New paintings and regular art updates.
Oh dear, I must be a bit more interesting, my monthly stats seem to be descending… But like everyone else I’m a bit limited in where I can go. And do you really want to read about face masks and social distancing.
So what can I talk about? My hair is growing, it seems to be evolving!
It’s turned frizzy and white (not overnight, and not from fright). I did mess it up a bit on this photo!
So if you don’t mind me, I will keep posting bits and bobs here.
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I was playing with a similar face to the previous one, and wanted a change of style and mark making. More patterned, lines, dots and dashes. Trying to get a feeling of age. The grey areas were done by wetting a brush and running it over the papers surface. Spreading the black ink gently into the shadows.
Age seemed an appropriate title.
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Last night I was watching a programme about the European renaissance. You know, one of those ones where you get a glimpse of paintings for a few seconds, before they are on to the next face or body. Impossible to draw a face from there.
One revelation was that the Greek and Roman statues would have had painted patterns and faces coloured when they were first carved. As the centuries between then and the renaissance passed, the colours would have faded or washed away. The response of sculptors like Michaelangelo was to carve their figures out of bright white carrera marble. Because what they were seeing coming out of the ground was sculptures that had lost their paint.
That is why I drew patterns and shade on this drawing, it’s an imagined figure. If I had some good colouring pencils I might colour it in… I will look.
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We have bookcases, but the books from them are on the floor, on tables, on footstools, in flurries and drifts. So I asked him. Why won’t you put the books back? I will do, he snapped back. He is the one who puts them there, often opened and left unread.
When I change the bedsheets his side of the bed is six inches deep in books. I have to force my way through a tidal wave of them…
I plot now. I think about what to do. I want one of those camouflaged book cases, where you tilt a book back and a door opens. I would like that.
Open the door, fill it with books, or push him in and throw away the key. Oh don’t get me wrong, food would be delivered three times a day. There would be a laundry chute and a bathroom. A comfy chair and a bed. A secret trap door would be there to pass in things, or hook things out when he’s asleep. He would be happy, I would be able to tidy up….
Life goes on in lockdown. Ideas spring to mind. They are not serious.
Cat
Why can’t you look at me?
why won’t you stay still,
always moving,
except when you sleep….
Even then you chase mice.
feet flailing,
galloping across dreaming gardens,
or hazy, cobwebbed fields.
Cat, statuesque,
gorgeous, flexible, strong,
you won’t keep still
and be drawn.
Urban sketchers, day 9. We were asked to draw a task we hate. Well I hate washing up. Mainly because I have dermatitis on my hands. I can’t wear gloves because I’m allergic. The water gets too hot even with the thermostat at its lowest (very efficient boiler). The sink is too small and leaks. The sides are too shallow so we get tidal waves if my hubby washes. Then I have to dry the surrounding six foot and the floor! The draining board is a bit small too. The microwave side gets soaked when he puts stuff on the drainer. Which is why I do the task most often, even though hating it!
Sketch is in an a5 sketchpad, cartridge paper, using charcoal pencil.
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Today for our virtual sketching visit we drew Trafalgar square in London.
Every weekend Stoke-on-Trent Urban Sketchers chooses a venue to draw from and this week was a view of Trafalgar Square with the National gallery and one of the famous lions in the foreground. The image was taken from Google maps and each sketcher drew it or another view of it. There were about ten artists drawing and sketching or using ink pens, some of them were using watercolours too. At the end we had a throw down (a digital view of all the drawings). An enjoyable couple of hours.
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Forty years ago, here are two of my friends who I shared a student house with. Unlike the accommodation today things were different then. It’s like something out of ‘the young ones’ TV series. There was no hot water, just a broken water heater. I hate to say this but there was no bathroom and we used the showers at the college. The washing machine was an old twin tub. Our cooker was gas, but there was no gas fire. Instead we just had a coal fire to warm the whole house. And the toilet was down the yard in an outhouse.
We moved on into a slightly less tumble down house, finished college, and ended up in our own house. But I actually enjoyed life in that house. X
Urban sketchers Stoke-on-Trent day 5, draw inside your shed or garage.
Where do I start. In my case our shed has had all the tools expelled to the outer darkness of our little shed. Instead some rickety pasting tables have been put up. The tops are covered with boxes, lengths of train track, bits of trains, engines, train trucks, stuff…. Plus he’s got different controllers to send power through the tracks. The pasting tables are so warped it’s like the trains are running through hills!
Then he’s got his bike bits, wheels, and a box that the stray cat sleeps in, which is surrounded with bags of straw… I’m allowed in as long as I don’t mess with anything… In the meantime he wants to upgrade things when the lockdown is over. We are going to buy some better tables. Exciting eh?
I drew this last night. I interpreted my wire fairy as a real one (with embellishments). I wanted to get the picture to look like one of those adult colouring books. I drew the outlines first with a thin black pen, then I shaded it in with spectrum noir coloured metallic pencil crayons. I finally outlined the fairy with a slightly thicker and darker black ink pen. Drawn in a Windsor and Newton heavy weight case bound sketchbook. A5 size.
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