"Making art in the park"

Some members of the Islington Art Society sketching group met at the ice rink at Canary Wharf, hoping to be drawing skaters. We found school groups having their first skating experience, and later saw some very good skaters swooshing and twirling in the middle of the ice. And everything in between.

It was warm and quiet in the cafe attached to the rink.

 I was attracted to the chairs and tables -

 and to the large blue shape outside, which reflected the lights in the cafe -

Without a "nice object" in a display case in front of me, it was hard to get going! The strings of lights provided a bit of warm-up, which segued into an abstraction of that blue shape -

 The stools and table in the middle of the room were going to be a blind drawing, starting at the left, but by the time I got to the end of the row I was paying close attention -

 My approach to the subject in terms of negative space got hopelessly lost -

 And when it came to taking a "group photo" of our work, I chose the brush sketches of drinkers and skaters -

Of course the materials people were using interested me -

The unexpectedness of ordinary things

Albrecht Dürer, Six Pillows (1493)   (via)

Dürer's high-quality woodcuts established his reputation across Europe when he was in his 20s. He has a vast body of work - portraits, self-portraits, altarpieces, copper engravings, watercolours, and of course drawings.

Extended Drawing - module 6

A mixture of anticipation and dread (just a bit...) on the resumption of the drawing class. What would the project for the next two weeks be?

The short description on the info sheet said "Exploring shape, form and surface. Rubbings", and the first exercise was about space - one's shifting relation to the space of the room. Three drawings, please, 20 minutes each....

Too much scope, thinks I, paralysed into inaction. But ya gotta start somewhere, so I picked up a piece of tissue paper that was drifting around on the floor, and started (don't know why) tracing the marks on the floor -

quite a collection

 I turned my back on the room and worked, abstractedly, on a windowsill -

making it up as I went along. A happy discovery was the blending of chalky pastels in the shapes. An unhappy one was finding gobs of paint from the previous class on my work and fingers (but not clothes, thank goodness).

The shoe prints, of course, represent the human presence in the "room". The various marks represent the absence and eventual return of the painters -

 The floor, with its marks for replacement of easels -

After the break, frottage, and much activity in all parts of the room as we collected marks on acetate and tracing paper -

Week 2 - I came to class with an idea of how to use the rubbings (based on the format of the "suturing" book) and was delighted to see new marks on the floor -

Took a photo of the brushes because "they looked nice", not realising how useful they would be later -

Sue's examples of various ways to take rubbings, eg from folded paper, and with varied directions and pressures of strokes -

The varied strokes didn't work too well for me, as it turned out, but with the knowledge gained I'll try it another time -

At this point I wanted to add "objects" and found some squares of card and a small, flat paintbrush. So the paper got covered in graphite marks, and it came time to do the "inside", in colour. The squares and some sticks, both flat and round, were rubbed hard with chalky pastel and then smeared, adding one at a time -

 That left quite a firm line of colour, and a nice haze.

On the outside I had both rubbed the entire object (paintbrush, stick) and also carefully gone round the edge, to leave whiteness inside the shape.

The room - or rather, the objects it held - became a book, and the book-object became a room - or rather, it held some of what was contained in ... the room? the book? the objects? the making of the book? -

The size of the book-object (A1 folded to A4) makes it quite clunky ...but hey, it's a prototype ...

Fox watch

Not long after moving my laptop to the table under the window in the studio (to get the benefit of the heat from the radiator under the table), earlier in the week, I lifted my eyes to the outside world and had one of those heart-stopping moments as two foxes dashed along the wall - at 11.30 am.

Quick, get the ipad, turn it on - caught them! 

Not long afterwards they returned, first making themselves at home in the downstairs neighbour's rather neglected garden -

 then moving next door, where things are rather tidier -

where they looked perfectly at home -

Then along came a third fox, investigating the windfalls next door -

 taking one over the fence to downstairs garden, presumably eating it, then going back for another.

She(?) didn't interact with the others, and didn't stay long.

And the others disappeared not long after -

They look fully grown and it could be a male following a female - winter is the mating season. Half the fox population in London is around a year old, and foxes rarely live beyond five years, though in captivity they live up to 14, comparable to dogs.

Foxes are omnivorous - about 8% of the diet of foxes in London is fruit, and they eat rats and pigeons too. More fox facts are at thefoxwebsite.net, and elsewhere.

Interim drawing show

The "work in progress" from the Extended Drawing class is currently lining the corridor on the 4th floor at City Lit; not easy to photograph (angles, reflections, etc). It feels an age ago that we were in the classes that resulted in these drawings, yet we've already had another module (which I'm gathering my thoughts about) and have been sent information on the one to come. It moves along quickly!

London Art Fair

Out of the many photos added to my "camera notebook", these are thinking-points for drawing. Unfortunately I didn't always photograph or record the artist's name, nor do I have the energy to add all the links.

Embossing, watercolour?, ink - Ben Nicholson

Wood drawing by Chris Kenny

Jessie Brennan, A Fall of Ordinariness and Light, 2014

(even the first one shows crumpling)

New ways of displaying drawings

Charcoal landscape by Dorothy Mead (1928-1975), 1967

It's done by tone alone

Large, leafy tree by Sue Ashworth...

... in watercolour.

Parquet floor drawing (laser cut) by Rachel Whiteread

Layered textile and paper by Fabrice Cazenave...

...close up, without reflections

Writing as drawing [artist's name not recorded]

... lots of tiny writing!

Fiona Watson, prints

Interior space (Mark Entwisle)

No idea who the artist is - I liked the rhythm in these pieces

William Scott drawing - the simplicity and
rhythmic composition of his paintings interests me 

Hidden pins used to make telling shadows
(closeup of small elements in small section of a large piece)