Saturday 26 December 2015

Falmouth Harbour: Cranes and masts

Falmouth Harbour: Cranes and Masts
Industry and leisure, side-by-side in Falmouth harbour, both reaching for the sky.

Acrylic and Molotow marker on canvas board, 12 x 10"

Friday 18 December 2015

Sketchbook Exchange 2016 (part 3b - the other two)

The theme is Texture, the sub-theme is Rough.
I posted my copyright-minefield-averted on Thursday. Here are the rest of my Rough contributions.
In keeping with the hands-read-texture idea... a textured hand.
Drawn in carbon pencil.

I'm pretty useless with all these skincare accoutrements, but people still buy me them.
Now I know why - so that I can draw them!

I hardly ever use hog brushes; I find them too rough...

(The bottle brush is a ringer - it's not hog and it's not meant for painting with, although I'm sure someone somewhere has tried it. It occurs to me that it looks a bit like a big mascara wand. Shudder. I once tried drawing with mascara. It was not the easiest of cosmetics to apply to paper...)

Media, clockwise from 9 o'clock:
Graphitint pencils with water (applied using the depicted hog filbert) and a hint of Molotow;
Sailor Fude de Mannen (Japanese calligraphy pen) filled with indigo calligraphy ink;
Uniball and Molotow;
Rotring Artpen.


Atlantic Surf

A winter seascape, waves crashing on the Cornish coast, colours that were there all along brought to the fore...

Oil on box canvas, 30 x 80 cm

Thursday 17 December 2015

Waiting (White Bordeaux)

The scenario: you're waiting for your significant other, but they've been delayed. You start the wine. They'll be here soon.

Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 cm

Rock Pools, Prussia Cove

Rock Pools
Prussia Cove, Cornwall
Oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm

£250, framed

Sketchbook Exchange 2016 (part 3a)

The theme is still Texture, the sub-theme is Rough. The drawing in this post uses two of the pages that I have in this book; the circumstances surrounding it require a little more explanation than they might, and so I thought I'd post it on its own.


This two page spread borrows more than a little from popular culture. Copyrighted popular culture. So I wrote to the copyright holders...

And it was alright (it might have helped that I emphasised the not-for-profit element).

2000AD (owners of Judge Dredd, character) told me to include a long statement.
CBS Records (holders of the copyright to "Ruff Justice", 90's indie classic by Pop Will Eat Itself) told me to talk to Pop Will Eat Itself.
Pop Will Eat Itself said, thanks for telling us, here's how the credit should be.

Here's "Ruff Justice". Just so you know, if you didn't already. Warning: they swear a bit.

Friday 11 December 2015

Sketchbook Exchange 2016 (part 2)

This was a tricky one. The theme is still texture; the sub-theme is meaning.

I started off by thinking about how we read texture - primarily through our hands.
So I drew my hands. Note that it's mostly my left hand...

This was the last page that I drew, but the second page in sequence.
It occurred to me that texture is often used in simile,
so I had a bit of fun with some common phrases.

My husband suggested this one to me. Sometime during my lifetime (and his), these textured paving slabs have started to appear on the footpaths. There are ridged ones (whose main purpose seems to be to redirect the wheel of your road bike; quite why they are used on cycle paths I do not know), and there are these bumpy ones (the bumps are "truncated domes") that indicate the best place to cross the road; the texture, of course, is primarily intended for people with impaired sight.
This image is based on a crossing place close to my home. I used heavy body white acrylic to give the page some bumps (not very convincing truncated domes) and drew over the textured page with Molotow marker pens and Uniballs, including some explanatory text.  

The last of my pages in this book is an extension of the "tactile paving" idea.
This time, one hope that the primary users of the textured surface are able to see, because it is a road and the cobbled rumble strip / road hump / sleeping policeman is supposed to be for the benefit of the motorist. The macro-texture is intended to be felt through the vehicles wheels and should encourage the driver to slow down. Again, I used heavy body acrylic for the texture - spreading it thickly to make the road hump and incising it with the knife. There's a cheeky hint of a song drawing that refers to the 59th Street Bridge Song. "Slow down, you're going too fast... "

More Carnations

Two stylised 15 x 15 cm acrylics.

Tuesday 8 December 2015

Trio

Trio 
Oil on box canvas, 30 x 30 cm
£150

A found still life from a (pair of) photograph(s). Not my usual modus operandi; I like to paint still life from life, but these bottles were in a disused mill in Cornwall, in the summer, and there wasn't time to do anything more than photograph them, especially as I was also interested in the old mill workings.

An unusual four tube palette, too - Phthalo Blue and Titanium White are old favourites, but Indian Red and Yellow-Green are new colours to me and I've been enjoying the voyage of discovery.

Friday 4 December 2015

Carnations in multitude

Carnations en masse, acrylic and Molotow on canvas,
I bought a big bunch of spray carnations for a commission (which is to be a gift and so I am not posting it until after it is given). Carnations last for weeks (well, quite a long time), so I'm determined to make the most of them...

Side, acrylic on canvas, 7x7cm


"White carnations suggest pure love and good luck [...] dark red represents deep love and affection. [...] Pink carnations carry the greatest significance, beginning with the belief that they first appeared on earth from the Virgin Mary's tears – making them the symbol of a mother's undying love."
http://www.teleflora.com/meaning-of-flowers/carnation