Saturday life drawing

Starting a new plate

Had a day at Red Hot Press this week minding the shop. Managed to make a start on new plate Dramatis Personae. Transfering the basic image onto the plate to make the first line etch. More characters will be added but this is the initial drawing to get started.

Building on a Foundation at Southampton City Art Gallery

 
Prints by members of Red Hot Press are on show at Southampton City Art Gallery at the moment. I have two pieces on display - my dragon roof tile and of course, PB has to get in on the act! He wouldn't miss out! On until 24 June 2016.

Dramatis Personae

All this etching in fits and starts is really frustrating but we're off again, PB and I. Working on some drawings for my next image. This one is a bit of a regrouping... A gathering of the clan. Taking stock of the PB 'family'. New characters coming soon.

March life drawing

 

It was our monthly life drawing day with Brian at the art gallery yesterday; there was all kinds of bad drawing and painting going on from me! Just couldn't get any proportions correct.

I had high hope for the painting as we had a two-hour pose but the fire alarm went off an hour into te pose and we lost half an hour to standing around outside in the cold. Not that I'm blaming my rubishness on that of course...! I was just having an off day.

Imprint2 PV

 

The private view was well attended and we mad some sales. Job done! 

Photos taken by Katherine Anteney.

Imprint2

It's up! We hung the show at Harbour Lights today. More pictures to come. Opening on Tuesday evening from 7 to 9pm. Join us for a glass of wine and meet the artists.

Evening life drawing

When the Hamble life drawing class folded, I was really disappointed. I found a fairly local evening class to attend in the interim but unfortunatley it's on a Tuesday evening so clashes with Cowprint and the Harbour Lights opening of Imprint2. I've missed a few sessions therefore.

The course is run very differntly to the Hamble sessions and indeed most of the life drawing I've done in the past. It's much more focused on teaching basic drawing skills so the tutor has us do various exercises. I try to go with it but much prefer to just do my own thing. Yours, Wayward of Southampton.

Life drawing again!

Had a great day last Saturday; a full day of life drawing and painting at the Art Gallery with Brian, the tutor from the Hamble classes. It was a really good session - good to paint again having not done so since before Christmas. This painting is just a sketch really, done in about an hour in a half. Must try to get ore of the background in next time.

20 minute pose

20 minute pose

'As flies to wanton boys': The Rise of the Precariat

Finished and a couple of the edition pulled ready for Imprint2 at Harbour Lights later this month.

Usually I have the next image brewing before finishing whatever I'm working on, but nothing doing at the moment...

Almost there

I think I'm pretty well there with this image now. I'm happy the plate is done and the monoprinted background it more or less there. Too speckly in the top right corner; losing the datamongers a bit but I can sort that in the edition. Which will be variable of course. Yay!

Influences 7 - Giles cartoons

It's been a while since I wrote an 'influences' post - the last was in August 2014 when I talked about the work of printmaker Ali Yanya. I suppose those posts are really about artists whose work I admire so their influence on my own work may not be immediately obvious. It's there to some degree though.

Whilst drawing the flying datamongers in my latest print, it suddenly dawned on me that there are two artists who have had a really strong influence on my work over the years and I've not realised it: Ronald 'Carl' Giles and Richard Scarry. I grew up with the cartoons and illustrations of these two, receiving a Giles annual every Christmas from the ages of about six to twenty, and Scarry books periodically. I'll save Scarry for another post but the two are similar in that the images are packed with recurring characters and action. I spent hours and hours looking at them, studying them, absorbing all the wonderful, comic details.

Giles started working as a cartoonist in 1937 for the left-wing paper Reynolds News, then moved to the Sunday Express in 1943. His cartoons were topical, commenting on current news and British attitudes in a very gentle way. 

My favourite cartoons were always the ones with the family in them; the extended family of which Grandma was the matriarch. She must be one of the best cartoon characters of all time - cheeky, beligerent and a bit scary. And you can't help but love the mini version of her - the little mop-haired boy who's always up to no good, quite often with a camera. These are just two members of this vast, familiar, never-aging family. I used to try and match the children to the adults. And I used the annuals as colouring books!

My own images have become sort of montages I suppose, composite images with different things going on. I think up until recently, if asked where this has come from, I'd have probably said looking at Grayson Perry's work. Now I think it goes back much further than that to the images that absorbed me as a child. Giles and Richard Scarry as influences? I'm fine with that!

If you'd like to look at more Giles cartoons, you can see them here.