Old Friends New Friends

I've just had the best weekend ... Spent hanging round Bristol with the lovely Xtina Lamb (seen above taking photos of Bristol, and who gave me a copy of her beautiful Gocco printed book "Swept Away" as a present) whom I met on the internets whilst looking for people to teach me how to use my Gocco kit; and then this evening meeting David and Jodie of Peskimo at their housewarming (they live down the road from us) who we were put in touch with via the gorgeous Milla - someone else I met via the interfishyweb; we also met Ben and Gianfranco from Here at Jodie and David's.

What a smashing weekend... and what wonderful people :) I love Bristol ...

Flickr links: Xtina, Peskimo, Milla, Here Gallery.

I'm also spending this weekend putting the final touches on on my Stitch'n'Bitch Image and Obs module project work. Hand in is on Monday and there should be lots of updates after ... so watch this space!

Abbu

Spent the weekend in London visiting my dad who was in the country ... I showed him the portrait and he said, "it doesn't look anything like me!"...

I beg to differ ... Mum, I know you read this ... what do YOU think? ;)

Tying it all up

Today was the last of our life painting classes and a chance to amalgamate everything we had learnt in the last few weeks. I was mostly just playing with colours still and getting to grips with working tonally. I did move up a gear and worked at a larger scale - apart from the bottom portrait, everything else is A3 size - and the paintings you've seen up to now have been A4.

The end has come round much too soon :(

Knit Green Purl Red

Just playing from some of my stitch'n'bitch refernce photos ...

Postbox

Full set of 24 images plus original pencil drawings here.

These last two days we've been doing another location drawing workshop based around the theme of an object. We were given a list (that included door, window, gate, tree, traffic light, boat, and a bunch of others I can't quite remember) from which I chose "postbox" (or "pillar box" - although there was some post-themed deviation). We went about town drawing our item of choice, in A6 landscape format (at least 24pieces). Most of the exercise was about looking at a mundane object, and seeing how you can draw it in different sizes (zoomed in, whole thing, far away), contexts (whats around it, is anyone or anything interacting with it? Negative space, composition) and not get bored! Also, A6 being quite small, and having to make at least 24 pieces, it was about practicing speed and gestural drawing, over too much detail (oh man did I have difficulty with that!).

Although mine are still quite detailed, I started to get much looser towards the end, especially as I moved on from a B to a 4B pencil. I then photocopied all my pieces (makes it all look uniform), and coloured in the photocopies with coloured pencils. Full set of pictures here. If anyone has advice on how to scan/photograph pencil drawings, can they please give me a shout, as I'm having no joy ...

Really enjoyed this and am enthused about doing more observational location drawing. Heres' what the drawings (originals on top, coloured photocopies on the bottom) looked like arranged in a group:

Embrace the colour ...

I think I'm finally beginning to get to grips with painting and colour ... well at least I've begun to see what combinations I actually like to work with. This has been such a steep learning curve.

Still stitchin' ...

Are you bored of them yet? Sorry for the quality - the pencil drawings don't scan very well - And I seem to have lots of spots (scanner artifacts)... Have also started thinking about what I might actually DO with all these drawings ... but it's still in planning/testing phase ...

A View In Your Mirror

Earlier this week a Belgian artist, Jan Verhulst approached me on my flickr account to ask me to be part of a blog he's set up celebrating the self portrait, and there I am ...

Don't forget to look through the rest of the blog, there's some cool stuff people are doing out there.

Painting in colour

Here's a double whammy update on our painting classes from last Thursday and today. They actually work together as you can see the progression from this to adding more colour; working in low-key colour; and eventually moving to high-key colour.

Last week:

There was a warm spotlight on him, hence the warm yellow in the middle.

This week:




Phew ... I'm not sure about this high-key stuff - very not me (although when Hockney does it it looks fab). I had to really let go of any inhibitions, especially on the last one. Its all about learning though, isn't it?