Rubbings In The Cold

I was out and about in Waun Wen in Swansea today, with two students from Swansea University who are working with me on the arts project. It’s been a grey and bitterly cold day, but we spent 2 hours walking the streets, making graphite rubbings of the different textures of the area – street metalContinue reading “Rubbings In The Cold”

Back in Black

Hello. This is my third podcast and it’s about where the colour black comes from, with a bit about Swansea’s local industrial history thrown in. It is mostly based on the book: Colour Travels Through the Paintbox by Victoria Finlay PURITANS AND PIRATES: Booze and Brothels and the Colour Black Hiya. Rosie Scribblah here. ThisContinue reading “Back in Black”

Life Drawing Live

I checked into the live life drawing session on BBC4 this evening and did this 5 minute sketch. I couldn’t stay for the full programme, it’s family Zoom quiz night, but I’ll catch up with it later in the week and draw the rest of the models. There’s a lot of art happening on theContinue reading “Life Drawing Live”

My Geographic Palette #4 – Graphite

The next one out of my geographic palette is graphite, a slightly greasy, slightly soluble solid black pigment and mineral found in The Lake District near Keswick, which is where I bought some nice chunky sticks of it and a whole load of top-quality graphite pencils. Not far from Keswick, at Seathwaite, is an oldContinue reading “My Geographic Palette #4 – Graphite”

My Geographic Palette #1 – Charcoal

  This is my first tryout with my geographic palette, a drawing based on a sketch I did en plein air on a field trip with colleagues from Swansea University’s FIRE Lab a couple of months ago when we went off exploring culverts up in the Brecon Beacons.   The charcoal I bought a fewContinue reading “My Geographic Palette #1 – Charcoal”

My Geographic Palette

I’m thinking about how to develop from the sketches I’ve done on a couple of field trips with colleagues in the FIRE Lab team and, as the research project is about ecosystems and environment, I thought I’d try as much as possible to use natural earths, plants and minerals in my artworks, so I’m puttingContinue reading “My Geographic Palette”

A Big Box Of Pencils

  I did a bit more work on my next woodcut today, making a tracing from my original drawing to transfer the image onto the wood block. I used a thick charcoal pencil for the tracing because I have to turn the tracing paper over to reverse the image onto the wood. Once the reversedContinue reading “A Big Box Of Pencils”

Getting Started

Just started drawing an idea for a new woodcut, scribbled it out onto a piece of layout paper with a chunk of 6B graphite first then did a couple of more detailed studies.   Next stage – getting some hand-lettering worked out….

Gazing Darkly

Today I printed up the woodcut I carved out earlier in the week. I used Intaglio Printmaker’s Caligo Easy Wash Relief ink mixed 50:50 with Extender and took the print by hand on Hosho paper using a Japanese Baren. This self-portrait was inspired by the late, great Käthe Kollwitz, an artist who produced loads ofContinue reading “Gazing Darkly”

Sprogs In Sketchbooks

I’ve been flicking through some of my old sketchbooks again, finding things I’d forgotten about. There are quite a lot of drawings of sprogs.   They’re weird little creatures to draw, looking simultaneously like aliens and cartoons.