New paintings and regular art updates.
you know sometimes how two words of similar spelling can sound amazing together…..
Apostrophe to Catastrophe does that to me.. bang and hiss, a comma of bliss…
In the wron’g place, confuses the populace? Make’s me s,mile. ..for a wh’Ile!
Each, word, divided, it can’t be hi’ded.. this poem’s lops’ided,
Like hiccups in the mi,st…… I’m really must de,sis,t!
Beware the comma, apostrophe…. it may create a catastrophe!
I’m having a clear out/spring clean, and I found this sketchbook underneath a foot stool that isn’t used very often.
I always have to look in to see what I was doing, this was an orange book with nice thick cartridge paper, spiral bound so you can flip the pages and not end up trying to draw into the crease between them.
So I saw pictures of landscapes and some portraits.
I had clearly dated them so I know they were done over a couple of weeks in June 2011. I dont remember my health then, but I must have taken the week off from work and gone up to Yorkshire and also North Wales….
While these are black and white pencil sketches, I think they give enough detail so that you can understand the views I saw. I dont think they are that accurate, but I sometimes prefer drawing to photography. I have joined a group of urban sketchers, but I dont get out often enough these days.
The portraits are just about OK. I feel like they are all flawed in some way. Perhaps I had done them too rapidly ? I don’t think the fact that there is a drawing of a pint of beer in there is of too much importance. I must have been feeling in need of refreshment, the drawing by the river was at a pub in Saltaire and I think I drew the landscape while we stopped for lunch and a drink.
The sketch of the lighthouse is at Talacre beach in Wales. The figure at the top us actually a sculpture of a person. I dont think its safe to enter and in any case I think the door is locked.
I will keep this short. I dont want it to turn into one if those “slides of landscapes I took on holiday” moments!
I went to a pastel drawing workshop today. We were shown how to use various grades of “toothed” paper. It was like drawing on fine sandpaper .
The smoothest grade was used with soft pastels (not the oily sort but the dry powdery ones). You could use a silicone spreader, I think it was called, or your fingers and hands to blend the colours.
First you make broad sweeps of tones, all of similar colours, so a light blue, mid blue and dark blue or grey for instance. You smudge them on the paper, then you add layers, working into each layer and dragging the pastels about with the spreader/smudger. You can get interesting marks and edges using this tool.
Then you overlay other colours to contrast, say an orange or a pink, adding detail as you go. Finally adding the darkest and lightest colours, which seem to float on top of the others.
The second paper was rougher and you must not get it damp or the surface will come away. It was coloured a turquouse blue. This paper was so rough you were not supposed to smudge it as it would destroy the texture. You had to draw with thinner layers of pastel and in a much more impressionistic style.
The third paper was really rough like sandpaper. The tutor said sometimes people fetch the skin off their fingers blending it. Better to swiftly smudge it with the flat if your palm. This paper could be wetted with an alcohol based liquid which allowed the pastels to blend and run. As the liquid quickly dried you could draw over it and smudge it with the silicone spreader. or use a pastel pencil for more definition.
I gained a lot of information from the workshop and will be doing some more work in pastels.
G’night cat my coffee’s getting cold,
I’m ready for bed,
And I’m feeling rather old….
G’night cat I must do as I’m told
Get your beauty sleep,
Drift off upon a cloud……
G’night cat but your purrs are getting loud
Well 10 minutes more
Til my dreams of you unfold……
Ask me if I’m a poet and I will say no. It’s not something I do very often. I wrote some on Facebook a few years ago and then lost track of them. I suppose now I have more time that I’m trying to fill I can try to write…..
But it’s not Art! I hear gasps of fear, There is no paint, no sculpting hammer.
No blow to chip the detail from the infinite ages. Where is your paintbrush, do you care? To mold faces from thin air?
How do I draw a Dragon, head and tail…with words or crayon, clay or ink? I do not know, I cannot think.
But I will try to soar in flame, give sight to thought, or begin again.
One of my favourite things is to paint portraits. I started when I was little, I used to draw Elizabethan people. I was intrigued by the clothes that they wore and the stylised look of the pictures.
I was soon drawing fellow pupils at school. It was the 1970’s so some if the fashions and hair looked quite odd compared with today. But then my teenage self would probably look at todays clothing and feel pretty much the same.
I used to practice drawing eyes or noses or mouths. I would try and work out how the angle of the jaw changed depending on where you were looking from. My passion was always for faces. I got quite good . One day I will have to find some of them if they have not been thrown away… the photos of paintings here are much more recent.
Nowadays I frequently use photos to work from, these pictures were either painted commissions or presents for friends. I would like to do more.
I have had cats for most of my life…
Small ones, big ones, cheeky ones, timid ones…
Inevitably they get into my photos, drawings and paintings..you have probably seen a few of them over the months I have been here. Some I paint from life, as pet portraits, but these are a little looser, cat shaped and friendly. I try and capture their spirit and character as well as their likeness in these pictures.
The photo of my mad male cat, sticking his head up behind the easel amuses me. I didn’t realise he was there till he popped up and looked at me. I took a photo as I may do a painting of him…..
So what next? I hope I get a few commissions as I do like painting animals. We are holding an open studio on 20 May 2018. There will be workshops, an exhibition, stalls and open studios….maybe that will result in some work to do…
My phone is getting so full of instagram pictures and camera photos. I added an SD card so I can store more, but there are too many to scroll through. So I created a separate gallery with some of my old photos…a painting if a friend , the canvas stretched over a curved chair back because I could not afford a stretcher..painted over 30 years ago… (somehow I have it twice)…a painting of koi carp at a garden centre….parts of a mural I helped paint along with several other artists, including me standing at the board it was painting on…a blue mecanopsis poppy….an Abyssinian cat painted on a blue background…. my old cat Molly, the year before she died…a painting of an Autumn woman…similar to the ancient green man….my grandmother, only the head is from a photo, the rest is imagined…and finally a photo taken at a lovely garden…the Dorothy Clive garden which us a few miles from where I live. ..
So many things to look at, to paint, to enjoy. I cannot stick to one theme. It is like just eating cheddar cheese and not trying brie or goats cheese .
I think your mind needs to be open to experiences, thoughts, ideas. Don’t close yourself in. Freedom is possible, life is a wonderful thing.
It’s a dry subject is pottery,
The clay, once wetted and shaped, is dryed to leather hard,
Then punished in heat, it burns to biscuit ware.
So called because it takes on the dry biscuit colour,
and Matt, flat, creamy white shaded non-sheen.
Waiting on a shelf, waiting to be gently dipped in liquid,
The glaze or slip is slurped up with thirst.
Then fired again in gas till shiny new and almost molten,
It is released from the volcanic kiln.
How is it not broken with the immolation of its body
No, just shrunken, the moisture burned away.
Ready to be decorated in variously gorgeous ways……
Drawing is of a jug, I think by Clarice Cliff. I drew it years ago on sketchfu…
I have had some cards and prints done!
The top painting is of a light at Spode. I was pleased with the prints that came out. The tones are good, and the image is clear. I’m glad I used a local fine art printing company.
The second card is of a painting similar to the green man above. It was a second version I had done, without the curves at the bottom of the painting. (I don’t have a photo of it).
The green man is on a gardinere in salts mill, saltaire, Yorkshire. It was an example of Victorian pottery. I took a photo with my phone and used it to work from.
I will be trying to sell them at a few craft fairs over the spring and summer. It’s hard to judge if people will buy them, but you have got to try !
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