Today’s portrait session.

Today’s sketches…

Today’s sketch portraits, I used cut up mono prints that I had made for the print workshop earlier in the week. I glued bits down then added black calligraphy pen and fine liner, then graphite from a graphite stick. I had to unstick one bit of paper and redo it because it was wrong and overlapped bits of the drawing. …

Sleeping mask…

On the corner of my bookcase in the bedroom sits my breathing mask for sleep aponea. Tried to draw it..#bandofsketchers prompt ‘edge,’

I have something called sleep aponea. When you sleep, your throat relaxes and can close up. I didn’t know, I just knew I was very tired, to the extent I started to fall asleep at work. I found out sleep aponea can cause weight gain, diabetes, heart problems and other issues. I didn’t even know I snored as my hubby is deaf.

Wearing a mask is not always comfortable. If it comes loose it feels like a tale force wind blowing in your face.

Block of flats

What to do with bits if left over paper when you’ve taken out pages from your sketchbook? I cut out the page egdesby snipping where the paper has squares cuyt out for the ring binding. I took some orange post it notes then glued the offcuts on top so it looks like windows… Crumpled up some green post it notes for the grass and bushy bank the flats sit on. Then I used my ink roller (that is meant to blot out your address when you throw letters away) to roll over the background, leaving a vertical line for a lamppost. Finally I added an orange oblong of post it note for the street light. I added felt pen for trees and the lamppost and drew in the squares to add shadow to the windows…

Portrait session

This weeks portraits using a little ink roller that normally is used for blotting out addresses to draw the basic structure, then soft pastels to colour them and a bit of black ink. Used hairspray to fix them.
The second set were played with in the Photodirector app I have, but I only put them through one filter.

Faced

Digital faces, played with in the Layout app. I think this is a couple of years old. I think I did the original drawing in ArtRage oils. To me this feels ancient and modern. I’m thinking of iconic mediaeval paintings. Also with the faces without eyes I somehow think of Heironymous Bosch? Weird images. The columns also make me think about columns of figures in stained glass windows. Each face is the same image, imagined and representing a female face. I did not try to interpret it or give an explanation when I made this image. Perhaps I needed a couple of years to think about it!

Cat bell

Wooden cat ‘bell’ one of the weird things I’ve collected over the years…

I seem to collect cat ornaments and friends give them me as presents, so much so that they clutter up everywhere. I’ve got cheap cats and cheerful ones, a few expensive ones… What other collections? Books and paintings and indoor plants. It’s amazing what you can fit on hotizontal surfaces in a tiny terraced house!

Canal view

Tuesdays #bandofsketchers prompt was decay. It took me a while to find a subject that I liked. In this case it was a photo I took of an old bottle oven and fencing / boarding reflected in the Trent and Mersey canal. This was near Dolphin boats in Stoke, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.

I used Boldmere colouring pencils for the drawing which made it paler than the photo. I could use some watercolour washes to increase the depth of colour but I quite like the way this is blended. One thing I didn’t include was the debris floating in the canal after so many windy days.

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Paula Rego

I was watching a programme on Paula Rego on BBC four last night, tried drawing her, I think I got a likeness…

She is a Portugese artist who has such a varied style of art. Full of abstraction, passion, exuberance, but also figurative, sad, emotional, incredible. I wish I could explain her art. I urge you to find her work online.