linocuts I’ve done of the Mari Lwyd and here’s my new one, sketched onto lino and ready to cut. In the picture above you can see my roller (nitrile), a bamboo Japanese baren, my Flexcut tools and leather strop, a bench hook and a little block of grey lino.
It’s #StandingStoneSunday again and here’s a drawing I made at Tair Carn Uchaf in the Brecon Beacons National Park in Carmarthenshire. Carns (or Cairns) are piles of stones and these three are exceptionally large. People still add to them and someone has built a small tower on top of this one.
I drew it on my adventures with pre-historian Dewi Bowen and filmmaker Melvyn Williams a few years back, in the days before the Covid lockdown. All the megaliths on our travels are connected to the tale, Y Twrch Trwyth (The Boar Hunt) in The Mabinogion, the Welsh book of myth and legend. Dewi is researching many Bronze Age stones across South Wales for his new book “Hunting The Wild Megalith”.
Most of the images I post for #Caturday are drawings or prints of one of my cats, but this week here’s Sparta Puss “helping” me when I was painting a poster. She often tries to “help”.
I had a bit of a play today, with Derwent Inktense blocks onto Khadi handmade paper. Just playing around, not trying to do anything recognisable, seeing what the materials can do. I might try and do this every day ….
This is the last of the rappers I saw in Cardiff a few weeks ago. He was striding around the floor a lot which meant that he had a bit more light on him than performers who stayed on the small stage, but he also moved quickly which made him harder to sketch. But it’s all good practice.
I did quite a few sketches in my sketchbooks when I was at a rap gig in Cardiff a couple of weeks ago, but it was quite dark. The stage lighting was set up to light the DJ, not the rappers so I couldn’t see much of almost everyone I scribbled. This performer just had tiny fragments of her face in the light, but that was exciting to draw. It’s tempting to fill in what you know is there, but I stuck to what I could actually see and I think the drawing is the better for it.
Husb and I went to a gig at Swansea Arena a few weeks ago to see the band Squeeze and the awesome Doctor John Cooper Clarke, the original poet of punk. I’ve seen JCC perform a few times over the decades and I’m always up for one more evening of scurrilous hard-hitting poetic hilarity. I only managed a very quick scribble – it was dark; we were miles away from the stage (and let’s face it, he’s a tiny figure anyway); and I wanted to concentrate on his performance, not mine!
I did quite a few sketches at the rap gig in Cardiff I went to a few weeks ago. It’s challenging working in the dark, I managed to catch a few people in the occasional pool of semi-light. I sketched this dancer with the extraordinary red hair in ballpoint pen and washes of Inktense colour blocks. Drawing in the dark means I take more risks with my work than I would if I was looking at pristine white paper in bright light.
Another quick sketch from my recent visit to The ‘Diff to a gig organised by fellow artist Unity, who is also a rapper. People who have known me a long time are a bit puzzled because I’ve always been a metalhead, but to be fair, I do like other types of music, just that metal and rock are my favourites.
Back in the early 1980s I started to listen to punk poets, John Cooper Clarke (now Doctor) and The Mad Kiwi Ranter (David Eggleton). I loved their aggressive, energetic performances – I feel that Rap is in that same edgy and angry tradition. I was drawing in the dark and the performers were also in darkness, but it made for good practice.
I saw this member of the audience when I went to see some Welsh rappers in Cardiff recently, and I really liked the clothes, the hat and the way they stood. So I had to have a quick scribble.
The gig was organised by my fellow artist Unity, who is not only a graffiti artist but also a rapper herself.
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