Busy weekend!

So, right off, there was the Bristol Sketchers meeting.  The focus should've been the italian motors in and around Corn Street, but it was too crowded for my liking and I took shelter in St. Nick's Market.  I ate an early lunch and did an awful colour sketch of the woman behind the counter of Royce Rolls - doesn't look much like her, she moved around too much.

Then I wandered about the market (bought a 2nd-hand easy-piano album of songs from Cabaret, the Judy Dench stage version) and made my way back to Neptune's statue, the meeting place for the group, by 1pm.  While we waited for everyone to return, I sketched the building that houses a co-op supermarket in St. Augustine's Parade.

We reconvened to a Corn Street café to look at our output and chat.  By the time we'd all had a go to 'show and tell' it was time to sprint up to the RWA for the private viewing of work by Robert Lenkiewicz.

This was really something, as I'd only discovered this artist last September, when I passed a bookshop window in Fowey.  It displayed several books reproducing his artwork and I was immediately struck by the guy's versatility of style and use of colour.  I brought one of the books back to Bristol with me, never thinking that I'd get the chance to see his paintings up close.

So, RWA set up five rooms to display a great wealth of his works, some of which are on enormous canvasses.  Exhilarating stuff.  What wasn't so great was the inclusion of the embalmed corpse of one of his muses - the homeless man known as 'Diogenes'.  I'm not very good with seeing dead, um... things. :(

Still, a great exhibition - a tremendous coup for RWA.  I'm going to revisit it a great many times before the end of its run.

Now, today - we had really good weather again and I was considering leaving Bristol to find something in the country to sketch.  Instead, I left the car behind, put on my trainers and followed the sunshine to The Temple, or Holy Church in Temple Street.

Its tower has been subsiding since its construction in 1460 and the church itself has been derelict since incendiary bombs gutted it in 1942.  Walking around its perimeter is scary.  I was reminded of the novel Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd...

I moved swiftly into the sun in the adjoining Temple Gardens, where I did a sketch of one of the windows as well as a quick colour sketch of a family un-self-consciously picnicking on a tomb :S

I moved on, meandering towards the harbour and ended up taking in the Cosima Von Bonin's exhibition of soft sculptures and macabre playgrounds at the Arnolfini.  I liked the use of stitched line-drawings and  phrases on blanket material.  Not sure about the neon cigarette motif that was repeated often.  Anyone got any ideas on that?

After an early supper at Watershed (where I bought my Friday tix for Wim Wenders 3D movie Pina) I headed to St. George's for a half marathon performance of Vexations by Erik Satie.  It was (on the whole) a relaxing and hypnotic experience, the short sequence of music played in bundles of 30 by a stream of pianists to a total of 420 repeats.  The relative stillness of the performers enabled me to get some more sketching practice in :)

All in all, a rewarding weekend :)

Bristol Sketchers: Bristol Harbourside

Fantastic, August-temperature day in the city centre.  A small group of increasingly familiar faces met outside the Arnolfini :) We set ourselves an hour and a quarter to capture elements of our surroundings.  I chose to visit the Millenium Square, stopping on the way to sketch Pero's Bridge.

I moved on to the square and wasn't prepared for the cacophony of noise produced by the screaming crowds of children playing in the water features (tho' every pillar in the area warns them that the waters are not suitable for paddling and may contain sharp objects...), that and the volume of the giant tv screen presenting non-stop BBC news coverage.

I sat in a relatively calm spot and made my first attempt (in years) at a colour study.  I chose the planetarium, its polished mirror surface absorbing the surrounding buildings, the sky, the water and breaking it into regular portions.

As I grasped this task a small boy came up to me and asked "Are you good?" Um? "Are you good?" "Are you good, at drawing?"  I asked him what he meant by good, but he only persisted with his closed question.  I decided to say "Yes" and leave it at that.  He left me immediately and I thought that would be the end of it.

As I was just about ready to call it a day with the sketch, the small boy returned.  "No.  No, no!" he cried. When I asked him what was the matter, he replied "It's silver" and walked off.

Bristol Sketchers: First of the Month

This was supposed to be drawing Circomedia, but it got rained off.  Instead we went to The Canteen, Stokes Croft.

We had people, decor and the outdoors as subject matter.

I liked the wonky, cable-stuffed paper lantern.

The bar is filled with strong geometric lines.

Customers were far more fidgety than I expected.  I lost track of how many times this guy, who was watching italian footie on a laptop, changed his leg and arm positions...

My last stab at sketching was of this group of folk discussing a business venture.  I reduced the woman's frock to the repeat motif of the fabric and the red occasional trim.  More people joined them after a short while and I lost the composition - I also think the guy in the glasses caught me sketching and moved out of sight on purpose :P

Met some new folks, with terrific imagination and energy - such a buzz to be with them :)  I had a lot of fun!

Later, on my return journey from my parents (for Mother's Day), the sunshine led me to The Downs and I took a shot at a sketch of the Avon Gorge.

I tried to use as little detail as possible.

My background

This is a painting I attempted in 2006.  The pose was chosen from a series of photos I took of a model I met online.  It took a great deal of time to layer the paint and get the effects I had in my head.  I have more recently decided that painting from photos is a bit of a hurdle, since you are effectively producing a 2D version of something already rendered 2D by the camera lens.  I think this plays havoc with the feel of a painting, making it look flat.  Perhaps it comes down to the artist's skill to reduce that effect, but I steer clear of photo source as a result.

I like the way the hand ended up and most of the texture of Hayden's skin :)

Model: Jason

Woo - just had a chap over for a bit of life drawing practice.  I found his face far too interesting to do the whole of him :)  He seems keen to repeat the experience, so that's something to look forward to!

The struggle to avoid detail - oh good grief, now here comes a steep learning curve.  I think that's why it ceased to be a figurative drawing session.  I am glad that my efforts give a (generally) consistent rendition of his face.  I found that by the end of the two and a quarter hour session 1) I was exhausted and losing focus, and 2) I was developing an appreciation of the features of Jason's face, their unique arrangement.  My hands had begun to anticipate the shape of his skull, the weight of his eyelids and the thinness of his lips.  I think drawing him got easier as I grew familiar with him.  Hopefully you can see some character there...?

To fix, or not to fix - and with what?

The sketchers opened my eyes to fixative for graphite drawings.  Folks were divided between buying stuff purpose-built for the job and hairspray!  I googled for more info and it does appear that they are much the same, tho' hairspray can have unwelcome additions like vitamins and conditioners that might as easily destabilise your drawings as protect them.

In the spirit of fear that I'd fuck it up and pride in my high street small traders I bought LOXLEY aerosol fixative from the local artist's materials shop. £5.95 for 200ml, which may be over the odds.

I've experimented with it and have to say - use with caution.  Too generous an application gives your sketches a bloom as they bleed into the saturated paper... and they can take on a purple hue.  The smell - well, it transformed my lounge into what smelt like a car bodywork paintshop. It dissipates eventually, which is more than can be said for the absorbent paper, which locks the acetate aroma in. :(

On the plus side, it does what it says on the tin.  Even my heavy-handed style won't shift after an even coat has been applied.