Recycle and Reuse.

Paintings Heading For Extinction!

I started painting during the early days of the pandemic lockdown after a break of decades (I’m a printmaker and scribbler). I joined the Cheese and Wine Painting Club on Facebook and painted along with artist Ed Sumner weekly for about 18 months. I was pleased with most of the work I did but there are a few that I really hate! I’m of that generation brought up to “Waste Not, Want Not” so I recycled these canvases for reuse today.

Scraping On The Gesso.

I had a tub of acrylic gesso knocking around so I grabbed a stiff spatula and shlepped it over the offending images. I put it on thickly to create a textured surface to use for new paintings.

#StandingStoneSunday 7

Rock Cairn with Fan Brycheiniog

It’s #Standingstonesunday again and I’ve been looking through the painting / drawings I did of some of the ancient stone monuments of South Wales a while back. I was travelling around hunting the wild megaliths with filmmaker Melvyn Williams and pre-historian Dewi Bowen. We trekked up the mountain near Trecastle to visit the Nant Tarw stone circles and cairn.

Fan Brycheiniog streaked with snow.

The Bronze Age circles are made up of small, rather insignificant stones and although fascinating historically and culturally, they were not particularly inspiring visually and nor were the cairns. However, the scenery was absolutely spectacular, with the Fan Brycheiniog face of Mynydd Du (the Black Mountain) in the distance. It had been snowing and the Fan was streaked with black and white stripes.

You can read more about my visit to Nant Tarw here...

Faking Friday …. Again

The original and the copy.

Ed Sumner’s “Cheese and Wine Painting Club” is back on Facebook! Brilliant. Ed started it during lockdown and ran it every Friday for about 18 months. Since lockdown ended and we’ve all been getting back to what we were doing before, Ed has only done an occasional one, and today was one of those days! We copied a portrait of a woman by Pablo Picasso.

We started by drawing the head in pencil, unusual as Ed normally gets us straight into the paint. But once the drawing was done, it was easy to fill in the colours, a bit like painting by numbers to be honest. I’m chuffed, it’s so much fun and I learn loads about handling paint. It needs a bit more faffing, maybe another half hour or so and I’m done.

Playing With Drawings #5

Strangeness.

I’m playing around with Adobe Photoshop and some of the charcoal drawings I did back in the early days of lockdown in 2020, when we just had an hour a day out of our houses. Back then, the drawings looked quite grim to me, in stark black and white on heavy textured Khadi paper, which gave them a jagged look. Now after a couple of years and a return to – almost – normality, I’m enjoying combining them with colour, they feel different and there’s a strangeness to this tree with the colours added.

Here’s the original, from Cwmdonkin Park, which was part of the regular route that Husb and I walked.

Playing With Drawings #4

Thinking Triffids!

I’m playing with Adobe Photoshop (Gradient Map) and some of the charcoal drawings I did during the first lockdown 2 years ago. The originals are in black and white using charcoal into a Khadi sketchbook. They were done one by one on the daily walk that Husb and I took through city parks when we were allowed out for our regulation hour of exercise.

It’s expanding my imagination to change them into colour and try out some different effects. I think there’s a touch of the Triffids about these, they’re in Clyne Gardens.

The original drawing.

From My Imagination…

A few more layers to go, I think ….

I’ve been messing around with some acrylic paint on a small canvas board, trying to make an abstract landscape from my imagination. I always work from life, I’m way out of my comfort zone doing this, but I’m persevering because I feel I need to loosen up and just try things out without being precious. I’ve been following the development of the work of artists Aletha Kuschan and Fran Williams and they inspired me to improvise.

I started by just laying a few lines across the board in charcoal, not being too fussy what I was doing, then I coloured in the shapes, like I did as a kid. Then I layered on textures, a bit like van Gogh. I used a dry brush and a rag to rub white paint over areas of it, to knock the colour back. And finally, I rubbed in some metallic paints with a rag, to give some of the sections a lift (top image).

Chilling With A Scribble.

A continuous line drawing.

Husb and I went for a stroll, it was a nice day, and we stopped for a coffee in Coast Cafe on the mouth of the river. I scribbled the guy silhouetted against the window and used the continuous line method to get the proportions right. Just a little bit of practice.

#StandingStoneSunday 6

The Tafarn y Garreg stone.

It’s #Standingstonesunday again and I’ve been looking through the painting / drawings I did of some of the ancient stone monuments of South Wales a while back.  This one is a few miles up the valley from Tafarn Y Garreg, where I scrambled across a stream strewn with slippery, slime-covered rocks and up a steep slope to Maen Fawr (Big Stone), around 2 metres high.

Close up of the drawing.

I was travelling around South Wales hunting the megaliths with filmmaker Melvyn Williams and pre-historian Dewi Bowen who was researching for his new book, while Melvyn filmed him. Dewi’s book will be published soon! Watch this space …..

On Top of the World!

As a boy, archaeologist Dewi Bowen used to scramble on top of Maen Fawr and now, almost 55 years later, my young nephew has done the same.

Almost Half A Century!

Well, I went to the opening of the new exhibition at GS Artists and came face to face with myself from almost 50 years ago!!!! The show is called Art Society: A Swansea School of Art Archive showcasing artists who have attended it over the many years of its existence. It’s a fascinating exhibition and also an historical record of the students and lecturers of the school since the 1950s. Alumni from across the decades were there this evening, from the 1960s to current students. I was there in the crazy 1970s and the photo shows me as a bright eyed 18 year old on the Foundation course. Happy days.

Cool students from the 60s, including my lovely friends Gill and Alan Figg.

Gallery Director Jane Simpson and her team have done a wonderful job of bringing this to life. Check it out, it’s free and it’s on Wednesdays to Saturdays, 11.00 – 17.00, until November 5th.

Like Chalk And Cheese.

Two giggers.

Here are the last couple of sketches from the gig Husb and I were at last weekend, in Hippos. People have different ways of listening to music, these two were like chalk and cheese. The gigger on the left was very focused and concentrated on the music, the gigger on the right was going a bit bonkers while Omnichron was playing.

Proper Bonkers!