New paintings and regular art updates.
Ten year old sketch. I used to like drawing people when we went out to the local pub, or to visit friends. It’s just an easy and quick way of keeping my hand in for drawing portraits.
There are groups you can join on the Internet to draw portraits of each other but I always forget its on until it’s over and I hardly go anywhere anymore.
Here they are, quickly painted. I think the date on the bottom one is 1988? I am sure they are watercolour and pencil drawings now I look closely. I’m not sure if they were a birthday or Christmas gift? It’s lovely to see work I did over 35 years ago! To think they still exist x
90s drawing of a sequoia bald eagle. I think we were on holiday in the lake district and called in at a bird sanctuary. It’s in a sketchbook that I just found while trying to declutter. We used to take the train up to Manchester and then cycle to Rochdale, then catch a train up to the south Lake District and then tour and cycle camp or stay at Youth Hostels. I must have been fit!
About 11 years ago I drew this self portrait. I was with a group of other people who went to a pencil drawing workshop. What strikes me the most about this is how chubby I was, it reminds me how I’ve changed.
The sketch was done using a small makeup mirror and it was impossible to see my whole face at once, but I did my best. In one section of the drawing I almost rubbed through the paper trying to remove some of the graphite. That’s why there is a dark smudge on one of the cheeks.
We were told the drawings would be used for the London Road festival in Stoke. Imagine my surprise when I was driving home one day and this was attached as a 6ft square banner on the front of an empty shop. I now have it at my studio at spode.
Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was grapes. Imagining a bunch of grapes and trying to draw them is hard! But I tried x it’s a pencil crayon drawing and so I added the pencil as part of the sketch.
Portrait of a friends nephew. I’ve just started it using a dark grey pencil crayon. It needs some more work and I will try and include some of the background to make it more cohesive. I need to work on the shading. If I squint my eyes I can work out the tonal range. Clearly the forehead needs darkening on the left hand side. I’ve only got today and tomorrow to finish it!
From May 2020, when I first started my part time illustration course. I am still quite pleased with this drawing. Physically, I was fitter and could draw without shaking too much. I tend to add less details these days too. I’d like to get back to drawing outside. Maybe meet up with urban sketchers again. Even though I havent caught Covid, it’s done things to me mentally. I guess I got a bit of cabin fever during lockdown, and since then it’s been easier to avoid people – you never know if you will just burst into tears… I think I’m OK, god knows what its like for people living through wars or famine. We can still do things here, well some of us can. I worry for people in food poverty or who can’t afford to heat their homes. It all spins round in my head. which is why I’m writing this at 3.11am…. must go to bed.
In the second world war and afterwards they had ordinary people just writing down their everyday lives in diaries. They were collated to record what had happened. There is a film called “Housewife 55” or something like that, which starred Victoria Wood. If you can find it, it’s worth watching, very poignant. maybe they were their own kind of bloggers.
How do I draw from imagination? I talk and think my way through things, by describing how they should look in my mind or verbally helps to make me think more about details of the image I’m drawing.
For example, this drawing was based on a memory of my walks in a local park as a child. There were trees that seemed to have faced in them. They were probably Ash trees, they seemed to have long spidery branches with tipped up ends like fingers. The path wandered around past stone walls that I used to balance on. Behind me was a play area with a slide, swings and a roundabout and seesaw. This is a memory drawing so it isn’t exactly accurate and things have probably changed a lot. I haven’t been back for years. But the face in the tree gives me a bit of a feeling of nervousness I used to get as a child.
A drawing from 1981 of Hanley Park lake, surrounded by trees. I used to do a lot of pencil drawings and my sister has this in a frame at home.
The park was refurbished a few years ago and some of the neat lawns have been rewilded to allow the wildlife to thrive. There are also sculptures in the park and the boathouse has been restored. It’s been a while since we went there but it’s good to know its still thriving.
Sundays #bandofsketchers prompt was ‘wood’. I’ve drawn a pencil sketch of a leafless tree in front of a large fully leafed tree. It was stark white against dark green and the lighter green of the grass. Used one of my photos of Westport lake from our walk today.
Mallaband-Brown