A Watercolour Gorefest!

    I don’t usually paint, preferring pen and ink, charcoal and chalk. Now and again I bring out the watercolours in life drawing sessions and have a bash. The received wisdom is that watercolour is a gentle, refined medium where you build up layers of pale delicate glazes. Some of the artists in theContinue reading “A Watercolour Gorefest!”

Artgeek stuff – Continuous Line and Direct Monotypes [nude image – PG]

  I’m a frenetic scribbler, always sketching and I have thousands of drawings done over the years. It’s fun to go through old sketchbooks and see what I can do with the images. The drawing style I use most is the ‘continuous line’ method, where I keep the pen on the paper without taking aContinue reading “Artgeek stuff – Continuous Line and Direct Monotypes [nude image – PG]”

Drawing Heads At Speed

  I don’t normally do portraits because I think they’re really HARD. I find it much easier to draw the human body, rather than the face, but now and again I have a go. It’s easier when you’ve been drawing the model for a while because you get used to them. The face is notContinue reading “Drawing Heads At Speed”

Printmakers – the Misers of the Artworld?

All the serious printmakers I know never ever throw anything away. Left-over ink is carefully wrapped in cling film, prints that haven’t worked out are recycled for drawing or collage, paper stencils are carefully peeled off screens and applied to a background sheet as a unique monotype/collage, old bits of wooden furniture and offcuts ofContinue reading “Printmakers – the Misers of the Artworld?”

Really Artgeek Stuff – from Sketch to Drawing to Monotype [PG]

Just completed a new large full-colour monotype using the 3-colour reduction method. I started off with a sketch which I did in a life drawing session then I developed it into a larger drawing [bottom image] in compressed charcoal, graphite block and white oil pastel onto a sheet of recycled Bockingford 250gsm paper. It hadContinue reading “Really Artgeek Stuff – from Sketch to Drawing to Monotype [PG]”

Upside Down Model and Why Things Cost an Arm and a Leg!

  I like a challenge when I’m at life drawing and enjoy things like extreme foreshortening and drawing hands and feet, which I think are probably the most difficult parts of the human body to sketch. Now and again we get a model willing to go that bit further and do a more challenging pose,Continue reading “Upside Down Model and Why Things Cost an Arm and a Leg!”

Life Drawing: Nude Study with Watercolour [PG]

  I’m not a big fan of paint, I’d rather draw or make prints, but I like to use watercolours to add colour and pattern to some of the life drawings I do in pen and ink. I prefer watercolour to coloured ink because it has a lightness and transparency to it and in practicalContinue reading “Life Drawing: Nude Study with Watercolour [PG]”

A classic nude

  Thursday night is life drawing night in this little corner of Wales and we’re lucky enough to have an excellent group of models to work with, all ages, all shapes. The drawing studio at Swansea Print Workshop isn’t very big and it’s often crowded out. Last night I sat on the floor to getContinue reading “A classic nude”

Going Over To The Dark Side: Experimenting with Acrylic Paint.

Acrylic sketch: Theresa in jeans. I’m not a natural born painter – I like scribbling and printmaking but I’ve recently been going over to the dark side and experimenting with paint, with varying success. Watercolours and Oils are a joy to work with and I’ve had one attempt at using Gouache, which I quite liked.Continue reading “Going Over To The Dark Side: Experimenting with Acrylic Paint.”

Mixing It: Print, Drawing, Collage

  I was editioning a block print of a head of an elderly man developed from a drawing from my trip to Pakistan a few years ago and had a bit of printers ink left over so I tried printing the block onto odd bits of paper I had around the place. I had aContinue reading “Mixing It: Print, Drawing, Collage”