Tea and No Sympathy

Two pastel drawings from Saturday’s CHADO /Japanese Tea drawing day with Akemi Solloway. Our classes are always so enjoyable, not only for the art practice but primarily for the fantastic company, we’re a lively and interesting group. Akemi was not only a good model but also most interesting about her culture and country. Shame I mangled her hands in the above drawing, but you live and learn. The quick 3 x 10 minutes sketches more successful as always, no time to over work the drawing. Added a little collage material from some origami papers I had lying around instead of trying to reproduce the beauty of the kimono.

As always, this is the time for artists to open their studios or grab an exhibition space for their annual show. One of our group has built himself a cleverly designed studio at the bottom of his garden but it’s certainly no garden shed.
I returned home inspired by the work on the wall and the studio itself and asked Nick if he wouldn’t mind building me such a desirable workspace.
“So, that’s an allotment shed, a yoga/meditation pagoda, a fruit cage and now a studio, I might just build you a cage, you can draw and meditate in that!”
Demanding, moi? It is his own fault and a complement to him that I believe he can just about make anything, I’m the divine inspiration, and he’s the oily rag ;-)!
I have always been drawn to handmade buildings. I have a great little book called Handmade Houses: A Guide to the Woodbutcher’s Art, very much a product of the San Francisco hippy movement of the late 60’s early 70’s. Written by Art Boericke, (himself, what he calls a ‘ticky-tacky’ builder) and photos by Barry Sharpiro, one of which I have reproduced below showing you where I got the idea for my meditation pagoda all those years ago. Unfortunately, still no manifestation.

Glastonbury Via Woodstock, Goodbye London

A good year to be there. With a stunning performance from Neil Young last night and Crosby, Nash and Stills today, what treats! It goes an old hippie's heart good! My new chum Luke Jackson sent me a great video today, a fine piece of animation, and music's not bad either! While I was studying computer animation 15 years ago, when digital imaging was still in it's infancy , I learnt the importance (and difficulty) of good lip sync and I think this illustrates it well. Enjoy!

Life - As We Know It

There is a buzz going through life drawing classes up and down the country this week, the BBC have a treat in stall for all us non-holidaying sketchers, five half-hour episodes of Life Class, each devoted to drawing or painting the naked figure, each starring just two people: the artist and the model. The camera we are told will be on the model, allowing us at home to join in.
It's unbelievable in this day and age that this nudity issue is still able to cause a negative reaction, as in shock, horror, full frontal on daytime television, a sentiment a tabloud recently voiced. I thought we had put all this behind us the 60's and 70's. Only last year my drawing instructor was ordered to remove nude paintings from Harrow Arts Centre by the Local Council which maybe, at a push, I could understand, if I lived in a small, intolerant, illiberal, conservative society or community, but we are talking about London here.

Life Class: Today's Nude is on Channel 4 from 6-10 July

This has reminded me of my pledge to post life drawings good and bad or indifferent. I've pictured a few recent daubs and scribbles just to show all the different techniques I've been encouraged to try. Sometimes, I have been less than enthusiastic in taking up the challenge but I needed a more disciplined and bolder approach to form, so hey, ho.
3 x five minutes charcoal


3 x one minute (coloured pastel only)

5 minute LEFT hand only

30 minute watercolour

30 minute pastel only (no pencil)


3 x one minute sketches walking around the static model

30 minutes pastels

Saint-Émilion with Pastels

Another workout with my new pastels. I'm trying to explore what's possible in this medium both in stylistic and practical terms. Saint-Émilion is another preferred stop on our journeys through France, not only for the charm of the village, but of course, for it's fabulous product, it's wine. Saint-Émilion's history goes back to prehistoric times and is a World Heritage site. It has fascinating churches and old, ruinous buildings stretching along steep and narrow streets. Since Roman times there were vineyards on it's slopes. The photograph, from which I have taken this image, was taken near a lovely bistro/cave called L'Envers du Décor, where you can take your meal and your glass of Grand Cru Classé Château Soutard wine in the troglodyte garden, a small outside space at the back of the cafe overshadowed and enclosed by the 8th Century carved hermitage. The poster was a gift from the proprietor, I admired the design and loved the "English spoken with a French accent" finish.

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Old Town Pamplona

I took a photograph of Nick beside a beautiful advertisement we found down an alley in the old town of Pamplona. This week, looking for a subject to test out some new pastels, a medium I’ve not used before, I decided to try to reproduce it. The advertisement, produced in the 40’s or 50’s, was a reverse glass painting, a great survivor, undamaged by vandals, bulls or runners!
Realistic reverse paintings are challenging to create, as one must, for example, in painting a face, put the pupil of an eye on the glass before the iris, etc, exactly the opposite of normal painting. If this is neglected the artist will not be able to correct the error as he or she will not get in between the glass and the paint already applied. Anyway, above is the result, I hope I have done the original painter justice.

A Little Life

I promised (myself) I would keep posting my life drawings, however painful to my pride. I'm a little disappointed by my lack of progress so far. I think it's because I've made my living as a so called artist, albeit, without often putting pencil to paper. I'm trying lots of techniques, papers, mediums, including photographing the scene, in the hope of checking the perspective, but in the end it comes down to me needing a lot more practice. Must try to be kind to myself and less frustrated!

Surface Design Runs Deep

I was amazingly lucky to study under two maestros of art who conducted me though my time at Chelsea School of Art. I was excepted to study ceramics but was talked into switching to Surface Design by the great Steven Sykes mainly because his course was looking depleted as only one student had signed up for his three year DipAD Surface Design. In the end he managed to talk two others into trying the course making the four of us probably the best taught ever, as the student to teacher ratio, including technicians, was 1:1. Part of the problem was that nobody knew what Steven had in mind with ‘surface’ design, but the truth was just about anything. These (late1970’s) were heady days in art colleges, decisions on direction, aesthetics, materials, influences were left to students, all things were possible, the staff helped you fulfill your wildest dreams by nudging you along the route. Turning you on to obscure art, suggesting resources and also, in Steven’s case, introducing you to respected artists in your field. To help him there was Lesley Sunderland, a master of textiles and all their ramifications. I remember, with her encouragement, one of our number choosing to dye some cloth by leaving onions, beetroot and other colour-giving botanicals, encased in bags made in the plastics workshop, which hung across the room to stew in the heat and light of the studio for three terms. In the end the bags with their coloured grunge became the art and a distinction mark followed. Experimentation leads to virtue, it frees the mind. Steven’s course was so before it’s time, nothing we made would be out of place in a so-called Brit Art collection now.
Steven lived at Hopkiln, near Midhurst in Sussex, a house and garden he created with his usual flare for surfaces out of a piece of rough ground he bought in 1967. “It was a triumph of bricolage and improvisation, incorporating a maze, a grotto, a waterfall and small raised canal, statues and mosaic work. To meet him (naked) beside his swimming pool, which was embellished with a gold peacock, was to encounter a charming sun worshipper from some ancient lost culture who had taken up unexpected residence in a fold of the South Downs”.* The house was amazing and I could try to describe it’s art and design given half a dozen paragraphs, but instead I’ll just mention the swimming pool. Hand made of course, tiled in ceramics, also hand made, of course, but what attracted me was his design solution for heating the water. He had cut the bottoms off wine bottles and threaded them closely on to a hose, then wound the whole into a huge bee-hive looking structure, solar heating long before I ever hear the expression or saw the concept. And this, I think, helps to explain what made him a genius tutor.

Both have obituaries available online at the The Independent
Steven Sykes (1914-1999) http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-steven-sykes-1072852.html
Lesley Sunderland (1947- 1995) http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19951005/ai_n14010332
*taken from the Independent Obit by Tanya Harrod

Paul Dunmall at Cafe OTO

The last time I studied life drawing was at Chelsea School of Art in the 70's but I've discovered a local class and last week when along. Boy, was I rusty! As with all arts the more you practice the better the chance of performing well, so this week I have been taking pens and paper when ever I'm out and about. Yesterday evening, that meant Cafe OTO in Dalston, where Nick was playing with Paul Dunmall, Tony Marsh. The trio have recorded on our Loose Torque label and if you are interested you can put sound to image at All Said and Dun where there is also video of Paul playing with same lineup. Of course, I was heading for the deep end for as subject matters, musicians, in frantic, dynamic, flow are difficult, to say the least, to 'catch'. Some artists manage the trick of motion brilliantly, but I've still to master a still life. I chose Paul to sketch (well, to show you, anyway, even with horribly inaccurate legs). I will post a drawing regularly, if nothing else to enable me to see some improvement over time, well hopefully. To see how it should be done check out Julie's Pictures

A Discerning Client Version Two

After uming and arghing over the design and artwork for the new CD cover for Loose Torque see blog A Discerning Client and to stop the artistic bickering, a brilliant solution has been found by prevailing on my sister for one of her nature photographs. This image, which she took in a birch wood, fits the criteria perfectly as it's suitably nordic, wintery and abstract. Still some design issues for me to settle but at least we're on the road!

A Discerning Client

I have a new commission, for a CD cover artwork and layout. The brief, as always with the Loose Torque Label, is to match the visual theme to the music, in this case, as always, free improvisation. I find most music will paint a composition in the mind, however the picture that resonates within me is often far from the intended impression, although as it happens, there is no intended impression here. (Which could make it harder still.)
There is a particular look of a free music album, either hand painted/drawn or textually reproduced digitally, sometimes incorporating postmodern text and implying complex underlying patterns in scribbled form (admittedly, like the music itself), the whole suggesting a sort of quintessence substance that tells you at a glance you are buying into a free form sound. Very cool, but maybe a tad clichéd.
The trouble is that all art is a current reflection of art that's gone before. Worse than that, a down right copy of what has gone before. For instance, a lot of advertising graphics at present hark back to the 70's, swirls, paisley, flower power etc. I did that stuff in the 70's why would I what to do it again? It's the same for me with this free music post-modernist look, been there, done that!
Of course, I can only revolt like this because the client happens to be my husband, otherwise I would be pulling my forelock and saying, aye aye, captain! Above a rejected piece. Ho hum, back to the drawing board and the morning tea in bed (supplied by the client) negotiations.