New paintings and regular art updates.
Thursdays #bandofsketchers prompt was new. OK, I struggled with this, then drew a new self portrait using monoprint paper and silver foil, then adding my face as if in a cracked mirror. The mouth is down, but that’s what happens to me when I’m relaxed!
With a bag? She was staring at me, getting into my mind, so I decided to do a collage with her. This seems to be my creative ‘go to’ at the moment. Photo, then draw onto monoprinted paper, copying the photo. Two holes for her orange eyes. Then stick the paper down. Next post it notes for the bag that holds a couple I’d packs of felt pens. I cut out shapes then drew over it to give it more shading. Finally the mat… Another bit of monoprint. It’s hard to cut out the negative shape of the cat, and the mat is red and green, but I wanted it to stand out from the cat and my red and green pens have just about run out, so I used pink and what was meant to be a pale blue instead. It’s a bit scruffy, I didn’t have enough pattern to extend across the whole page so part of the mat is just coloured in. Anyway it was fun to do. Ignore the date by the way, I hadn’t done anything on the 18th so I filled in the gap.
I decided to use bits of post-it notes and monoprint and combine them in a tangle of colours. Do they link up with each other? It is a representation of my MA land. When you work on a college course there is so much to absorb and take in. Lots of information that needs to cross the book/ brain barrier via your eyes. The ever expanding reading list tries to force you to take in knowledge, but it’s not always easy to sift the relevant from the irrelevant. The clarity of words is not always there. I try to write clearly when I’m blogging, but if you have to take a dictionary with you when you try and read a piece of information, then you have to ask whether the author is being elitist.
Other problems with online courses are the lack of face to face contact. You can try and have zoom meetings or their equivalent. But it does feel sometimes like you are working in a vacuum. My desk is tiny, my pc and keyboard and screen take up about 75% of the space. It’s hard to find enough space to work in. My sketchbooks are getting smaller in proportion to the increasing number of them. So much drawing over the last year!
Small drawing of a heart that I drew on top of a bit of black monoprinting. I’d cut this section out of another bit to create a negative space for a portrait, I’ll post that drawing later. Done during a student led session that just finished tonight. Part of idea generation for the illustration course I’m doing.
One thing I do need to look at is fonts, it’s hard to draw them accurately and I struggle to copy them, and I didn’t have a particular font in mind, just the idea the letters should be red, I might try and make them look a bit more like blood with a fine ink pen.
Splash your colour everywhere
Brighten the world
Pink and red and yellow
Purple and orange too.
Spring is here
The world is green
But tulips
Give the world joy.
Finally got round to drawing something at five am today! Cylindrical chimneys on a building opposite Stoke Station. I took the photo on Thursday but then had a fall and hit my head. Spent four hours in Accident and Emergency. I’m fine, the pavement is probably dented!
And the road goes ever on… Black acrylic monoprint spiral. I was remembering a song or poem from the Hobbit by Tolkien. Bit abstract but fun…I haven’t slept much tonight so thought I would catch up with some #bandofsketchers pictures. This was last Sundays prompt, road
Quick digital sketch using a blurring tool and eraser on top of a previous drawing of a blue woman. I like morphing things from one to another…
Using a sketching app on my phone. And trying to give the face more sharpness and character than a generic idea of a face. I’m being influenced by other artists here including Robin King and stoneronarollercoaster.
Two days of hard work to tie up all the loose ends of this semesters college work. I only hope it all makes sense. I tried fitting imges on a word document, they came out tiny on the PDF. I tried using PowerPoint, it played up, and the images are huge! Ah well, computers are not my speciality.
At least now I can think about life outside of college for a couple of weeks till the start of the next semester. I can try and catch up with life.
Today was hard. One of our college presentations has to have our illustrations in a PowerPoint. But my computer was playing up and instead of being able to use the tabs at the top of the page they were greyed out. So I started a new presentation, copied and pasted the work over… Then I had a break for lunch, and the new powerpoint would not work, but the old one would! So I shifted all the new work over and continued. I just finished it. I don’t think it’s well presented. PowerPoint gives you design options so each page looks good, but together it’s a bit of a mush mash.
I have got to finish off another piece of work and hand both in this week so I might be missing for a few days.
Mallaband-Brown