Art holiday, part 2

Everyone seemed to enjoy the "draw each other" exercise. Helen had brought a roll of cellophane and cut off long lengths, which we held in the air (and stood on the bottom) and our partner outlined our face, hair, arms, clothes (aprons!), shoes with a chunky marker. Instant amazement!

Another task was to make a "group costume" for the party on Thursday night. The theme was "sci-fi" and "silver and white" - we made spock-ears, supported by headbands (sometimes embellished) -

 Ready to party -

 Some of the other groups had gone to a great deal of trouble, producing mini-plays -

Back in the studio ... I spent the final days revising some of the less successful drawings - often with erasure -

 ... and overpainting with ink and, hmm, coffee I think - the paleness is channelling Ian McKeever's palette -

 These swoops of ink should have gone straight in the bin. They are a bit gestural and totally meaningless and unpleasing -

They became a trial of white paint and powdered graphite applied over oil pastel. The paper around the pastel came off in crumbs and became part of the texture, which the graphite enhanced -

Still not much of a design - call it a spaceship to go with the sci-fi theme?

But what a great texture!

Three charcoal rubbings of different types of ground (twigs, path, etc) happened to be circular -

and inspired the composition on another erased sheet of paper, with a little white paint on the old lines for augmentation, and string laid onto the central whorl because it was too dark -

Using nature's brushes - bundles of twigs or bark

This rubbing of bark and stumps

was overlaid by an alphabet of big-flat-brush marks -

The drawing on cellophane influenced this

Some of the less successful efforts were transformed by being made into one-sheet books and I was so happy to pass this process onto the others, whose work became really interesting in book format, allowing a close look rather than being an overwhelming network of lines/marks.

(Also, it's easier to take home when large sheets are folded up!)

One of my bundles, crow feathers (used to scratch into swathes of ink) was lying on my open sketchbook along with some card I'd used as a template, and Helen pointed out how the separate elements complemented each other. An eye-opener! -

In my small notebook I'd been making "mini-McKeevers" -

 ... which got the "add something" treatment -

The afternoon of the final day was a chance to round to the other courses to see what they had produced. Which meant showing what we had produced, and every surface was covered -

 Tidy-up in action -

 Result = display of interlocking one-sheet books -

I'm amazed at how important "nature" was in all this, and how
I enjoyed being direct rather than twisting the work into
complicated concepts (note to self: Remember This)

 These trees-that-drew-themselves (using brushes from their own twigs) are one of my favourite pieces -

 also this, which involved washing off a lot of fussy marks and changing them to a simple branch (but the feathers stayed)

This was made early on, with a feather dipped in ink, and brought on thoughts about the kinds of structures found in living things - how is a feather like a tree? -

This started from a big flint, enlarged - it's become, what, a fish swimming into murky water? Or maybe it's just a shape and some tones -

 My favourites -

Goodbye new friends, goodbye room 45 (open window) -

Hello rain, hello train! The heavens opened and the rain pelted down for hours. I'm so grateful to Jan for a lift to the station, through the lakes that had formed everywhere along the roads.