Drawing Tuesday - a film still

Some film stills inspired by famous paintings are here.

How to capture a still, for reference purposes, from youtube or a video? 

Use the Pause button, and then Print Screen. Open your photo editing program

and copy (Ctl+V) the image into it, then you can save or print it.

From Carol - I had a lot of fun with this, and then at home we thought of loads of others  and it started a family discussion. (Resident Teasel – horticultural apocalypse, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Test – an exam psycho thriller, Sars Attacks – a medical drama, I could go on…..)

From Ann - A very disturbing still from the film Cabinet of Dr Caligari...German Expressionism... The sharp angles, contrasts, tones and subject matter all suggesting a dark period of history. 

From Sue K - found on Youtube :- Kate Bush - Among Angels . Animated by Michael Dudok de Wit called ‘Father & Daughter’

From Mags - Inspired by  Harald Smykla’s ‘Movie Protocols’  at Saatchi Draw Fair May 2019 (pictographic shorthand notations of films drawn in real time, I particularly enjoyed  his rendering of Wallace and Gromit Curse of the Were Rabbit)

I  watched Wallace and Gromit ‘ A matter of Loaf and Death’ on iplayer, drawing frames at minute intervals and then a larger version of my favourite

From Joyce -Grandchildren Thomas and Emily walking along a fallen tree in Wandle Park a couple of years ago, from a video I took in August '18. 

Second attempt at grandchildren Thomas and Emily on the fallen tree at Wandle Park, inspired by Shirley Hughes’ sketches of children in an egg and spoon race in the book “Dogger”. 

From Janet K - The Third Man. Playing with chalk pastels.

From Judith - From me a Citylit class aeons ago asked for an intervention to a well known artist’s drawing or painting.

‘A think and a drink’ Hopper Drawing -

The intervention -

From Gill - Who can forget The Birds?

From Jo - from memory!

From me -  from one of the many youtube clips from Broadway Melody, this is Fred Astaire and the amazing Eleanor Powell caught between frames (double the number of feet!) dancing the glittering mirrored set to Begin the Beguine - hair flying, trousers flapping, and skirt floating -

The 6B pencil used for the background leaves a shine somewhere, no matter how the paper is positioned, and the 8H pencil used for the figures is rather faint. Worked on tracing paper, over a printout.

Drawing Tuesday - Jewellery

Being without internet (changeover to a different provider) left me stranded to find images of jewellery in art - but my goodness, surely painting at least is rife with jewellery! 

From Carol -  A chance to look at something everyday in real detail –

From Mags - this gorgeous  Brazilian Onyx  box  given to me by a participant  from an orchid training workshop I taught in Mexico.  One drawing is sort of a continuous  line in pencil, the other is scraffito overlaid with graphite and then use of Tombow eraser . I then got carried away drawing individual earrings with 0.1 UniPin pen.

From Janet B - I could happily draw necklaces every week and here is one of my favourites.

From Janet K - 3 favourite brooches. The birds are paper mache on card made by Edori Fertig. The frogs are a copy of pre-Columbian gold frogs.

From Gill - Last year I did an observational drawing of my bowl of jewellery so this time I have painted elements of my jewellery and imagined them as planets and space junk in orbit.

From Joyce - Necklace bought in Murano in 2006 while on holiday with my daughter. Colour pencils.

From Judith - Negative spaces with Procreate

From Sue K -  I got into making jewellery from found pieces - this is a necklace made from left over silk from a dress l made. I made a tube & filled it at intervals with wood (knotted apart) & telephone wire wound round the gaps between.

From Jo - "a doodle" and an amber necklace -

From me - faut de mieux, a blast from the past - mid-90s. The first collage came from a thick magazine with a special section on glitzy jewellery -

It was the start of something I still enjoy doing - namely, using just one magazine for the materials for a project.

That led to a close look at the lights and darks in cut stones -

and then to a further collage, with more glitzwear -

Perhaps a bit too busy ... it reached the tippling point once the wine bottles got in there, and glassware is the theme of most of the rest of the sketchbook. I'm not too sure that most of those "jewels" weren't glass...

Drawing Tuesday - under the weather OR something that makes me happy

 Metaphorically, the phrase means "slightly unwell or in low spirits" - but I'm sure you'll not be restricted to metaphorical imaginings. There are literal intepretations - such as, anything that's being rained on. Or otherwise affected by the weather. Or, beyond being affected by the weather? - eg, we don't think of there being weather under the sea. 

If you google the phrase you'll find lots of cartoony images of illness, if you want to go that route.

Here are some artworks involving weather...

http://www.keithharder.com/project/gallery-for-under-the-weather-twelve-months/ - a year of painting different weather conditions

Robert Deyber, Under the weather

Lots of Japanese prints involve rain or snow -

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/36521

https://www.japanese-painting.com/artist/kiyoshi_saito/artwork/

And so do photographs; this is by Werner Bishof -

https://www.magnumphotos.com/theory-and-practice/making-the-image-werner-bischofs-snow-draped-meiji-shrine/

Something a little abstract, based on weather maps -

https://chrisdrury.co.uk/antarctic-winds-1/antarctic_winds_1/

Weathery words include thunderstorm, lightning, flood, heat wave, mist, clouds ...

The alternative topic is "something that makes me happy".

From Gill - As I’m doing a series of A4 Chinese Ink and acrylic paintings , I thought I’d use this title for inspiration.

I start with ink blots and go from there.

From Mags -  A  world of weather in an Elspeth Owen  sphere .  Joy in making rubbings  with wax crayons on used Colour Catchers  and rereading a favourite story  from childhood about a weather witch. 

From Joyce - Heron in the snow, after Shoshon.

I inherited some scraper board from my Mum so I thought it would be ideal for this! 

Working from dark to light is quite an interesting way to work.

From Sue B - winter mist in sussex…in a friend’s garden

gouache, chalks and charcoal

From Jackie - Millennium bridge  under a murky sky some time back when I was always out and about absorbing central London’s stimulation. Looking forward to the return of safe freedom of movement ...

From Janet K - the thought of being in the Rocky mountains. In the past year the farthest I have travelled from Islington is Hackney Wick so I dream of being in the mountains. I was at the Banff School of Fine Arts (now the Banff Centre) for many summers first as a student then working in the theatre department. The last year I was there I finally climbed - walked up - Mount Rundle.

From Judith - Under all weathers. Over this past year more than 200 trips to 96 hectare Beckenham Place Park has helped keep me sane and makes me happy! A fair weather sketcher, no rain and mud!

From Sue K - Ironically it’s been lovely & sunny all morning & l was staying in to catch postal delivery re a blocked kitchen drain-pipe :(( ! 

From Carol - My take on under the weather (melancholy) and what makes me happy (joy). The Duck Tiger stories have kept me going during lockdown and there are now 15 in paperback format for my Grandchildren to help them understand the world.

Joy -

Melancholy -

Part of the collection -

From me - I have been combatting my "under the weather" moments by doing some online workshops and have been lucky to find papercutting with Beatrice Coron. Her recent workshop on Paper Theatres was inspiring - using the tunnel-book format for static scene-setting. 

I used images found in a random magazine, and coincidentally two of them came from an article on the Cheltenham Festival (horse racing) at this time last year, which turned out to be a superspreader event for covid ... leaving lots of people under the weather, to say the least. 

Three scenes are held and separated by the pleated insert at either side of the box, which has the back cut out to let the light in; the front is cut to open up and show the scene. As for the scene itself, make of it what you will... 

Drawing Tuesday - texture

Texture is everywhere. It's easy to capture it with "rubbings" and amazing what kinds of textures appear. Max Ernst often used it -

(While finding that image, I came across  the term grattage and while looking it up (is it the same as frottage) found this educational course - https://artwithkorb.com/tag/grattage/ - interesting to see how online is used to supplement studio time!)

A possibility is to "unpick" textures by changing their scale. Just a thought.

Another possibility is to try out various tools and media for getting various textures - explorative drawing.

Back to texture-as-texture. Two other artists quickly sprang to mind - for mark-making, Van Gogh - this, for example -

and for tonal texture, Jasper Johns' grey works  -

From Sue K - l crept around yesterday doing wax rubbings from various objects - but few were deployed on my breakfast board ‘piece’!

... and, sent later ... "I had another go at this today doing combo rubbings in multi colour - felt better for it!"

From Jackie - Inspired moments some years ago after a City lit course ..torn tissue paper and wrapping paper with pen strokes ‘art ideas’ referencing the sea and then transferred to ceramic vessel using oxides stains and molochite for texture

From Sue B - a brass rubbing i did when about aged 11 at westminster abbey…and which i recently (early 2020) had framed…so loved brass rubbing!

[Sorry, Sue, I couldn't straighten the pic because part of the frame was missing!!]

From Janet B - Enlarged multicoloured raffia basketweave.

From Ann - A few textures:

Rubbing from an eagle head trivet, Victoria

Whitstable beach 2017 

Fantasy tree trunks in glade...textured piece for book illustration course

From Joyce - I’ve been experimenting with Quink and bleach to create textures on a tree in Kelsey Park,Beckenham. Spot the pigeon keeping an eye on the children!  The foliage is mono printed papers collages on. I used a toothbrush for drawing some of the textures, fun to experiment (play)!

From Gill - Some textured egg cups.

From Mags - I had a ' Frottage Frenzy' in my studio using crayons on used Colour Catchers. My favourites were: treasures from my windowsill ( stones, shells, fossils, bits of pottery); rubbings of stitch and sewing equipment ( scissors , thimbles, bobbins etc) and African baskets.

From Janet K - Wire rings on the edge of my sketch book and woven leather - frottage (great word). 

Fur fabric, edge of wooden box, wastepaper basket - drawing
Lace - stencil

From Judith - Lots of wonderful tree trunks where I walk most days.

From  me - The third of what will be six experiments in papercutting. I drew, I cut, I arranged ...

and then it descended into mere frottage, randomly using the negative spaces, the uncut areas -  

If you look closely, you might see woods and hedges -