Busman's holiday

 Just did five solid days of life drawing at the Oxford Arts and Crafts Summer Scool. Run by Laura Degenhardt with Anthony, Peter and Naomi as models. I've come away groaning under tthe weight of who knows how many drawings. I feel there are plenty of things in there that will emerge in future work, and also got to try out a number of things, many of which I already have in my posession. I feel energised and ready to attack some of the ideas I've felt too jaded to even look at recently. Anyway here are a few of the drawings...

 

Lette Matrimoniale

 This one came together over the second half of Warwickshire Open Studios. I've been thinking about doing bed pictures since the exhibition in Mala Beds. I remembered that Lette Matrimoniale is what they say for double bed in Italy. Or at least they used to. The bed is very vaguely based on one we bought at an auction when we were newly together. 

I like the idea of her hiding behind the blanket. It could be she's being cheekily seductive, or maybe she's just woken from a scary dream. Make up your own story.

Fallen from Olympus VIII

 I think this really is the last one, now. It's been good to have some obsessions to follow though. I'm pleased with how the pinstripe trousers have worked out. I spent some time yesterday staring at the back of some guy's trousers yesterday to try and work out how the shadows go. Making them pinstripe worke out well too. This is another drawing (the guy's head anyway) thatt dates back some years - around 2021, I think. Then I constructed the body out of other random passers by over the last day or two. A bit like Dr Frankenstein, really.

Fallen from Olympus VII

 Slight variation in the position of the viewer here, with our party-goer on the left hand side of the picture. It's a slight nod to the teary drunks who used to say "it was a great pub..." Maybe they still do.

It look me a while to find someone suitable for tthis one. Ended up plumping for a life-drawing from back in 2017 or tthereabouts. 

Fallen from Olympus VI

 Just when you thought it was all over... A little idea occured to me and it grew and grew to become this.

I certainly felt I had no defense here. The print insisted that I make it. It took a little while to shape up, but it was relentless in its will to be said. I'm not entirely sure what I'm gettig at here. It's got something to do with the fact that neither figure is looking the way they "should" be. And there's something about actions and consequences here, too. But I'm not going to delve too deeply. I'll just leave it up to the viewer. 

Video interview for WOS 25

Mala Beds Anniversary Show 7 - 20 June

 Not your typical art show, but eight of us local artists have put on a pop-up exhibition at Mala Beds in Rugby to help celebrate their first anniversary. All thanks to their marketing team contacting my entrepreneurial wife about local artists maybe doing some pavement art for them. Luckily we didn't go with that idea because it poured with rain on the opening day yesterday. But the in-store exhibition worked out well, putting our stuff in front of a different clientelle.

The artist are: myself; Eric Gaskell; Joseph Ryan; Ross McA; Vikki Skinner; Ije; Clare Pentlow; Jane Tilley.

PS The shop owner is so delighted the show will carry on until July 7th.

 

RA&M Exhibition: Transformations

 This Rugby Artists and Makers exhibition is at the Alex between 6 June and 6 July. It'll overlap with this year's Warwickshire Open Studios.

 

Fallen from Olympus V

 Here's number 5. I think I'm going to stop here, at least until I've done more exhibition drawings and probably postcards, too. 

This viewer is a combination of the central figure in Pictures at an Exhibition and someone I drew more recently who moved before I could do his body. Both these people had been to the Library downstairs before visiting the gallery, so were carrying books with them. I had decided that the art work in this one would be a landscape, and I started off aiming to use the background of the Alex from last yearr's Diwali cards, but later it became evident that I should use the one of the Art Gallery and Museum from the same set.

Fallen from Olympus IV

 Number 4 in the series. I was keen to use one of the Dance of Death postcards, and this one being the most explicit dance seemed right. I also wanted to revisit the woman in the floral dress from Pictures at an Exhibition. They seemed to call for each other. She seemed one of the more... robust figures I'd drawn in an exhibition context, so I felt she would stand up to the picture of Death. Also I felt the off-beat rhythm of the various elbows would work somehow. It has turned out to be something that has really worked for me.

Fallen from Olympus III

 The third. You can believe that I drew this woman in an exhibition if you want. I will neither confirm nor deny it. She seems the proper foil to the clothed figure in the framed picture. 

I've got better at using an acetate mask to remove the viewer's profilr from the framed picture. I like it as a way of combining and recombining linocuts I've used elsewhere, 

I've got another two or three of these in my head. I've earmarked some other postcards and I've got at least two drawings I want to use. I've also got some other ideas bubbling away, so I might park these and see how they go.

Fallen from Olympus II

 The second in this series. I remember this guy in the gallery. From the back, he looked like a giant. But when he turned round, he seemed more normal sise. Anyway I managed to draw him in gigantic mode.

The frame stays the same from Olympus I, this time with another small nude from way back. Back then I used to cut up  tea cartons and print on the inside. I was so cheap. So it's in a much less humble setting now. People often look at art askance like this. Almost as if they don't want to confront it directly. 

I printed this one and the next together over the last couple days, having had more time conducive to cutting during the week,

Fallen from Olympus I

 Often, when I'm on "minding" duties at an exhibition, I do a bit of drawing in the quiet moments. Which is nearly all the time, to be honest. The people who spend more than a couple of seconds in front of a work risk being immortalised by me. I enjoy this kind of drawing because it's hard getting an acceptable picture in so short a period of time.

While doing this I thought it'd be worth revisiting something like the print Pictures at an Exhibition from some time back. I thought I could make a frame to fit some of the postcard images I've done and use a mask to use the same thing with a number of viewers.

So this is the first of what may be a few. The postcard dates back to 2021.

I might also dig out the block from Pictures at an Exhibition and cut out the woman in the floral dress to re-use. I may also try colouring these with brush and ink. I'll have a go on one of the least successful prints and then decide.

 I thought the title might reflect both the art and the viewer being at least in part more holy than they first appear.

Pigeon

 We were given a free stall at a VE Day market in town. For me, VE Day equals pigeons in Trafalgar Square, because my dad was there on the day and had his photo taken with pigeons like you did back then.

Anyhoo I thought I'd print these "plein air" as it were. Didn't work. The atmospheric conditions meant the ink didn't dry. But it was a fun evening anyway.

Rugby Artists Group exhibition: Seasons

 We're over half way through this exhibition now. There's about a dozen RAG members exhibiting around 40 works between them. I decided to submit my 3 Cemex prints (here, here and here) as they offer views of the cement works with different moods to them that could represent different times of year.

Girl with Flowers - Fall

 

I don't know about this one. The reason I started was because the upcoming Rugby Artists Group exhibition is entitled "Seasons". So I thought of various seasons of the girl with flowers. This one's kinda what I was aiming for, but it needs some time in the drawer for me to think objectively about it. So I've gone to Plan B for the exhibition. (Which I will go into in a later post).

I listened to Tal R on the Danish Originals podcast just recently. He says something like Failure is the artist's shadow. But it's not a bad shadow because it stops you from travelling the well-worn path. I've had a number of ideas that either haven't gone anywhere, or if they have, the end result just hasn't lit my boat. This one isn't a total disaster, so it hasn't gone straight in the bin. There's something in it that I might push forward with, and it might make sense in the context of future work, so be worth saving.

Woman's head

 I guess this is another "study". There are a couple of larger things I'm edging towards, but I need to get some of these postcard-sized prints done to work some things out and to get my hand back in practice after what seems like an interminable "break" doing DIY and stuff. I need to know what my hands can achieve after several months of punishment.

I found a very simple drawing in an old sketch book that served as the basis for this. I've no idea of what/who I was drawing here, but I liked the shape of it. I did think I might call it "M". She looks like an "M" to me...

Study for something larger

 I've got an idea for a larger piece that just needed something... like a naked woman on a skateboard. So I thought I'd have a little postcard sized try out. A couple of wee tweaks and I think I've got what I wanted. All I have to do now is work out the rest.

Black Sun, Cemex

 This print has been a long time coming. I've been stuggling with it for months. It ended up that there was one corner that I liked. So I decided to cut the rest away and go with a print half the size. Anyway now it can be the third Cemex print, and I'm happy to chatge money for it. It was going to be much more complicated with multiple blocks, which is why the sun is the "wrong" colour. But when I decided the Sun was black, everything fell into place. Do you remember staring at the sun when you were a kid? Even when you were told not to. The world turned colour then, didn't it?

Brown paper bags

 Packaging has always presented a problem. I've tried varius things, wrapping paper, random commercial bags... So I decided to make my own bags that would take the larger mounted prints I sell. And of course, the smaller sized ones. I used brown wrapping paper. So its essentially doing the wrapping work up fromt.

I can't remember if I posted about the design way back, but I tried printing on fabric bags back in 2020, but I wasn't too happy with how they turned out. So I reused the text from those to print here. It's desiigned to take any postcard (portrait format) so I used tthe "Handprinted" postcard here.

Rugby Artists and Makers exhibition - Five Senses

Hanging this exhibition today. Goes live tomorrow 21st January and closes 1st February. The title was plucked out of the air at a meeting in November, I think. I decided to run with it and arrived at the print Sensing.

Here's the flipbook catalogue:

Sensing

This print brings together a number of ideas that arose while I was working on other projects. Some I have already used; others I just slipped into my pocket with my car keys. They all came tumbling out when someone suggested Five Senses for the name of the upcoming Rugby Artists and Makers exhibition. So here they are brought together in a sensual game of consequences.

So many artists and ideas came into play here. Touch comes from Harold Speed’s book, The Practice and Science of Drawing – the notion that outline comes from the act of touching – it’s an idea I’ve wanted to draw for some time, and it sneaks in here. The hearing woman is based on a figure from an old life drawing by an unknown artist. The whispering man and the seeing woman started out as the couple in Nolde’s Mann und junges Madchen. The sensuous pomegranate eater has been in my pocket since I did the Song of Solomon prints, and if I ever do a full set of those he will reappear. The model for the pomegranate eater is by the way a small classical bust of Hermes I keep for these purposes. The woman smelling the flower is of course Anna Bloom, pretty much directly lifted from my Rote Blume print. Finally the pregnant belly with the eye comes from Shiko Munakata. The navel eye appears frequently in his work; I’m guessing it’s Bhuddist, but For me it feeds sufficiently into that Room for a Life thing and maybe that Gut Feeling thing to place the viewer in a slightly uncomfortable place.

Finally, I recently bought a print by Maria Beine-Hager of a puppeteer and puppets that was done as simple line work in white on black. So provided the overall feel of what I wanted to do. As I was working on this I was reminded of an article by Eric Gill in the Woodcut Annual for 1927. He suggested that it was relatively simple to make intaglio prints from small wood engraving blocks. I am minded to try making intaglio prints from this block. If it works out I will no doubt post again.