Husb and I took a walk around Avebury village over the weekend. There are a few medieval barns, thatched of course and lots of trees, quite a lot had been pollarded. The older barns are a bit higgledy piggledy, bent and sagging with age. I had a scribble. Of course!
It’s a Bank Holiday and rain is forecast so Husb and I got out of the house before the deluge started and went off to Aberdulais Falls for a bit of a walk, some historical instruction and to do a quick scribble or two. I used white, sanguine and black conté crayon into my spiral bound A4 brown paper sketchbook from Seawhites of Brighton. I worked very quickly as it is still quite cold, just getting down the basic details of the scene. Then off to the cafe in the old schoolroom to warm up and have a cup of tea and slice of bara brith.
The triptych from the inside
A few weeks ago I was privileged to join one of Fern Smith‘s women’s circles, part of her ‘Seven Sundays In Spring’, walking through the beautiful deer park in Dynefwr, Llandeilo, drawing an extraordinary wintry tree in my sketchbooks, here’s one of the sketches below…
One of my original sketchbook drawings
I have thousands of sketches and dozens of sketchbooks locked away in cupboards and I only choose a few to develop into another piece of work, and this is one of those times. I was invited to do a pop-up drawing at the Women4Resources event for International Women’s Day at Creative Bubble today. I decided to do a triptych onto detail paper that I taped to the window, so that people outside could see the drawing developing without coming in – it’s a democratic way of doing art because it reaches out to people, not everyone is comfortable coming into an artspace.
I started out with my home-made walnut ink, blocking in the base of the tree and working into it with sanguine conté crayon to develop a texture. Then I brushed in the upright trunks.
Then I switched to white gouache and brushed in another layer of uprights, trunks and branches. And finally, I used a black conté crayon to work tiny marks into the area of the sky behind the branches.
The work looks different from the outside, with the white branches much more prominent and the black sky almost invisible. I guess that if I ever exhibit it I’ll have to consider framing them with glass both sides.
The triptych from the outside
And so full circle, from the drawing en plein air to the triptych in the window, from Fern’s creative women’s circle to International Women’s Day, it feels complete.
I spent an hour or so making drawings of the same tree during my visit to Dinefwr Park last Sunday. I’ve never tried drawing a single tree before and certainly hadn’t done several studies. It was interesting moving around the tree and drawing from different angles and also varying my use of drawing media. In this, my final drawing, I used my home-made walnut ink and a brush to block in the tree that was lying prone on the ground. Then I drew the strong lusty new growth in sweeping upward strokes of white conté crayon. Finally, with a sanguine conté I made jagged marks in the walnut ink while it was still wet and then sketched a delicate tracery of shadows on the white tree trunks. I’ve never worked like this before, the experience has given me a creative boost.
I joined a group of creative women just last Sunday, a women’s circle brought together the artist Fern Smith, a recipient of a Creative Wales Award who has organised “Seven Sundays in Spring: All The Women I’ve Ever Met“. This, the second, was in the 18th century landscape of Dynefor Park in Llandeilo.
I joined a group of creative women just last Sunday, a women’s circle brought together the artist Fern Smith, a recipient of a Creative Wales Award who has organised “Seven Sundays in Spring: All The Women I’ve Ever Met“. This, the second, was in the 18th century landscape of Dynefor Park in Llandeilo. We walked in silent contemplation in the medieval Deer Park which was idyllic in the cold but bright Spring sunshine. I spent quite a bit of time drawing one tree. It had fallen and lay prone on the ground covered in moss, just a fraction of its original root system still anchoring it into the ground. But out of the twisted body of the fallen tree sprang large, strong trunks reaching lustily skywards.
I had taken a pot of my home-made walnut ink and some brushes, it seemed appropriate to draw the tree with ink made from the fruit of a tree. The ink is lovely to use, like drawing with liquid silk. I drew in sweeping broad strokes, capturing the essence of the shapes before me, rather than the detail in them.
I went for a stomp about in the twilight, still freezing, and came across this row of pollarded trees near the Guildhall with a half moon with a frosted ring hanging in the sky above a bright planet. The practice of pollarding is often criticised because it makes the trees look ugly but it dates from medieval times when trees were pollarded for livestock food or for fence posts. Nowadays, it’s usually to keep them to a reasonable height in an urban environment. I like the look of them, especially in winter without their leaves.
“Here Be Dragons” at 216 High Street, Swansea until November 11th. I’ve been commissioned by Sky Arts television to make a new artwork for an arts festival and TV programme early next year. It’s Art50, where over 50 artists or art organisations (in music, theatre, literature and the visual arts) have been commissioned to produce new […]
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