Drawing For Life - 4

My task on Monday was to put some curves back into my life drawing at Betty Frankenstien's Drawing Room, SE19. As an exercise, I tried to keep my pencil on the paper as long as possible. Instead of drawing all over the place, to get from one side of the page to the other I had to follow an existing (or create a new) route. This increased the darkness of the lines, sometimes, but did make it harder to measure or prepare proportions. I'm really pleased with this picture but none of the others made the grade for the web, I'm afraid.

Borough Market Ideas Give Away

I popped along to Borough Market, SE1 last week to see if I could get some ideas for some new art work. I'm very keen to develop my monoprinting further. I think the marks you can make with ink are really interesting. The trip was fruitful - I'm currently producing five pieces based on what I saw down in The Borough: coloured monoprints with black ink details drawn over the top. Hopefully they will evoke something of the hustle and smells you can get down there - seemingly every day of the week, but I know that's not 100% true. Borough Market is closed sometimes. Here are some photos that I took along the way, but the work itself will be much more produce/stall focussed. Coming soon.

Drawing For Life - 3

Life drawing evenings continue (despite the dense London heat we have at the moment) at Betty Frankenstien's Drawing Room in Crystal Palace. I found an old pad of coloured, slightly textured paper that I think used to be my mum's (!) It even has the price written on the front in pencil: 10/- which I believe is 10 shillings. I've had it for years, but never found a use for it - until now. I thought I'd try my hand at using soft pencil, white chalk and working more tonally. I'm still wrestling with the speed that I have to work at during the poses but I guess that's all part of the Life Drawing Game. Learning that economy of line and tone to convey the human body as succinctly as possible. Anyway, it's all for the good causes of Art and Illustration.

Rowney sketchbook

Printing in mono

I've been trying out some monoprinting at home, to see what results it might produce.

Monoprint. Blue printing ink (diluted, neat and wiped). Printed on damp 220 gsm paper.

This is what I did:

• Monoprinting basically involves painting (with water soluble printing inks) on a water resistant surface (I've used glass).

• I placed a printout of a photo of mine (taken in Borough, London SE1) underneath the glass, to give me something to paint over as inspiration.

• Using either: neat ink, slightly diluted ink, ink that I scratch into, or ink that I apply then wipe off - I created my image.

• I then place either a dry piece of paper onto the inked glass (or a piece that's been soaking for a few minutes in water but with any surface water wiped off before printing).

• With a small roller (normally used for linocut printing) you give the back of the paper a few good rolls.

• Carefully lift up the paper and voila! Your print.

• Monoprinting is so called, because each print is unique, a one off. You can try to get two or three prints from one 'inking' but they will each look significantly different to your first (but still interesting if you're lucky).

Merchandise At Last!

Well, I've entered the world of merchandising. Sort of. Inspired by Jules from Crystal Palace Subway, and liaising with Liz at Smash Bang Wallop (a home wares and gift shop in Crystal Palace), I adapted a design for a t-shirt based on my 'Subway Sphinxes' image. So, you can now buy clothing in a proper shop bearing my design. How cool is that?

'Subway Sphinxes' adapted for use as a t-shirt design. [detail]

Jules is part of the growing group of people trying to raise the profile of the abandoned subway at the edge of Crystal Palace Park (see my earlier posts) and she had the idea to do something on a t-shirt. This venture is something good for me, Smash Bang Wallop and for raising the profile of the Subway (and the crumbling Sphinxes on the terrace). The small army of park lovers in CP get a small mention on the labels too (see picture): @cpsubway, @CPParkCommunity & @crystal_sphinx.

T-shirt Tag