Tag Archives: recycling

Rubbish Into Art

4 Sep

develop 5

 

Here’s another cyanotype print done en plein air at Craig-y-Nos last week, on a field trip with colleagues from Swansea University’s FIRE Lab. My colleague, Steph, picked up a discarded fishing net from the river and arranged it on the photosensitised paper with some fallen leaves and stones picked up from the banks of the River Tawe. It was around midday but heavily overcast so I guesstimated a 20 minute exposure time, which has worked well. It’s a shame that thoughtless people dumped their rubbish into the river, but it’s been recycled into art and the fishing net was disposed of responsibly.

 

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Oh The Glamour!

11 Jun

recycling

The glamorous life of an artist – not! Recycling canvasses with gesso. There’s a lot of prep and hard work before anything ends up on a gallery wall.

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A Crafty Afternoon

19 Mar

 

Herb bottle 1

I work a few hours a week for a charity that supports homeless people, teaching crafts and fine art. Today I had a crafty afternoon. I try to make the craft sessions relevant to people, making practical things that they can use in their new home when they get housed. We recycled plastic drinks bottles – around 1.5 litre capacity and, with gardener’s jute twine, we made macramé herb bottles that people can hang up in their kitchens. I bought a selection of supermarket living herbs – coriander, parsley and basil. Here’s one I did as a demonstration and here it is below as a snake-like work in progress.

macrame 1

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Man Engine

12 Apr

manengine

Back last week I was rummaging through the drawers in my plans chest and pulled out some used paper that I thought could be reused and today I got my chance. Swansea hosted Man Engine , the largest mechanical puppet ever constructed in Britain, which has been journeying up from Cornwall. It’s amazing. I was invited to take part in a live drawing event (with afternoon tea) at Galerie Simpson on Swansea’s High Street to coincide with the behemoth’s progress through the city. It’s very slow moving so I managed to sketch the giant head outside the gallery on the pavement as it rumbled by. I drew with black, white and sanguine conté crayon and some of my home-made sepia walnut ink onto a recycled cyanotype print on Bockingford paper. If you want to know how to make walnut ink, please check out my blog post here.

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More Rummaging

3 Apr

walnut

I had another rummage through the big drawers in my plans chest and found some more lovely papers that I’d used but didn’t do anything more with. This is a piece of paper stretched and gessoed then painted at random with my home-made walnut ink. I had taken it out on my journeys around Wales hunting megaliths and started drawing some ancient stone monuments on it, but I didn’t like the way it was going so stuck it in a drawer and forgot about it. Now, what am I going to do with it?

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Recycle, Reuse

1 Apr

cyanotype

I have some very big drawers for storing art and materials and I was rummaging through them earlier and found a load of papers that had been shoved to the back because I wasn’t happy with the work I’d done on them. So I pulled them out to have a think about how I can reuse them. This was a cyanotype experiment that hadn’t worked out and I already tried to recycle it by doing a life drawing on top, but I didn’t like that either. So now I’m going to try again – third time lucky? I don’t know what I’ll do yet, maybe I’ll have a digital play with it before deciding. It’s looming out at me quite darkly ………..

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New Old Thing

6 Oct

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Day 5 of the 40 Day Drawing Challenge and I scribbled this little ceramic mustard pot that I picked up for a £1 in a second-hand shop earlier this week. I drew this on my Samsung Galaxy Note 8 tablet with a basic free app called Markers. I saved the drawing several times as I went along and the slides below show the different stages.

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At The Bus Stop

7 Mar

street

I had a bit of a scribble when I was waiting for the bus yesterday. I had 10 minutes or so to kill and that’s enough for a bit of street drawing. A while back I finished all the pages in my leather steampunk sketchbook so I replaced the pages with scraps of paper left over from other art projects. The paper here is a piece of Somerset that I’d initially squeegeed with a browny grey acrylic screenprinting medium the screenprinted in with some of my sketchbook drawings and photographs. I use these papers for mixed media work but this bit was left over and too good to throw away. I drew the street scene with a black Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen, size F.

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Random Faces In Random Places

17 Nov

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It isn’t glamorous, being an artist. It’s a constant slog. Underpinning my art practice is a daily routine of just that, practice. And at the heart of that practice is simple drawing, usually in sketchbooks. I draw anybody, anywhere, at every opportunity. Random faces in random places.

 

I have a new piece of art in this exhibition in Cardiff. Please drop by if you’re in the area 🙂

waa-invite

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Recycled Sketchbook

9 Nov

cover

I’ve had this handmade leather Steampunk style sketchbook for ages and used up all the paper a while ago. Its simple design meant that I could remove its innards and replace them with new (old) paper. I have loads of bits of paper left over from drawing or printmaking projects, some plain, some covered with ink or some sort of print or even squeegeed acrylic or cyanotype. I cut the leftovers down to fit and reassembled the sketchbook. Bob’s your uncle!

protest-1

I did some scribbles en plein air at an event in Swansea’s Castle Square, the city meeting place, a few weeks ago. It was organised to offer positive support to refugees in the area.

protest-2

The grey/white pages on the right are recycled bits of Somerset paper that had been squeegeed with Daler Rowney acrylic screen-printing medium and overprinted with a photoscreen image in white. I’ve been trying out some new UniBall pens – Uni Pins – and they work really well on the plain white paper, but a bit less so on the bits squeegeed with acrylic which dragged a bit.

waa-invite

I have a new piece of art in the Womens Arts Association exhibition, opening on Saturday 11th November. Please pop by and take a look if you’re in Cardiff🙂

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