Over the past 10 weeks I’ve taken part in an inspiring on-line painting course: Find Your Joy with Louise Fletcher. After taking a short taster course in August I was really intrigued and motivated to do more! This isn’t your usual painting course!!
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In September I was fortunate enough to spend a week on the west coast in Wales. The weather, starting to show signs of autumn, with a nip in the air and colours of change, held up. I spent most days walking ( the Pembrokeshire coastal path) and sketching. I love autumn!
Manchester Histories, in partnership with Manchester City Council, commissioned me to document ‘From the Crowd‘ in a series of Reportage of Peterloo 2019 illustrations. You can read more of my reportage work here. This Peterloo 2019 production is a musical theatre piece, co-produced with Walk The Plank and Brighter Sound and involving a large number of volunteers (Laurels). These volunteers then supported members of the public to deliver this impressive collaborative performance. In the words of the production’s Creative Director, Evie Manning (CommonWealth): ” From the crowd is a dialogue between 1819 and 2019. We’ll be remembering those that protested and lost their lives at Peterloo and those whose lives today are affected by different oppressions”
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In a previous blog, I explained some of the approaches I am taking to my mixed media collage works. You can read it here. Recently I’ve been working on two new mixed media collage pieces. They are based on a series of Oldham sketches. It’s proving to be a bit of a challenge to say the least!
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Those of you that follow me on my blog and on my social media platforms will realise that I have been developing my collage work for a while, alongside my sketching work (see previous Urban Sketching in Porto blog). However, my trip to Porto is the first time that I have developed my urban collaging pieces out on location. Collage for me is a natural mixed media technique. With a background in landscape design and an interest in the materiality of things, it gives me the opportunity to explore both texture and composition and to present them in a finished piece of art. This blog shares the approach I have taken to develop the sketchbook pieces and explains their possible future development. Continue reading
Last week I was sketching in Porto! I was fortunate enough to get over to Porto in Portugal for the 9th Urban Sketching Symposium. Continue reading
Over the last couple of Wednesday evenings (2 x 2 hours) I ran a demonstration and workshop on Urban Sketching at Salford Art Club, held in Salford Museum and Art Gallery. I am also a member of this art club so for some reason (I think it always is when you know people!) it was a little bit more nerve wracking than usual. However, members made me feel very at ease and we had a couple of great sessions. Fortunately, on the first session earlier in July, the weather was great, enabling me to demonstrate my colour-first technique outside and also set the group off with some thumbnail sketching practice around the outside of the gallery as a way of capturing snapshot views of the place before settling on an overall view. Unfortunately we had to run the second session inside the gallery but with plenty to sketch (and an example to hand of how this compares with the outside situation), this wasn’t too much of an imposition! The main focus of both sessions was capturing the essence of the place using relatively quick techniques and creating depth in the drawing (without necessarily focusing on perspective only). Members seemed to really enjoy the sessions and engage with the approach of drawing from life. For me, with an interest in reportage illustration as well as urban sketching, this is the focus of all of my work. Continue reading
One of my goals for this year is to develop and improve my watercolour approaches : not necessarily in the traditional ways but those of the looser; more atmospheric and dynamic artists like Jean Haines and Judith Farnworth who let the water and the colour sing! I love the life, movement and freedom of their works so I’m interested in how I could incorporate some of the approaches into my own artwork. I want to do this with three main areas of application: my existing urban sketching and reportage illustration; figure drawing and ‘other’ watercolour paintings (possibly rural landscapes, not sure yet!).
When I first started drawing very regularly in 2013/14 I set myself a task to be drawing every day within 6 months. I managed that and at the time, well, until recently, I had done that. I was often doing several drawing courses, e.g. Craftsy, on-line sessions like Sketchbook Skool etc. It didn’t seem so hard. There was a variety to draw and there was direction. But as time went on, I got my own direction, my own commissions and yep, my own pressures! Bigger (I started with A5 sketchbooks but now I usually use A4 or bigger, paper or sketchbooks (a topic for another blog!), more detailed, more text, …more time…It was a treadmill and I got the impression that If I stopped, I might never start again! Continue reading
Last weekend whilst out sketching , one of my fellow sketchers asked: how do you go about choosing your view to sketch? It’s an interesting question and it got me thinking beyond the theory of composition, at how exactly I choose my view to sketch . Here in a short summary; mainly illustrated with recent sketches of my local area are some of the things I take into account when deciding which view to draw and what to include. Note that with most of them, there is more than one reason the composition was chosen. Continue reading
As 2016 draws (get it!) to a close, I thought I’d capture my year in sketches ( some but not all of them!), partly as an aide memoire (those of you that read my blog know how I like to document my drawing adventures!) and partly to reflect on where I’ve been and where I’m going. Its been quite a year in many respects and those of you that have followed my #scribblescompilations on social media in my 12 days of Christmas countdown, will be familiar with most of the combinations below. However, this blog puts a narrative to the visuals and I have tried to group things so that you can see more of the approaches and types of things that I am interested in recording and the approaches I’ve taken to drawing. Continue reading
Last weekend I was fortunate enough to have been one of the artists who took part in a Mehndi festival, in a house in Levenshulme, Manchester. This blog is about my involvement, the approaches I took to develop my henna tattoos and the results…I did say this one was a little different! Continue reading
Over the last two weekends, I have visited two different Manchester locations to draw: The Etihad Stadium in East Manchester, the Manchester City Football Club grounds and ChinaTown in Central Manchester. Each of these drawings were created over a several hour period: pencil, ink then watercolour (paint and pencil). In terms of identifying the best main view and composition, I did this by walking around the site and observing different aspects: the angles, the depth of view, the light and shadow etc. The other thing I do is to write down (or at least have in my mind) key words that reflect what I feel for the place and what I want to convey in the main sketch. I can then refer to this as I draw. Continue reading
For a while I have been torn between using loose watercolour paper to create my sketches and recording in sketchbooks. There are pros and cons and as an urban sketcher with an interest in telling chronological stories through drawing, I have often worked in sketchbooks (moleskine, Stillman and Birn, SeaWhite, Handbook) and most often at A5 size for its portability. For me, the issue with using that approach alone is three-fold: one is the size is arguably a little small (although of course you can buy larger size sketchbooks, but then there is the size and weight!) ; secondly creating prints from them is not always straightforward. The third is that because work for prints was in my sketchbook, I was getting tighter and more precious with my sketchbook work (which is the opposite of what I want!). Continue reading
I have mentioned colour first in several of my posts of late so at the risk of sounding a bit like a stuck record, I will talk about it again here. I am talking about it because I want to develop the approach, (lots of others do it as a matter of course), but I want to see how I can progress it for my own needs and in specific ways. Over the last couple of weeks, I have used colour first in many situations and I want to share those drawings as a way of unpicking where I might be heading with it. Results have been variable, leading to a whole lot of questions and clarifications and I am going to share some of those thoughts here. Continue reading