A Perfect Day?!

Spindle Drilling Machine

This weekend is Heritage Weekend in UK with many interesting places open for free. Yesterday, taking advantage of the lack of entrance fee, I went to the Museum of Power, Langford.

In situ in Museum of Power

The sound and sight of The 'Simpson' Belt Driven Workshop attracted my attention, so I decided to sketch there. With so many machines, belts, and interesting things I chose a small section to focus on and the above sketch is the result. Here is the in-situ photo. This sketch was done with a sepia Derwent pencil in A4 Monologue sketchbook. Whilst the afternoon sketch was Winsor & newton watercolours, Staedtlar Pigment liner in Daler A5 sketchbook.

After lunch, Degas and I went to Goldhanger for their Gala Weekend. With a karate demo going on in the churchyard, I took Degas down the road and walked her around the sea wall before heading into the village. As musicians were setting up in the Salty Dogs Tea Room, we headed there. It was the perfect afternoon: What's better than drinking tea (and eating carrot cake), in a beautiful garden, listening to live music, with your dog lying at your feet as you sketch?

Music, tea & cakes in a beautiful garden.

 It was a lovely day. What would make your perfect day?

Devon doodles

Trying to capture the evening sun.

Having an invitation to a new fringe event in Devon, Tavistock Edge, I decided my assistant and I would have a holiday beforehand and found a cottage for us just on the edge of Dartmoor. I did lots of sketches throughout the week. I was especially fascinated with the cattle in the next field, as was Degas, so I drew them as she barked at them.

Here are some of the landscapes:

8th July Morning rain

A very quick sketch of Cox Tor as my assistant was impatient to explore.

Here is a selection of the animal sketches:

5th July Calves in evening showers.

More cattle.

You can see more here: Great landscapes & animals.

I'll post the Tavistock Edge sketches next Sunday.
What do you think of my sketches? I'd love it if you left me a comment below. 

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Dreads & tats

Gaby, Charcoal A3© Sue Pownall 2013

Whilst in the UK I went to 2 more life drawing classes. As with drawing Terry I took charcoal to draw with as I'd had such fun before. In the 2nd class, I also tried using watercolours directly without under-drawing. I think as a side-effect of drawing portaits for my Festival Faces series, with both models I ended up drawing portraits during the long poses. Gaby was so pleased with my drawing of her that she took a photo of it. Below are other drawings of Gaby.

Gaby reclining. A3 Direct painting with Payne's Grey watercolour

Gaby A3 watercolour.

The day before I left UK, I got to draw Rachel and her tattoos again. I drew her before in September 2011 and you can see those drawings here. With the first long pose I drew the charcoal portrait below, which I think is a fair likeness. Then did the rough full body drawing. Can you tell I was pre-occupied with what I had to do before my flight the next morning?

Rachel Charcoal A3 © Sue Pownall 2013

Rachel in charcoal A3

Finally,  I drew another portrait of Rachel as a concerted effort to focus and relax.

Portrait in sepia pencil on A3

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Tattooed lady

5 min warm-ups. © Sue Pownall 2011

As I'm stuck in UK, problems with paperwork for new contract yawn, I thought I would take advantage of my local drop-in life class. Despite the fact I haven't been since last summer, several people recognised me and so chatted to them in the breaks. I was preoccupied as I was going to a printers for the first time that afternoon to arrange prints of some of my work and was unsure if I've choosen the right pieces, number, size...

30 min pose © Sue Pownall 2011

Despite that, I was very pleased with my 5 min warm-up sketches and the half hour long pose afterwards. However after the break and the resumption of the long pose, I started a new piece which got too over-worked and pretty. Oh, and despite remeasuring, checking  and altering several times the hands still look too small.

arrrgh too pretty © Sue Pownall 2011

Towards the end of the class, I abandoned the pretty drawing and I grabbed a sketchbook (35x25cm), a pen and sketched the tattoos.

Pen © Sue Pownall 2011

One of the reasons I attended the class, apart from opportunity, is that I feel it is important to practise the basic drawing skills whenever possible as well as sketch and produce finished pieces. By coincidence, the fabulous writer and ceramist Diana Baur wrote a post on that this week click here to check it out. It's very worth reading.

Dog sitting studies #6

My dog-sitting duties ceased on Monday, so here are the final sketches and some photos. Nelson often lies on his back, legs akimbo, for hours on end, like this...

Nelson asleep in the lounge.

That is until someone gets a camera or a sketchbook out and then he moves after 2 seconds. I wanted to capture that pose, but as you can see he didn't stay still - it's the top one. I actually did better in #3 here.

 He is a strange dog as he doesn't like to swim, but will paddle in any water. I published some pics of him earlier in a pond. Here he is in the same pond later in the week.

Another walk, in a different part of the same pond.

In a pond up the woods.

Two-tone Nelson.

Finally, I was taking some reference photos for a possible drawing and Nelson decided he wanted to be included:

Exam sketches

Doing their weekly exam on Monday, I first drew El Tigani with his very upright posture, when I noticed Ahmed was struggling with the test. Moving frequently, Ahmed's most unusual position was wrapping his right arm across his face and onto his left shoulder (he's left handed) and I tried to capture this every time he moved into that position. (portrait sketch top right) He has beautiful hands, which were full of tension, but they moved so frequently I was unable to capture them. I think the bottom portrait has captured his sadness at the difficulty of the paper.

With the second class, I sketched the view out of the window, but was unable to finish it within the time, so I intend to either finish it at break tomorrow or the day after and post it then.

Life drawing class - Michael

At class the other day, I was not expecting a male model. It took me a little while to settle, hence the very bad, unpublished,warm up drawings and the seated pose from the side, but after tea I drew the two reclining poses. I am very pleased with how I captured the foreshortening in the last picture of the day (top) and the strength of his legs. I measured and remeasured Michaels raised arm in the lower picture, and concluded it was a the way the pillow covered part of the arm which made it look wrong, I'm still not happy with it.

Art-based resolutions

I'm starting off the year quite well despite the difficult weather conditions by drawing mum & Nelson inside on the 2nd & 3rd. Then on the 4th I attended another life drawing class. I was not to happy with the results, my proportions kept going wrong, so switched to my favourite pen and gave up on the pencil to produce the piece above. I walked around the model trying different viewpoints and details, and ended up fairly happy with the results.

Reading Cathy of asketchintime I thought I would steal some of her ideas for art-based resolutions. Checkout her blog for some great illustrations.

"Manage my time better - far too much time is spent on the internet, which is perfectly entralling but doesn't get any painting or sketching done". I think that's a great place to start, although I will still blog my results, but maybe not spend so much time on Facebook, and reading various blogs. 
 
"Do what I love, love what I do ...- I’m not about to throw out all other mediums, but I would like to focus on getting better at... ". in my case I'm going to concentrate on my pen & ink. I've had lots of fun since September, when I started this blog, painting, drawing in pencil etc., but I want to develop and complete more ink drawings.

"I am also so enjoying sketching, the quick, immediate and spontaneous act which I’d never really considered an art form in its own right until I was exposed to wonderful work on Urban Sketchers". Me too, and I resolve to do lots more this year.

I left the UK on the 7th, so my future posts will be from Italy, I hope you like them and I look forward to reading your comments.

HAPPY 2010, MAY IT BRING YOU PEACE & HAPPINESS.