Holiday drawing

I usually don't draw much on holiday, but I have a happy memory of drawing these early one evening while D was making dinner in the tiny kitchen of our shepherd's hut in the middle of a field in West Wales.  

We had space for a mini break in early June and the plan was to explore the Pembrokeshire coast. Although the weather report wasn't saying camping, I wanted nature and super simple.   

We found a shepherd's hut (which is really a small tin shack on wagon wheels) just outside Tenby, Wales on airbnb. Perfect for camping lite but without rain soaked walks to the loo block and nights of flapping nylon.

I loved that it was a short walk across a potato field to the cliff path and then a choice of windswept hikes along the coastal reserve. Simple.

The hut was super cute inside, and I didn't feel the urge to clear away a single thing. Usually the first thing I do when I get to a hotel or B+B room is take down offending pictures, stuff frilly/satin cushions into a cupboard and get rid of all knicknaks. (Ye olde shepherdess figurines and jolly wooden lighthouse ornaments, I'm talking to YOU.)

We had cows for neighbours, and a little local train choo chooed by every hour or so, and birdsong - welcome respite from the sirens and constant traffic hum of home.

There was even time and inclination to draw. I love that I drew these campion flowers loosely, without that drawing school thing of 'draw what you see not what you think you see' sounding in my head.  This has its place, but for me it has become a Rule of Drawing, which is totally tiresome. 

I draw what I like these days, and how I like, more and more.

Letter to Malevitch

Dear Kazimir, 

I first met you during a slide show in a gloomy lecture theatre as an art student at the University of Cape Town. Those lectures were pretty early in the morning so if I wasn't always that awake, when you came up, forgive me. 

Also, a slide of a painting of a black square is a little ho hum, I think you might agree. Last week, we met properly, eyeball to canvas, at the Tate Modern and I saw I had misjudged your work entirely.

I remembered that you were a Russian artist who painted a black square on a canvas and then a white cross on a white canvas and that was a Big Thing at the time, which was somewhere in the tumultuous context of the peasant revolts, of Stalin and Russia in the 1930s. 

(History isn't my strong point Kazimir, so that's roughly about right I hope.)

It was a surprise, on meeting your work at the Tate Modern again, to discover that you also painted portraits of your dad and later your mum. Tender, naturalistic portraits. And wooden bungalows, peasants in the fields. Homages to cubism, to futurism in rich, deep colour. Not the sort of thing I saw you as doing at all when we first met.

I had no idea that you were so into colour. Richly glowing hues, shimmering like icon paintings sometimes. 

The chalky limestone-white backgrounds of your abstract work, the deep almost black plums, yellows both sunny and dirty. Red squares talking to black squares, pinks. Soft greys. I found the language of Suprematism to be surprisingly lyrical. 

The Black Square and all the critical engagement where you were finding a new place for art, was but the half of it, I see that now. 

As a painter, you also paid your dues as a master of colour, space, and the dance of shapes both abstract and figurative.You brought your heart into painting as much as your head, and as such it was a pleasure to get to know you better.

hello, gorgeous (#spring)

This guy is in the churchyard next door to our house. Resolutely spring delicate and fluttery no matter what. Drinkers brawl in the recesses of the church building, school kids toss another empty fried chicken box amongst the graves, bikes flash down the lane - and still, the flowers. Clouds of them, saying hello to the gentle sunshine.

Charcoal and colour pencil on cartridge paper.

Sea blues, winter greys

The first week in January. 

A tricky place, sometimes, with self initiated work. Opening the watercolour box, filling up the water jars, facing a blank page again after the long break. 

This year, I began with binding my own sketchbook. Slicing, stitching and gluing paper and card felt do-able and very, very satisfying. I get to determine the format - square and smallish felt good. 

This is a great DVD on simple bookbinding from Shepherds, paper and bookbinding specialists in London.

I knew I wanted to start off with colour studies, since I had been inspired by a visit to see Turner and the Sea at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

Many of Turner's late, very elemental and rough, more experimental pieces were on show. To my eye, those were some of the most interesting and wow pieces in the exhibition. Pieces which were not originally intended for exhibition, actually, they were private explorations and notes.

I looked and looked at the greys he is so famous for, and at the huge tonal range. 

Back in my studio I'm loving finding the varied greys, hunting for the full range of tonal values using just a few colours and coming back again and again to the same thing in a meditative way. 

The blank page has become an invitation, and I can't wait to finish one spread and start the next each day.

snatches of the karoo, south africa

These were made on the road back from the Kalahari in South Africa, done in the car on the long, beautiful road between Brandvlei and Calvinia on the R27. I've always wondered how it would be to paint those huge landscapes, at least now I have made a start. Such a great way to really see, to notice more of the changing colours and forms and textures of the countryside. The textures out there are something special - the small, dry karoo bushes, the ironstone koppies, the smoothness of mountain ranges far, far in the distance and the fenceposts marching forever towards the horizon. I'm a fan.

central line to epping

 

Curiously, older people are harder to draw unobserved. Perhaps they aren't so used to the invasions of privacy a younger generation regards as unremarkable - the constant photographing, blogging and sharing images of ourselves on facebook.  I try to be discreet when drawing on the train, and hope that at the very least I'm celebrating people's individuality in a sensitive, if not always conventionally flattering way.

Interstate 40 to Flagstaff

From our trip to the Southwestern USA, a drawing made very much on the road, in the car and on the move.

from my sketchbook - virginia creeper

I'm pleased I made this drawing a few weeks ago - all but a few last leaves are still hanging on now. Marker pen on collaged background.