Drawing Tuesday - Favourite shoes

My warm up - after a prolonged breakfast, due to looking at shoes on the internet - was quickly drawn with the felt pen that lives in the little notebook, and wash was added with coffee and a finger -

My shoes are kept in rows on the bedroom floor. I chose the least dusty ones -

(top to bottom) Designer trainers;
Red "Tom's" canvas shoes;
Now my "studio shoes", one of the first Arche pairs bought in Paris, 1990s 

 ... and then remembered that all the summery shoes are still in the cupboard. Here are some of them, rendered with charcoal and, again, coffee for colour, but with a paintbrush this time -

Impulse buy at M&S last year, very comfy and walkable-in

The first shoes that I bought in Paris, early 90s -
"The Silver Sandals", love 'em.

From Ann - Grandson Leo's new shoes ...and look forward to seeing him in them soon!  Also my old riding boots from Derbyshire horserides, Scotland and even Grand Canyon! Deserve to be drawn...Happy memories...

From Richard - Pastel boots, then caran d’ache shoe and stretcher. Still trying to push the speed for spontaneity and inevitably that works better with the pastel - I can’t hide in the detail!  When will it feel safe to take the boot back for resoling?

From Judith - More boots! Also view from Bangkok skywalk 310m above street level tweaked to include my boots.

From Sue S - Here are some favourite shoes - some of which are now too tight (sadly) having been sitting overlong in a box waiting for a special occasion! Rendered in aquacrayon & caran d’ache.

From Janet K - One of my favourite pairs of shoes - yellow suede. I very seldom wear them so decided to draw them 'in situ'. Bought 22 years ago in a designer discount mall in LA. I was in LA to make a series of Levi's ads with a puppet called Flat Eric - who is yellow.

From Sue M -  Why did I pick some with laces?

From Jackie - These shoes were made for walking and that’s what Leo did…

 he finally took his first steps..ready for a while before then, he couldnt steady himself until grandma went on a shoe shop trip with the family….

He is now five and leaping about at all opportunities….intrigued that he once wore these! 

From Joyce -  these are the trainers I wear to Paracise and Zumba gold, will I ever wear them again?? Interesting patterns on them that I hadn’t noticed before.  

From Janet B - These sunshine shoes have already appeared twice on the blog, on my feet. I drew them yesterday with a 6B but decided that their glorious yellowness needed to be celebrated so I’ve had another fun morning in the garden colouring in.  

From Sue B  (introduced by Janet B) - We did art A level together and life drawing classes at Camden Arts Centre. Like me she left a long gap before taking up drawing again although she opted for landscapes. This is only her second close up since school.

From Mags - Last year for 30 Day Sketchbook 'footwear' prompt I drew my 20 year old sandals that I wear around the house ,giving just an indication of the patterned leather. Scaling up from A6 to A4 I should have stuck with that idea, it started well but spent way too long today shading in. Still , taking a rubbing of the sole was fun

From Gill - Feeling bold this morning. Son said I’m too fiddly so he gave me this oil stick.

Studio Saturday - catching shadows

Three weeks have passed since the previous update and projects have progressed. Painting the shadows of the pencils on the window ledge got me into a routine of getting up early, taking a cup of coffee into the studio, and getting going with something or other. 

At an angle?

As the sun [earth, actually] moves and the shadows move, the colours change

With pen (worth a try!)

The first grouping

 

Closeup, showing changes in colour for each new layer

Found a good space on the wall

The blobs are an accident, and so is the running paint -
and they interact somehow

First layer; I hold a hairdryer in my left hand and mix
the next colour of paint with the right hand, by which
time the shadow has moved enough for the next layer of paint

Paint vs Pen

The more the merrier

At the top, painting on washed-off version

These two were washed off too - but in the photo I see
a strange beast, a plumed deer perhaps

Laid out in chronological order; the final one is still
to be painted, on the next sunny morning

What have I learned? 

1. Keep it simple, no need to tilt the paper, for instance. It's ok to do the same thing time after time, because each time will be different.

2. Accumulation is good. You could even say that it's enough. After a while the whole gets to be more than the sum of the parts.

3. An end-in-view isn't necessary, an important part of the process is seeing what develops.

Once that final paper is painted, is this finished? I have no more paper - these were about to be binned, they've been hanging around since the late 80s. I like the faded vintage-ness. It gives resonance, I think, that they are proofs or over-run from the printing of the Royal College of Art's cookbook (1988), bought for mere pence at an RCA degree show. I never did make any of the recipes that are printed and illustrated on the reverse of these, but another (now lost) lives on in that Gunpowder Cake is one of my signature dishes.

Drawing Tuesday - "From an old sketchbook"

Museum expeditions on Drawing Tuesdays have filled seven A4 sketchbooks so far, plus an A5 book that I used in June 2015 in Berlin. My favourite "Tuesday place" was the ethnological museum, and I got quite bold about putting just one item on the page. These two, from Mayan or Aztec civilisations, intrigued me at the time and continue to do so, so some of my drawing time was spent looking online to find more information ... and I got a bit sidetracked. 

Stone model of temple, 300-100 BC; clay "host figure", 350-650 AD

What I found combined the architecture of the temple with the interior space of the clay figure: house urns, and face urns, from various neolithic European cultures.

The pages got filled according to my old habit of crowding as much as possible on the page. It all looked like a grey expanse, so a bit of contrast was added -

Many of the urns came from this article, and the info about stone temple models here led to more.

From Richard - Ended up sketching dog-eared old sketch-books in caran d'ache with some wet brush. Poor attitude today, and worse perspective.

From Judith - St Pauls superimposed on a sketch from the South Bank and a rather odd collage based on drawing I did of a design on a plate by Alexander Nikolayevich Samokhvalov called ‘The Seamstress’

From Ann - I revisited a tired perspective sketch of our toilet and recreated a Roy Lichtenstein version- a less drab result! Another sketch was from the 3 jugs drawing where I  experimented with simplifying shapes and painted in gouache. The last is from a sketchbook with just a pencil circle and square on it..so I played with other shapes and added colour! 

From Joyce - Looking through my sketchbooks since 2015 when I joined the group I was amazed to see what a variety of subject matter we have had the opportunity to sketch.  I came across Blackwall by Louise Nevelson  at Tate Modern sketched in 2017 and thought it was just the kind of design I needed to stitch on a textile  piece I had prepared from rust dyed and indigo dyed fabric. It will be a boro/kantha type of stitching so  I have made a start but won’t be finished today!

I enjoyed the stitching and interpreting another piece of artwork.

From Mags - My first 'Drawing Tuesday' entries in my sketchbook  in April 2015  were of amulets in the Islamic Gallery in the British Museum.Thinking of those and the more recent sketch of the 'Talismanic Cloth' at the Brunei Gallery, I spent hours drawing a finely embroidered arm strap bought in Yazd, Iran in 2007. As ever with textiles , I prefer the back, the 'unconscious side' 

From Jo - I grabbed one of my small sketchbooks at random and it had an odd selection, starting with a view of a Liver bird in Liverpool while waiting for the ferry to depart to the Isle of Man (?2016) and ending with two things from the Greenwich Maritime Museum. There were a number of sketches for illustrations to the Three Little Pigs and Goldilocks & the Three Bears, so I looked again at those.

Had had trouble with the house of straw originally,. so had another two goes at that (suited my mood last week, the pink pig is reading The Guardian). Then tried a more advanced version from the 3 Bears - but actually like the original squiffy sketch in the book better than this "folksy" thing. Anyway - it was useful to have a go.

From Sue - Revisiting a sketch l did in 2017 of a colourful leaf. I masked it & then worked in collage to do a more graphic version. Had fun not using pencils or paint - just a few marker pen lines here & there. 

From Gill - A quick drawing with my left hand.

Just found this little sketchbook I had with me when I was at a language school in Rome about 6 years ago. I hated people looking over my shoulder whilst drawing so I went very small and tight!

FromNajlaa - This is from 2016 from in the British museum. Then, now, and also did it on a piece of card  to hang it for fun !

From Janet K - The pencil sketch of cremation urns is from the Museum of London - very wishy washy. Wanted colour so did a collage with paper from a design magazine in the weekend paper. The background is a photo of Yinka Ilori's summer pavilion at the Dulwich Picture gallery last year.

From Janet B - Facebook reminded me that four years ago at the Horniman museum I drew this ancestor sculpture. I was never happy with her face which was the wrong shape and a bit too big, although I was pleased with the rest of her, especially her hands. So time to have another go in colour.