The front room of our funny little wood-beamed house in Ludlow, Shropshire. We are now pro fire-builders.
And a doodle of Tony Benn, who we went to see answering audience questions while there. The crazy dog on the left is by my secretly artistic boyfriend.
Sketch with my new Pentel brush pen of our friend Garret’s flat in Barcelona.
A self-portrait.. not a lot for the blog at the moment as have a bit of work on.
I’m on a path of self-education at the moment with my art. I have several books I’m using (see the About section to the right), and right now I’m splitting my time between anatomy/the human form and watercolours. Having some knowledge from previous studies, I began my current investigation of the head with magazines – it’s helpful to see the 3D forms frozen on a 2D plane – and a mirror. I drew and drew each part of the face, making notes, until I had got to grips with their general forms (admittedly the perfect kind as seen on magazine pages!). I’ve posted some of my sheets of paper from this exercise below.
You can click to enlarge them if you like.
I’ve now moved onto the wonderful book Artistic Anatomy, by Dr Paul Richer, first published in 1889. Through this I’m learning about the skeleton (again I’ve begun with the head); there’s so much you don’t realise you’re registering when you view a person. I’ve decided, as per the beliefs of Da Vinci and the great figure-drawers of the past, that to really portray the human form you need to understand how it’s constructed, which muscles move when, etc. So the plan is to get through the whole book, alongside others such as the brilliant Robert B. Hale books on learning to draw from the great masters. Not a short exercise but better than using corpses like back in the day.
A sketch of the most random thing I’ve seen in a long time. I left our building – which is in the heart of Manchester – at about 9am on Wednesday morning, just as this guy skateboarded past. He was completely nonchalant, like he was just getting from A to B. I can’t remember if he was wearing shoes or not.. to clarify, the rabbit was real, looking very content in his arms, and that’s a pink clip in his hair. People who are different or eccentric, who mess with the boundaries without caring what others think, are life-affirming to me. It was a great city moment.
A card for my friends Laura and Steve who have just had a baby. We’d discussed previously the ick of other people referring to your unborn child as things like ‘the peanut’.
My boyfriend’s uncle, Gordon, fast asleep after his daughter’s wedding.
