Can you do the Canna, can!

Is anyone still out there? It's been another long time since I've been here on the blog, and no excuses, but back with an intention to post more regularly, even if just for my own documentation.

I've been trying to find the pure pleasure of drawing and painting again - after far too long of producing work to order, that seems to have gone by the wayside a bit. I think less writing, which takes me longer and longer, and more artwork is the key to keeping up.

These drawings I made when I had a problem with my left eye recently, which was frightening to say the least. After months of fussing about what to draw, what to paint, when, how and why... when faced with an actual threat to my ability to do so, I just sat down and drew what was in front of me, a desiccated canna flower on my studio windowsill. I resisted doing Inktober again, as a pressure I wasn't feeling up to, but got out my Indian ink, watercolours, and the dregs of my morning coffee to make these. My eye is OK again, thankfully, after a small op, but a lesson was quickly learnt - less pondering, more action. Seems obvious doesn't it!?

Something with Bristles

So much for posting every day - just keeping up with drawing is about all I can manage. Day 6's EDM challenge 'something with bristles' immediately made me think of the drawing into ink washes with bleach method that I first tried here. Great for fine lines and scrubby marks. I was asked to post a tutorial by a couple of people on the Facebook page, so here goes:

Materials:

• Black water-soluble fountain pen ink. Not sure if Parker Quink is available everywhere, it's a standard stationery item here. (the flower on the top is mine :)) 
• Ordinary household bleach. I wasn't aware of how bad it is for you till someone mentioned it in the comments and I looked it up. Wear gloves and a mask, open the windows and doors!
• Water for rinsing and diluting the ink and bleach - a small nozzled bottle is very useful - and small containers to hold the solutions.
• Old or non-precious brushes. I think bleach would eat any natural bristle
• Bamboo pens or sticks to draw with - likewise bleach would destroy a metal pen nib
• Watercolour or drawing paper - different types will give different results. I masked the edges with tape.
• Things to add texture - sponges, toothbrush, paper towel.

Prepare your paper with ink washes. Vary the dilutions - with Quink you'll see the black separate in places into blue and orangey pigments.

 Add textures if you like, flick on ink or bleach solution, dab with paper towel or a sponge - experiment. Allow to dry - or if you start working into the wash while still damp it will give softer edges.

 Dilute a little bleach with water in a small container. It seems to work just as well as full strength. Have your reference material or photo at the ready.

 I started by bleaching out the negative shapes in my leaf design with an old paintbrush

 Adding lines with a bamboo pen - if you dilute the bleach more you can get less stark lines

 and some pattern or cross hatching

 If you like you can go back in with ink washes, lines and splashes

Not my most successful result, but the more you play around, the more options you'll come up with, and are sure to encounter some happy accidents along the way. I can't vouch for the archival qualities of this method - I've heard that the paper will eventually deteriorate but so far my earlier drawings have survived. Have fun!

Draw, draw, draw

I have been busy drawing for my upcoming course, 'Objets Trouvès' with Greg Kerr which starts in Johannesburg next month. Part of our prep was to find an object - not your regular Still Life subject matter which may have been drawn and painted to death already - but something unusual and perhaps strange or unappealing that happens into your life or surroundings.
I had a few false starts with things I found - a woodwork plane - too linear, a toiletries travel bag - too tedious with its zips and meshes, a computer fan - too hard and mechanical... when one day a storm approached, the wind blew, a painting flipped off the mantelpiece knocking off and breaking an early attempt at turning wood on a lathe by my son - which made me a bit sad until...aha, voilà! I had my objets!

There's something deeply satisfying about completing and beholding 20+ drawings you've done of the very same item. I usually draw something, tick it off and seldom feel inclined to do it again, so before I began I dreaded all that slog before me, certain I'd be bored to tears halfway through. But tackling one frame at a time, and with options of different mediums to do it in I became absorbed in the challenges and new perspectives of each rendition.

Starting with three drawings with the humble HB pencil, moving onto six in charcoal and going onto my favourite method, water-soluble ink with bleach, water, brushes and pens (I had whittled a new bunch of bamboo pens while watching cricket on TV days before) which I explored and experimented with for the remainder of the 20 - I've only shown three of those ones here, will get to photographing the rest sometime. So interesting to play in this technique but be warned if you try, I'm told they won't last - the paper may rot and the ink fade!

Figures & Form

Ecoline watercolour and Neocolor II on Fabriano 70x50cm

Graphite and marker on cartridge 59x42cm

Ecoline and Neocolor II on Fabriano 70x50cm

I spent the last Wednesday mornings of May at lovely figure drawing sessions held by the Figures & Form group in Parkhurst, in return for a 10 minute talk on urban sketching on my last day. It was lovely to slow down and spend whole hours looking, drawing and painting. These were from a session with the theme of Flappers - the top and bottom ones long poses and the middle ones two 5 minute poses. Such fun, but what does one do with all these studies..!?
The talk went well in spite of nerves, I'm a drawer not a talker!..but I had stacks of sketchbooks on display, and inspirational sketching books like The Art of Urban Sketching and One Drawing a Day and Danny Gregory's books. The group received it enthusiastically - ten minutes wasn't actually enough to say all I had to say about urban sketching. I'm hoping  a few more will join Joburg Sketchers, as well as start their own sketchbooks and journals. I forgot to take a photo, as I always do :-/ but I have to say the display looked quite impressive, I never feel like I sketch enough, but when they're all spread out - whew - 100's!!

This isn't easy you know

Now I've gone and ruined my accordion sketchbook, trying to draw the dog and cat in one of their covoluted sleeping poses - from a photo up on the computer screen, as they always move the minute I start trying to draw them. I got both of these attempts completely wrong.

This was slightly more accurate, though the dog is too small, and his face a bit weird - I painted the big shapes first, then added the lines with my bamboo pen, (which isn't drawing as well as I'd hoped - I have little control over whether lines are thick or thin, or come out at all) and the values are all very bland - the dog and cushion they sleep on are rather similiar in tone, but Kenzo the cat could go much darker.

It's interesting to see today's Making a Mark post about mechanical and optical aids... I find myself feeling irritated and tense when sketching from photos, though they are definitely a useful tool when trying to remember features of a landscape, for instance - as long as I don't follow them too slavishly.

This sketch of Gucci (excuse the undignified pose!) that I did quickly after messing up the Fabriano was much more enjoyable, and I think is a lot more expressive in line and character. So - conclusion, I think drawing from life is my thing. I'll be happy to leave the photo-realism to others - for now, anyway. (I tend to make sweeping statements one week and back-peddle on them the next)

Accordion to me...

I have been enjoying Laurelines vivid sketches she's been doing in an accordion sketchbook, so I was thrilled to find out how to make one myself , using Nina Johansson's simple instructions - out of a sheet of Fabriano paper - I was intending to take it to the beach over Easter, but that little holiday didn't happen - so I took it into the garden today to try and sketch a eucalyptus tree that I love for its silvery blue-green leaves. As is my way, I started much too big, so got mostly trunk on the page... and had to go up, up into the next page, and only squeezed a little bit of the foliage around the edges. I don't think its a very well eucalyptus tree - the top of the gate bangs into it, and it started weeping gum from the wound, and has now developed very interesting colours and textures all down the bark, with a bare strip on one side. I hope it's not a mortal wound, and I sure hope it doesn't topple over onto my car which is parked nearby.

The paper I used in the sketchbook is a bit heavy to fold easily, so the paint really gathers in the crease, and I think it might crack after much opening and closing, but it is good for watercolour sketching - especially when you pile on as much as I did here. I need to fit the sketches on only one sheet at a time. P.S. (I apologise for the appalling pun in the title to this post!)

Bamboo pen two

I whittled another bamboo pen last night, while supper was simmering - a more elegant slimmer version with a sharper point. Then I tried to make myself slow down and do some careful drawings of what was left of the garlic bulbs after I'd made 20 clove chicken casserole for guests on Friday. One of our visitors, staying with us from Edinburgh, requested garlic, so boy, did he get it. Though it wasn't as potent as one would think, as the cloves were whole, and blanched first, so I hope he didn't clear the plane he flew back on the following night.

I love using the bamboo - the sharp point, which made beautifully fine lines, didn't last long, so I see why mas o menos (see previous post) said that you're supposed to work on the nib as you go along. I think I prefer the gentler look of the brown ink. I am annoyed with myself for not planning the drawings better to begin with, so one didn't go off the page at the top, and the other off the bottom.

My new bamboo pen

I made myself a bamboo pen today! I've been wanting one since seeing Laurelines lovely pen and wash sketches, and on Friday I spotted a pile of cut bamboo on a neighbour's pavement, waiting for disposal. So I guiltily sidled up to it today and pulled out a few sticks, feeling like a burglar (which we really had - 3 of - in our driveway yesterday morning - but that's another story). Dogs barked and cars slowed down, but I soldiered on - brought them home and searched for how to set about it.
I found wonderful instructions and diagrams on Daily Art (mas o menos) blog, and his flicker site on exactly how to go about it. It isn't as professional looking and beautiful as his, but I intend to practise and make some thicker and thinner ones - I have enough bamboo for at least fifty. Mine is very green - easier to cut I think without it splitting, but I wonder how it affects the line, it will be interesting to find out. I had to try it out immediately, of course, so here's a rather wonky quick drawing of Johnny Depp - I'm not really an avid follower of all these celebs, but I found a magazine of one of my kids with lots of rather good portrait photos in it - something I don't manage to take myself very often, so I hope nobody minds if I do these exercises using them.