The Last Of The Old Year

I went up to Elysium for New Year’s Eve with Husb and SIL and had a fab time. I did a bit of scribbling, of course, in pencil into my size A6 Indigo-bound sketchbook, the last of 2025.

At The Swansea Fringe: 5

I was one of the “Live” sketchers at this year’s Swansea Fringe, and here’s one of the musicians at Elysium on the first night, in a band called Whilbur. I used graphite onto a thick vintage paper (not watermarked), a water reservoir brush and Derwent Inktense blocks. 

At The Swansea Fringe: 4

When I start a sketching session, I usually do a few quick warm-up sketches, to get in the groove. Here are some from Thursday and Friday at Swansea Fringe, at Elysium. I generally do these on cheaper cartridge paper with graphite, and I don’t normally use colour on these. Their purpose is to get up toContinue reading “At The Swansea Fringe: 4”

At The Swansea Fringe: 3

 I was one of the “Live” sketchers at this year’s Swansea Fringe, and here’s one of the musicians at Elysium on the first night, in a band called Whilbur. I used graphite onto a thick vintage paper (not watermarked), a water reservoir brush and Derwent Inktense blocks. That violin was REALLY HARD to draw.

At The Swansea Fringe: 2

 “Live” sketching at this year’s Swansea Fringe, and here’s one of the Rainyday Rainbow musicians at Elysium on the first night. He looked a bit like a cartoon character in real life, I thought, so I drew him like that. I used graphite onto a thick vintage paper (not watermarked), a water reservoir brush and a DerwentContinue reading “At The Swansea Fringe: 2”

At The Swansea Fringe: 1

I did a lot of “live” sketching at this year’s Swansea Fringe, it’s the fourth year I’ve done it and I love it. I get to go to any venue I want, see any act I want and scribble them with official approval. It’s great. Here’s Tokomololo at Tŷ Tawe. I drew him in graphite ontoContinue reading “At The Swansea Fringe: 1”

The End Of A Sketchbook

I came to the end of my lovely cloth-bound sketchbook last night, at a gig in Elysium by Matthew Frederick. He had an interesting technique for playing his guitar across his lap, I haven’t seen that before. I really enjoyed the gig, not my usual thing, a very lovely singer songwriter, not heavy metal! IContinue reading “The End Of A Sketchbook”

The First Of The Samhain Scribblings.

These are the first two scribbles I did in my sketchbook on Samhain / Halloween. I should have posted them first, I guess, not last. It takes a while to warm up so I usually do a couple of very quick ones at the start of a session.

Halloween sketching

I managed to get a fair few scribbles last weekend on Samhain / Halloween at the Elysium gig, in between headbanging and interesting conversations. The line-up featured Root Zero, Grindhorse 83, Pyrogaric and headliners Adfeilion. I bought a vinyl album by Adfeilion and have been listening to it, it’s fab.

More Samhain Scribbles.

More from the gig on Samhain at Elysium. The headline band, Adfeilion played a very atmospheric set. I scribbled away in my sketchbook but to be honest, I got right drawn into the music and ended up headbanging…hurt like heck the next day! Samhain is also known as Halloween and in Welsh, it’s Nos Calan Gaeaf.