#StandingStoneSunday 19

Mynydd Drummau / Drummau Mountain.

Here’s Maen Bradwen, or Carreg Bica on Mynydd Drummau Mountain in Neath Port Talbot. It’s a massive stone and local legend has it that it bathes in the River Neath / Afon Nedd on Easter morning. I did this while I was travelling around South Wales with filmmaker Melvyn Williams and prehistorian Dewi Bowen while he was researching material for his latest book.

I worked onto stretched Fabriano paper (240gsm) that I’d prepared with textured gesso and compressed charcoal, and used Daler Rowney soft pastels and Conté Crayons in sanguine, black and white, outside in the field.

It’s a pretty hefty stone and it’s been incorporated into a fence and wrapped in barbed wire and stands on a well-used unmade road up the mountain.

#Caturday – A Happy Accident.

Sparta Puss with Tulips.

It’s Saturday #Caturday again! Sparta Puss jumped onto the table opposite me the other day and sat in front of a vase of tulips I treated myself to. They’re in that falling-over stage and when she sat down, she was framed beautifully by their purple flowers in front of olive green curtains. A happy accident. I grabbed my phone and snapped a photo. Then I had a play in Adobe Photoshop, the cutout filter. I like Photoshop, it’s fun.

Painting Upside Down 2

Siblings on the beach.

I started this painting a couple of months ago (here), working on top of a recycled canvas. I’m working upside down from a photo as I don’t see the subject clearly any more, just colours, shapes and lines, that I find easier to place accurately. It’s still pretty rough but I can see it starting to take shape.

A detail showing the underlying textures.

The photo was taken on Swansea Beach last summer, after dark when we sat around a driftwood fire, occasionally paddling in the bioluminescence in the sea. It features two siblings, a brother and sister in the firelight.

Painting Upside Down 1.

Siblings on the beach.

I started this painting a couple of months ago (here), working on top of a canvas I’d recycled because I didn’t like the previous painting. Because of that, it’s quite heavily textured, which is something new for me. I’m used to working on paper, drawing and printmaking, or new stretched canvas for painting, much smoother surfaces.

Upside Down Blobs.

I’m working from a photograph, taken at night of two siblings by a campfire, and I find the best way to get an accurate likeness is to turn the photo and the canvas upside down. It works for me. I’m blocking in the main areas of colour at this stage, blobs really, and putting in roughly where the two figures are.

The Union Banner.

The Union In The Church.

Here’s the last sketch I did at the “Cost of Living Crisis” rally in Aberdare last weekend. The old church had beautifully made Union banners around the walls. The seating was very cramped so I couldn’t move around much to see and draw, but this lovely one, from the Welsh Fire Brigades Union, was near me, so I scribbled it. There were a couple of people in the mezzanine above it, which helped to put it in context and show the scale of the banner.

The Man Himself

A quick sketch of Mick Lynch.

Here’s another quick sketch from the “Cost of Living” rally I went to at the weekend in Aberdare. It was a bright and sunny, but freezing, day although the converted church venue was pretty warm and jam packed. There wasn’t much space for drawing and I had to get into all sorts of positions to be able to see the speakers well enough for sketching. I caught Mick Lynch when another speaker was on and he stayed still for a couple of minutes. Not the best likeness but not bad either. He wasn’t grumpy like I’ve made him look either 😀

Tightly Packed

I went up to Aberdare on Saturday to a “Cost of Living” rally where Mick Lynch, General Secretary of the RMT Union was one of the speakers. I did a warm-up sketch to get started, working with the cramped conditions, peeking between tightly-packed shoulders to get a look at the speakers at the front.

#StandingStoneSunday 18

Bryn Maen Farm Stone.

It’s #StandingStoneSunday again and this huge megalith is the Brynmaen Stone on Brynmaen Farm in Carmarthenshire. It’s been six years since I visited with pre-historian Dewi Bowen and film maker Melvyn Williams – time flies by so fast! We travelled along the route of the legendary Boar Hunt, Y Twrch Trwyth, from the story of Culhwch and Olwen in the Mabinogion, the book of Welsh mythology; researching, filming and drawing the ancient stone monuments along the way. 

The stone itself is vast, around 3.5 metres, you can see it with filmmaker Melvyn below – he’s a six-footer!

If you want to go and see for yourself, follow the link above to find where it is, but make sure you ask the permission of the farmer first.

The Upper-Lip-Hamster.

Went to a 60th birthday party – going to a lot of these recently – and people were wearing fake moustaches. It was weird seeing normally clean-shaven mates with upper-lip-hamsters 😀 Of course, I had to have a scribble! I used a ballpoint pen into my A5 leather-bound sketchbook.

Exhibition Time!

The drawings I did at the Swansea Fringe at the back end of 2022 are now being exhibited in one of Swansea’s live music venues, The Bunkhouse. It opened tonight, work by 5 artists in the downstairs bar. The top two rows in the photo are my sketches, the two bottom rows are drawings by Leanne Vaughan-Phillips. I cropped my original photo and shoved it through a Posterise filter in Adobe Photoshop.