Drawing Tuesday - my "domestic museum"

A sustained downpour - the wettest day of the week - meant everyone arrived dripping - coats and umbrellas quite filled the bathroom -

and Sue found a corner from which to capture the scene -

Later, to take away the "sinister" feeling, she added more colour -

Jo found a different perspective, from the floor outside the bathroom door -

Caryl pulled up a chair near the dried-out lilies, which I'd saved in case anyone might want to draw them -

 Joyce had a go too -

Fortunately there was a statue of a horse, which could be moved to the table for Janet to draw -

and Michelle was drawing it from the other side -

Najlaa was sat at the table too, intrigued by various bits of crockery -

Mags was upstairs using watercolour to capture the stoneware inkwells (remember how collectible they were in the 1970s?) -

Note how the colours she used are found in her kantha scarf. Coincidence?

Having other people around, drawing, helped me to at last put pen to paper in the house.

You might not be able to see the "flat pottery lady" sitting on the bookshelf - she has definitely not been one of my favourite things, and represents some of the negative things about my relationship to the house. Once that was out of the way, I enjoyed drawing the chair, starting at the top, and was pleased that it ended up fitting onto the page.

At lunch, we were nine around the table -

Extended drawing - the run-up to the exhibition

Before class I had time to finish another of the Home drawings - sitting comfortably in the members' room at the British Museum (after seeing the Sicily exhibition) -

A home from home ... just like a living room, lots of books!

At class I played around with the few materials I'd taken along - 

a "room" book, two printed drawings, and some jpegs of manipulated images combining the drawings -

parts of two drawings, side by side

doubled up

flipped

(I'm thinking ahead to "wallpaper", repeating the pattern ad infinitum.)

Tracing paper and pencil to reproduce parts of an image that was showing on the ipad ... being very careful not to make it resize itself, or disappear! - 

The imprints on the cartridge paper are the result of making the dark lines on the reverse of the tracing paper, then erasing the wobbly lines from the other side. The imprint is rather faint, but it might be a useful transfer method.

An attempt to use one of the drawings to make a "room" book -

That's not terribly successful, as it stands. But could be scanned in, resized, and printed out on opaque paper.

The aim of the session was for the tutor to talk to us individually so that we knew what we'd be bringing in next week, whether it was finished work or work in progress, to put into the cases in the hall for "the exhibition", which will be put up, as a group, that evening. We have a chance to change the work on show the next Monday, before the PV on Tuesday 21st.

I had the idea of printing my digital drawings very small*, perhaps 5cm square (will have to try it out) each centred on a large sheet of paper, and it was suggested that I try printing on "nice" papers. Of course my various papers are buried under furniture etc in the flat, which is having floors and ceilings replaced at the moment, but something along those lines should be possible - once I find a printer to use (the laser printer at the flat is similarly unavailable, and Tony's lovely big printer is playing up). 

Several possibilities for printing suggest themselves:

- straight onto the nice paper, and fingers crossed the ink doesn't fall off

- onto acetate and attach the little square of print over top of the paper print if the ink does fall off

- onto acetate, cut into little squares, and attach to the pages of an accordion book (perhaps with a negative (white on black) print on the other side of each page)

- enlarging and reducing the prints on the photocopier

Also there's the possibility of using the prints of the drawings as a way of making monoprints, taking them a further step away from the computer.

But for next week, only a set of tiny prints on nice big sheets of paper - four or five - are needed.

*With the small prints, the idea is that people have to move closer to them to see them - and this "gesture of approach" involves the viewer physically in looking at the works. That might be almost as good as being able to pick them up?

On the theoretical level, an article about "what is home" here.

Extended drawing - small ideas

Last Monday I set out some ideas for "working at home" as there was no class, thanks to a bank holiday. Sorry to say, I've followed up on none of those - but did come up with something different.

Sitting in a coffee shop, to get out of the house and out of the cold weather (temps in low teens, and grey, grey skies all week), I had no book with me to read but did have the ipad. On which were photos of various rooms of the house. I put one into Brushes Redux and started tracing the edges of things -

I had forgotten most what we learned at the "drawing with the ipad" course last year, and stuck with different widths of line and a few colours. Each colour was on a separate layer, as I wanted to try inverting the colours or changing them in some other way. Or maybe making them monochrome.

The drawing and its layers

Layer 4 inverted - the reddish-blue becomes a yellowy-beige

Over the next few days, and in a variety of coffee shops, I did a few more of these drawings -

Tony's computer desk, with view into the garden

The shelf near the sink and its collection of small objects
- which, over 22 years in this house, I'd never looked at closely

Those bird houses

Now the challenge is to get them sized (big? tiny?) and printed out - for some reason the printer feeds the paper right through and says "Paper out" although there's plenty of paper in the feeder. Frustrating or what...

While I've been writing this post, I've done a few of the things on last week's list.

Small, quick drawings of a dozen objects -

They include the wrapped soaps in the bathroom, the stopped clock, various lights, and unread books.

Moving the bird house around and photographing it -

Oddly enough, this did lead to a few half-formed ideas ... something for later perhaps. Ideas about the environment of the dwelling ... about being in the right place. Birds would need the house to be at the right height and away from a human dwelling. (And sometimes it - or the occupant - doesn't fit in - home as non-home.) Also a few thoughts about appropriate adornment. Half-formed and small ideas.

Extended drawing - small ideas

Last Monday I set out some ideas for "working at home" as there was no class, thanks to a bank holiday. Sorry to say, I've followed up on none of those - but did come up with something different.

Sitting in a coffee shop, to get out of the house and out of the cold weather (temps in low teens, and grey, grey skies all week), I had no book with me to read but did have the ipad. On which were photos of various rooms of the house. I put one into Brushes Redux and started tracing the edges of things -

I had forgotten most what we learned at the "drawing with the ipad" course last year, and stuck with different widths of line and a few colours. Each colour was on a separate layer, as I wanted to try inverting the colours or changing them in some other way. Or maybe making them monochrome.

The drawing and its layers

Layer 4 inverted - the reddish-blue becomes a yellowy-beige

Over the next few days, and in a variety of coffee shops, I did a few more of these drawings -

Tony's computer desk, with view into the garden

The shelf near the sink and its collection of small objects
- which, over 22 years in this house, I'd never looked at closely

Those bird houses

Now the challenge is to get them sized (big? tiny?) and printed out - for some reason the printer feeds the paper right through and says "Paper out" although there's plenty of paper in the feeder. Frustrating or what...

While I've been writing this post, I've done a few of the things on last week's list.

Small, quick drawings of a dozen objects -

They include the wrapped soaps in the bathroom, the stopped clock, various lights, and unread books.

Moving the bird house around and photographing it -

Oddly enough, this did lead to a few half-formed ideas ... something for later perhaps. Ideas about the environment of the dwelling ... about being in the right place. Birds would need the house to be at the right height and away from a human dwelling. (And sometimes it - or the occupant - doesn't fit in - home as non-home.) Also a few thoughts about appropriate adornment. Half-formed and small ideas.

Favourite photos, January 2015

What to DO with all our digital photos? Some people are, at intervals, say every month, printing out half a dozen of their best. I like to revisit my photo files and plan to occasionally extract a few ... for the record.

stormy weather

Vie w through the members' room, Tate Modern

Sunlight through flowers - magic

My first issue as editor; 11 more to come within the three-year term

A stitched "pot" ready for dipping in porcelain slip

Caught in passing

Passing the Royal Academy, we stepped into the courtyard to see the sculpture that is being put up for the Summer Exhibition.

It moves! The angles its "tentacle" makes are intriguing, as is its conjectured construction, its rotation along the ellipses formed from conical sections.

The tentacle seems to be looking around ... it IS looking around - there's a screen behind it, and a camera at its tip.

It's a surveillance triffid.

Colour puzzle

These lights - a work by Jiri Thyn in the "Drawing and Photography" show at the Photographers Gallery until 3 July - have coloured filters: red, blue, green (from left to right).

If those lights are red, blue, green ... why is are the colours on the wall so different?

If you (discreetly) put your hand in front of the light, it becomes the colour of the filter - but its shadow is yellow, cyan, or magenta.

It feels - or looks - like magic.

Poetry Thursday - I know some lonely Houses by Emily Dickinson

I know some lonely Houses

I KNOW some lonely houses off the road
A robber ’d like the look of,—
Wooden barred,
And windows hanging low,
Inviting to	5
A portico,
Where two could creep:
One hand the tools,
The other peep
To make sure all ’s asleep.	10
Old-fashioned eyes,
Not easy to surprise!
How orderly the kitchen ’d look by night,
With just a clock,—
But they could gag the tick,	15
And mice won’t bark;
And so the walls don’t tell,
None will.
A pair of spectacles ajar just stir—
An almanac’s aware.	20
Was it the mat winked,
Or a nervous star?
The moon slides down the stair
To see who ’s there.
There ’s plunder,—where?	25
Tankard, or spoon,
Earring, or stone,
A watch, some ancient brooch
To match the grandmamma,
Staid sleeping there.	30
Day rattles, too,
Stealth ’s slow;
The sun has got as far
As the third sycamore.
Screams chanticleer,	35
“Who ’s there?”
And echoes, trains away,
Sneer—“Where?”
While the old couple, just astir,
Think that the sunrise left the door ajar!

from Emily Dickinson's Complete Poems (1924) 

Another result of taking a book off the shelf - this was published in 1970 -

and opening it at random -

The illustration is "A House on the Moor" by LS Lowry.

Wordless Wednesday