Moustache Tree!

Day 23 and I have cracked.  It's a tree where I believe all the moustaches of Movember flocked to in December.  I'm enjoying this imagining lark!

28 Drawings Later: February Drawing Challenge, days 20-22

A lovely day of drawing, printing and Photoshop.  I started off drawing a Penny Farthing in pen and then scanned it and manipulated it in Photoshop to produce some wallpaper designs (a la Rachel O' Keefe)  And then my favourite that took quite a while to do- a Raven made up of printed letters.  The inspiration for this came from the Lewis Carroll riddle "Why is a raven like a writing desk?"  which famously has no answer, I think this is a fitting one.  Both have inky quills.

28 Days Later: February Drawing Challenge, Catch up!

Catch up Saturday!  Here are four "drawings" to make up for the last few days of nothingness.  I am having a go at monotype again, I quite like the orange one, it looks a bit more delicate in real life, the smudges aren't so splodgy and the pencil is nice and sketchy.  I like the idea of going over the top of a mono printed outline, might have a go at more of these.  The I quite like the lobster ghost though I don't think I have got the technique perfected quite well enough yet.  More experiments I think!  The digital drawing of Gordon Brown is a little strange with his gradient filled bags under his eyes but I think there is something there that has kind of captured the same sort of feeling as the new labour posters I remember from when I was younger.

A catch up! 28 drawings later, days 12-15

 Bit of a catch up session.  I have been away in Bristol over the weekend for a friend's wedding, I played piano for the ceremony and it was a really lovely day.  I managed to do a quick sketch on the train on the way down (bit embarrassing but a good exercise in quick sketching!).  The stag one is my favourite, I spent a bit more time on it and I enjoy working on the printed page more than a blank piece of paper.  Back on track for this week!

Day 10, Still life!

A straightforward still life today!  Year 10 art lessons involved me helping them today so I had a go myself.  I quite like charcoal and chalk, smudgy goodness.

Egg on your face! day 9

Day 9 February drawing challenge!  And it is Mr Prescott.  I hope the likeness is not too bad...  Back to my roots of using idioms as starting points.  I read somewhere that egg on your face was particularly used in conjunction with politics and so thought it apt to do one of an actual political eggy encounter.

Leeds takeover!

Make do and mend!  Me and my fellow partner in art crime Katherine Johnson will be performing our new piece in Leeds on the 2nd and the 11th of March.  The first one is an exhibition at Broadcasting House called "Reduction" based on the recent cuts to the arts.  The second is called "Home from Home" at 153 Woodhouse Lane and is being shown alongside the annual artist's book fair as artists respond to the brief of a book being a time based medium.  Our performance fits both of these quite well fortunately!  During the performances we will be asking the audience to destroy and deface maps of Britain which we will then try to fix, showing a literal cycle of damage and repair.  It is a piece based on the modern idea of "Broken Britain: and how the ever mounting problems in society are never really fixed but just smoothed over.  We will also be dressed as 1940s factory girls to hark back to wartime community spirit (any excuse to dress up!)  If anyone is about in Leeds pop along and see us in action!

February Drawing Challenge: Day 7

Bit of ink and water today.  Liked this, am enjoying finding out about the appropriateness of materials. 

Day 6: Tree marked for felling

Another quick one, still tired!  Hopefully the week will bring concentration and time to do some detailed sketching.

Day 5; drawing with light

Stretching the brief a little here.  I am very tired from wishing my brother a farewell at Manchester airport in the early hours of this morning, he is on his travels as a cruise line photographer, and thought that a little bit of drawing with light would be a nice easy way to get my 1-a-day drawing in.  I forgot the fact that I don't draw very spontaneously anyway and that a lot of energy is required to make big shapes!  Bad combo but am pleased with the result, think I will refine this at some point and try and get some lovely simple shapes going on, I like the depth of the circular shape at the top where you can see a 3d quality to the light.

Day 4 Bowl 'o balls!

A quick one tonight as not much time, enjoyed working with oil pastels though, even thought it's a bit wonky (ok, completely deformed)  I like the shading and stuff.  And I like brown paper.  Lovely stuff.

3rd day, a bit of Illustrator

A raven.  A bit fuzzy as I had to export it from Illustrator to get it on here, I was thinking about that iridescent shine birds have in their feathers when I did this.  Go go drawings!

February Drawing Challenge: Day 2

Second drawing of February after a couple of failed attempts at doing a cathedral window. Didn't spend as long on this one but I like the idea of drawing a picture on each page of a dictionary. Whether or not this could be achieved is another thing! I have dirty fingers.

28 Drawings Later: February Drawing Challenge

Expect more of these!  The 28 drawings later is a February drawing challenge set up by Scottish artist Victoria Evans.  The idea being that you do a drawing for each day in February and upload it to the facebook page here creating an "evolving exhibition" and hopefully see some progress in your own work.  This is my first one from one of the photos I took the other day.  Not bad for a first attempt, it has been years since I have properly sat down and drawn something so I am pleased!  Hopefully I will be as enthusiastic after drawing number 28!