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 - View from below

After thinking about this challenging topic all week, and taking photos looking upwards under trees, I found it hard to get started - too much to choose from! This is the shortlist - 

I used two of the photos and an A3 pad of tracing paper, but instead of  putting the photo underneath and tracing onto the paper I transferred the shapes from above via carbon paper, which means you can't see what's happening with the drawing below! The tracing, and the choices involved, took quite a while and I got rather bored outlining shapes on the photo with lines I couldn't see until ... the pencil (8H, long story with that) took on a life of its own and wanted to make interesting and lively marks. Once I figured out what it was trying to say, what choice was there but to obey? 

Eventually the tracing was done

I'd chosen to use tracing paper because of wanting to layer the lines. Although using carbon paper ensured there would be no smearing, the way a pencil does, opacity of the carbon paper meant there would be no control of where the layers would lie. Probably it wouldn't matter, but I knew of another way to get overlaid layers: a few folds and a slash and a "secret book" was made -

When the light comes from behind, the layers appear

The book is brought to life by the movement of the pages, and the traces of leaves showing through from other pages.

Holding the book and turning the (few) pages is like having the chestnut leaves move around you, whereas the sumac is more rigid and quite lofty, and altogether denser, keeping the floppy chestnut leaves in place.

From Janet K: If you at first don't succeed... I felt so discouraged (and grumpy) about my drawing on Tuesday that I had to try again this morning with a slightly different view.

From Carol: This is traced from a photo I’m afraid after several attempts at drawing lying down but it was a good learning opportunity. I’m not sure though why today of all days after 2 years my husband decided to finish painting the stairwell and was puzzled as to why I was lying about in the way.

From Sue and Richard:  Here are our sketches for today’s - mine is of handrail & banister to 2nd floor with a peep of the top landing. Richard’s is a view of the last flight to top floor

From Janet B:  Well that was a struggle. I had lots of false starts. Why I had I forgotten that I cannot draw cats? Miss Molloy was looking particularly winsome at the top of the stairs but I gave up after five minutes. So my view from below is drawn from a photo of the back of our house taken from under the palm. The top right window is the one I “drew” from last week.

From Judith:  Three efforts today, below the table was from sitting on the floor but for the tree I put my iPhone at the base of the trunk and the bookcase is using Procreate

From Joyce:   Looking up at the smokebush with the light streaming through the leaves. The colours are stunning.

From Mags:   Started drawing these latticino dishes ' from life' perched awkwardly on a very low stool until I slid off bashing head and back. Drawing resumed in kitchen from photos after lunch and half a chocolate squirrel. Still feeling a bit wobbly, how we suffer for our art!

From Jo, on postcards:

I collect pebbles with faces...
Fine lead propelling pencil, ivory black pencil, brown
water-soluble pencil

Monkey glove-puppet, mine since 1950s. Two small holes in left ear,
so may have had a Steiff tag.
Oil pastels, wax crayons, fine propellign pencil

View from my bedroom window - Cassiopeia (hold up to light)
Indian ink + wash

From guest artist Gillian: I'm trying to use chinese ink.

From guest artist Jackie:  

Tomatoes banana papaya pineapple mango views from below ... the idea was a challenge!!!
Not sure it was truly according to the brief

Seen from below the tele!!

From guest artist Hazel - "This is my drawing of a glass vase of hellebores viewed from under a glass table. I enjoyed using the grid of the conservatory roof as a guide to where shapes and lines fell within the picture plane "

From guest artist Sylvia - I'm still Looking Up ... bit behind the curve!

Woodblock Wednesday - "Waders" reduction block

The photo of the birds has been hanging around for a while, 6 February to be exact. Found online (but where?) - there was something about it....

First I printed the photo out quite small, and chose groups of birds to trace for a 10x15 print - but they were impossibly small. Try again at a larger size (to thriftily get two from a sheet of ho sho pad) -

The larger composition was traced onto the stained block after nori was rubbed in. I decided not to overthink this, just go for it, step by step. First step is to take out the background so that would "print" white, and the shapes would be a pale grey. Then, removing parts of the shapes so that each layer would become darker, ending up with black.

Starting to cut ... oh those skinny legs on the smallest birds! And, uh-oh, they don't follow the grain. Double trouble!

Retrace the composition with  the grain.  But the board was so big, hard to turn on my narrow table. It needed cutting to size -

As the fiddly bits of the first image were already cut, I decided to use the three small birds for a warm-up, postcard size -

A chance to experiment with the reflections and to determine the number of layers needed.

Cut and rubbed, ready for printing the first layer -

Drawing Tuesday - Self-portraits

Over the years I've had various encounters with self portraits, including these, found in old sketchbooks -

Self portrait (with contact lenses and good haircut), 1990

1992: "Why did you make yourself look so old?" (Really?)

Collage selfportrait from the late 90s, and (above) glowering c.2009

None in this collection is a self portrait; taken from photographs of friends, they were stitched onto envelopes in the 1990s -

A variety of techniques/approaches thus presented themselves, but I approached the project with some trepidation - and decided to do

Something Completely Different, 

using the glut of Sarah Raven plant catalogues that happen to be on hand (ie, hoarded) for an inner portrait. 

Archimboldo was the inspiration 

Start with skin tones

It's helpful to quickly draw out the main areas

Can't believe this took two hours

The way of working develops as you keep going. I started by looking for "the eyes" and made some that by now are All Wrong. Rethink - do the skin first. With collage, it's easier to start with the bottom layer and work up to the details - how long has it taken me to learn that??

With head and neck done, there remained only (only?) collar, dress, and headdress. Background was hastily painted in. 

Something to come back to - 

(I meant to get back to it, but haven't yet.) btw a rather different Arcimboldo showed up on instagram later and it would really have been a self-portrait if (with my history of avid reading and librarian training and love of libraries and book and - nearly forgot - the book arts MA) I'd used books instead of flowers.

From Carol: I was feeling a little blue today but then remembered that it was beer o’clock time and that the government has said that some foods can be counted as ‘essential religious items’. I’m moving onto the Easter eggs later.!!

From Sue: Here’s my self portrait, sporting my newly made trousers! It was a bit tricky matching the stripes!! There was a tapered section below the knee!

From Joyce:  I’ve been looking at David Hockney’s book ‘Faces’ and he did so many line drawings just capturing the essence of his sitter. That was my inspiration.

From Judith: Complete cheat as done from photo and all those teeth!

From Mags: I took photos of my shadow yesterday when on my walk thinking I'd use them for drawing from today. But instead I stitched on calico, each version going wrong in a different way! 

From Janet B: Drawn from a photo taken first thing in my dressing gown before I’d had a shower or brushed my hair. 

I’ve also attached my only other self portrait and one and only attempt at drawing with my sewing machine. It eventually found its way into a group quilt to say thank you to the departing chair of New Horizons, one of my many quilt groups. Luckily mine wasn’t the only bonkers one. 

From Jo: Is it cheating to do a self-protrait from behind!! Anyway - this is me every day.

From guest artist Helen: