Drinking and drawing

Pencil sketch of Natasha Robertson at The Black Buoy's April/May Beer Festival 2016

I have just returned from the Black Buoy in Wivenhoe's May bank holiday real ale festival. My assistant and I sat outside sketching and listening to the music, although my assistant was more interested in the fish and chips.

Earlier this week, I arranged for the Colchester Sketchers to drink/draw at the Bricklayers. My first sketch of my Aspell's cider was the most successful and is shared below.

Direct watercolour sketch.

 Finally, something different, I currently have my experimental piece hung at the Art Exchange where it was selected for the Celebrate Landscape exhibition. If you are in the area, pop in before it closes next Saturday.

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BTW. Last week's post didn't autopost here. You can read it by clicking this link I Draw Do You?

An Arty Time

Channelling Monet. Colour planned on site but added later.

On Wednesday, I headed to town with the first stop at the Royal Academy to see the Painting the Garden: Monet to Matisse exhibition. It was the most inspiring exhibition I have seen in a long time and I just want to draw and paint gardens.

Sketched inside the exhibition.

Next stop was at my favourite London gallery, The National Portrait Gallery, where I went from inspiring paintings to amazing photography in the Vogue 100: A hundred years of style.

Arriving early to meet friends and fellow artists, Jean Edwards & Minnie, I took inspiration from the Monet exhibition and sketched the pub focusing on the garden. (top).

After dinner, it was off to the Tower of London. Arriving early I used the 15 minute wait to sketch the Shard. (below)

 We were at the Tower of London for a fabulous evening at #DrawnattheTower with Art Macabre: Ravens and Morbid Corvids. I started off drawing the RavenMaster, who was a fount of knowledge on everything corvid down to the naming of the birds: he was holding Gripp. After a couple of sketches of Gripp, I moved on to the pairs of ravens in their cages. They are only caged at night and roam freely around the Tower during the day. The ravens were very challenging to sketch and moved a lot, my results were not helped by my butterfly brain wating to take photos and chat to the Raven Master: love interesting people. I think my last sketch, drawn on black paper, is the most successful and I have hung it up in the studio. Here it is:

To see the rest please go here to the slideshow

After all that artistic input, I've been very busy drawing and planning prints since coming home. I especially want to get on with my Bourne Mill gardening project. What have you been working on?

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2015 year in review

2015 A Year of Growth, Development & Successes from Sue Pownall

Where was I?

Accepting Braintree Chamber prize

This year I've been entering a few exhibitions, and have been quite successful. 

Last month, I entered and was juried into the Braintree Open AND I won the Braintree Chamber prize.

Storm over the Saltings hung at Braintree Open.

 Also, in Braintree, I was chosen to have a painting in the Art Trail.

Wentworth House, in position in the art trail.

Finally, I had a painting juried into the Harwich Open.

Broken Dreams hung in the Harwich Open.

So that's where you could find me in June. What were you up to? You can tell me in a comment to this post.

2013 in review and resolutions

2013 was a rollercoaster year with very high highs and very low dips both personally and professionally. The best was rescuing a street pup, Degas, who 8 months later has grown into a beautiful young dog with a lovely friendly temperment. Due to her, I have moved to a house with a garden, 30 seconds from the beach. The low has been seeing my mother after she had a massive stroke in May and helping her move into residential care after a long spell in hospital, whilst making sure my father (along with his dog Nelson) is cared for with his developing dementia.

Al Minsefah Doorway. 2013. SOLD

 For 2013 I had 3 words to guide my art: inspiring, happiness and dream. Plus my resolution, as written in last year's review post was "throughout 2013 my resolution and goal will be on getting my finances in order, so I can move to Barcelona as soon as possible. ... my sketchbook will remain with me throughout 2013, I already have 2 commissions for drawings and further illustrations to do for The Story Shack... obviously my art passion will not be totally neglected." Well, due to having to take 3 trips to UK to help my parents, my finances are still not in order, though they are a little better then a year ago and I am still not in Barcelona. However, my art passion was certainly not neglected.

La Sagrada Familia, 2013. ©Sue Pownall inspired by Norberto Dorantes

Inspiring: The biggest inspiration I found was attending the Urban Sketchers' Symposium in Barcelona. Four days of sketching and talking about sketching with amazing arty people. I met artists there who I have been in awe of and following for years like Luiz Ruiz and Norberto Dorantes. I was especially pleased to finally meet Pete Scully , Omar, and Liz Steel and to sketch with Alissa. I got to catch up with the Barcelona sketchers and Nina Johansson who I'd sketched with in 2012.  Then, there were all the new artists I had the pleasure to meet and sketch with such as Simone and Chris, who I can't wait to sketch with again.

Burj Al Arab from Souq Madinate Jumeriah, UAE. 2013

Other inspiration came from attending Art Dubai and the Global Art Forums in UAE, in March. It was great to see the contemporary art and attend the talks.

Illustrations and drawings from 2013.

Happiness: Whilst Degas has brought love, laughter and fun in my life, happiness within my art is hard to measure:- my biggest year end profit, 3 commissions, only half as many drawings 6 compared with 2012's 14, illustration work, or a solo exhibition - which brings me to ...

The Blind House. 2013 SOLD. One of my favourite drawings from the year.

  
Dream: I'm not sure when the dream to have my first solo show became more than a dream, but it was realised in December where I exhibited 30 pieces at the Beach House, Seeb. The exhibition exceeded all my expectations when I sold 12 of  the 28 available for sale.

A wall of portraits. Another dot was later added to Still Celebrating by Mary (left)

*****

Resolutions for 2014

The last three years, I have used three words to guide my life throughout the year, but cannot fix on any this year. 

• I wish to be single-minded with my art by which I mean I will be selfish with my art time and not let people nor events cut into it. The obvious exception is Degas. 
• I still want to move Degas and I to Barcelona, so will continue to organise my finances, whilst helping my parents.

One of my first sketches of 2014: Degas

 In order for these to be goals rather than wishes, I have an amount to achieve by October. Also, I am setting aside a minimum 8 hours each weekend for art production. Finally, I want to produce a minimum of 6 ink drawings within the year.

*****

May 2014 see you produce lots of art, laughter, and bring peace & happiness.

What do you think? Please leave me a comment. Thank you.

Art of a Nomad Exhibition

With my amazing host, Tess.

Friday, brought the vernissage for my first solo exhibition. Hung were 30 pieces, which included the drawing of the venue that I had been commissioned to draw (above) and some of my sketches. The venue is a hub of events here in Muscat and is a fabulous exhibition space. (Next weekend is a charity gig for a family in the Philippines whose homes have been destroyed in the typhoon. I'm donating 10% of any sales made on the evening).

My first red dot!

A wall of portraits. Another dot was later added to Still Celebrating by Mary (left)

My final dot of the evening #6 as Elena bought Al Minsefah Doorway

 The following morning, we held a coffee morning, which was well attended and resulted in 2 more sales. I was very pleased to have Omanis visiting and even buying my work, which was a lovely surprise as I view my market as being expatriates.

Omanis looking at my Omani portraits.

Both the vernissage and the coffee morning exceeded my expectations and, as I said on facebook, but it needs repeating THANK YOU to everyone who made it a success. BIG THANKS to my host Tess for everything she did, I am truly blessed to have Tess as a friend. To Marek who helped set up and gave me lovely roses on the night. To Jon who sorted out the drinks and music and Stephen who did the photos all evening. Lastly, but not any less in importance, a thank you to all my friends who came to support me

Sneak peak

Section of Al Minsefah doorway ©Sue Pownall 2013

I'm currently working towards my solo exhibition, which is on from 7th December here in Muscat. 

This is a sneak peak at the first new work that I've produced. If you want to see the whole thing, you'll have to wait until the exhibition.

A day in the life of... me

I sometimes wonder where my 'drawing' time goes. Yes, I waste time on 'marketing' myself a.k.a. facebooking, checking emails, and tweeting. However, serious internet time is spent catching on my blogging friends, adding content to my facebook page, and checking out possible art opportunities etc. So after finding no time to draw today, I thought I would chronicle my day.

It started at 12.45am when I got up, not being able to sleep, in order to finish my submission for an exhibition, whose deadline was today. I went back to bed an hour later with it 99% finished. 7.30am I got up for the second time and fiddled with my submission on and off for a couple of hours, whilst facebooking, eating breakfast, showering etc. 

9.45 I got in my car and drove to the printers I use for scanning and got the drawing scanned. I then sat in the car putting it its frame. From there I drove to the gallery, which should hang my work later this year, which is at the far end of Muscat. At the gallery I swopped Festival Face #5 The Grandfather, which I had taken with me, for His Brother's Musar. The reason was that I'd received an email the evening before from someone wishing to purchase His Brother's Musar and I need to mail it to its new home in Australia.

From the gallery, it was a mad dash in Muscat Wednesday traffic (think Friday evening in Europe) to the Omani Society of Fine Arts, arriving about 11.30. I handed in my drawing, relieved, was asked about submission details, which I had emailed last week... BUT then was asked about the cd with the jpeg of the drawing aarghhh. Dashed home, cleaned scan from printers in photoshop, burnt a cd, and drove back to OSFA. As I was pulling into the carpark my phone rang, my mum, quick chat, then I sprinted into the building to drop off the cd at 12.45, just 15minutes before they leave for lunch and possibly the weekend.

I drove home again, via the post office as I'm waiting for a package of greeting cards (of my drawings) to be forwarded on, cooked and ate lunch, showered, changed, set up an autoresponder for my mailing list, and was out the door again at 2.30 to go to the day job, which pays the bills. Six hours later I got home, had a quick drink and catch up with my neighbours, ate a late dinner, and collapsed in front of a tv programme. Then, I wrote this post. It's now 11.10pm.

Time to draw??? Tomorrow I hope  after buying packing material, taking the picture to the couriers...

BTW. In case you are wondering about the picture, I'm not sure I'm allowed to publish it prior to the selection day, so I'm not posting it yet. However, here's a sneak peak in an early WIP shot.

WIP Moon Rocks ©Sue Pownall 2012

Resolution review and revision 2012

Reviewing 2011

Last year my art was pinned on three words: focus, creativity, happiness, with 3 resolutions.

  
The 1st was: To focus my life, my thoughts, my dreams on my art and market myself as much as I can. 

One of the first steps within this was to set up a facebook page "to get my finished work out there", which I did and I now have 217 who follow my page, suepownallartist. Also, I set up a twitter account @suepownall to tweet about my art with, as I write, 200 followers. The biggest two marketing things were to establish a website suepownallartist.co.uk , which went live in October, and a quarterly newsletter, which has 37 subscribers. Of course, I continued to blog and post my sketches here as normal. 

Surprising marketing successes came from a 3 page newspaper article on me and my sketching and, for me even better, a magazine article on my art with my name on the front cover.

Within this 1st resolution I also wrote "I am thinking about printing postcards and/or gift cards". I went a step further as well as printing gift cards of 2 of my pieces of work, I also had limited edition Giclée prints of 6 drawings made. I have sold several to date, which I'm very pleased with.

I also wrote that "I may develop and deliver some workshops", but due to a lot of changes I have not done that.

The 2nd was: to continue working in pen and ink with regular sketching, which I did. I planned a "minimum of 1 finished piece a month ready to try to get hung in a gallery or exhibition and to update the facebook page." Life was a bit crazy in 2011, nothing new there, so the monthly goal was not achieved per se, however I finished 9 pieces over the year, selling 3 and donating 2 others to charity. Plus I got a commission for 3 illustrations from Qatar Museum Authority, so I completed 12 pieces, they were just not done monthly. 

Trees For Life Charity Exhibtion. Photo by John Need

Surprisingly, without a body of work I had work hung in the Trans-Siberian Train exhibition, Trees for Life Charity Exhibition, and had 2 drawings juried into the CAS Winter Exhibtion. Also held in Doha was an Art event: private view of my original drawings and prints.

The 3rd was: Happiness will come from following my dreams and continuing to interact with wonderful artistic people, which it did.

Resolutions for 2012

As last year, here are my three words to guide my life throughout the year:

Yes, I kept focus as it's important to keep my focus on my art, in this year, which already is a bit crazy. Vision is my 2nd word as I need to keep myself open to opportunities, as I did in 2011. Finally, produce is the 3rd as without actually producing finished artwork, I cannot achieve anything.

Resolutions:
1. To produce a minimum of one finished piece per month.
2. To exhibit at least twice in the year.
3. Continue marketing myself.

Thank you to all of you who follow my work, take the time to comment, and who have encouraged and inspired me throughout the past year.

Juried in!

Secret Garden. Pen & ink. 380 x 260mm. © Sue Pownall 2011

I have just received an email from my mother telling me that both The Secret Garden and Al Saiq Window have been juried in to the Colchester Art Society's Winter Exhibition. 

Al Saiq window. Pen & ink 260x 260 mm. ©Sue Pownall 2011

Both are available for sale at the exhibition or as limited edition giclée prints on my website: suepownallartist

If you are in the area, why not pop along.

CAS Winter Exhibition.

St Martin's Church, West Stockwell Street, Colchester.

Finally, my newsletter is due out next week: have you signed up yet?

Mini adventure to Scotland

Solitude © Sue Pownall 2011

Taking advantage of being in UK for a little longer than anticipated, I took the opportunity to go to the opening of the brilliantly organised Trees For Life Charity Exhibition at Out of the Blue, Edinburgh. Details of the charity event can be read in my post Trees for life charity fundraiser. I would like to say again a big thank you to Trevor Jones, whose concept and hardwork brought it to fruition.

Newcastle Hotel, Rothbury A5 sketchbook © Sue Pownall 2011

I chose to drive up as I was dogsitting, whilst my parents went on holiday, which meant I got to spend some time in beautiful woods, parks & on beaches as I exercised him. I drove up to Northumberland the first day and stopped about an hour from the border. That evening, we both visited the dog-friendly bar of the Newcastle Hotel where I sketched a few of the locals. The next morning, after a foggy walk on the moors along St Oswald's Way, we crossed into Scotland at Coldstream. We stopped for tea at Hirsel where I outlined the building opposite us, then added watercolour later.

Hirsel. A5 Sketchbook © Sue Pownall 2011

Next, after a drive around Edinburgh, we visited the beach at Portobello, before heading to our hotel. I've mentioned before that Nelson always loves the sea and barks at the waves as they crash on the sand and I took the opportunity of a near empty beach to photograph him. More photos from the trip are on flickr.

© Sue Pownall 2011

That evening, I drove to the gallery for the opening of the exhibition, meeting the harried Trevor Jones briefly, before admiring all the donated work. I was delighted to see that Jeanette Jobson was hung on the adjacent board, as it was her contribution The Gate Keeper, which you can see here, that got me involved. You can still snap up some original pieces of art at the bargain price of £45 each, including  The President's Tree, either at the exhibition, which is open until the 13th November, or on the website here. Below are a few photos from the night.

Opening speech by Trevor Jones

Gentlemen looking at mine & Jeanette's work.

My drawing, The President's Tree, & I

Don't forget to visit the charity's website www.treesforlife.org to see how they aim to restore the Caledonian Forest. Finally a quote from Trevor written last Saturday:

"£5135 and counting  ... We've raised so much money already so thanks again to all of you."

Let's get the remaining pictures sold  and push that total higher!

Showcasing my work

Before the event.

On Thursday I wrote that a friend was hosting an art event to showcase my original drawings and new limited edition giclée prints here in Doha. I am very happy to report that it was a wonderful day and a great success. I was especially worried that nobody wold turn up, but we had people coming in all day. It was a wonderfully informal affair, which suited me, with people staying for a tea or coffee, cake and a chat.

Remember in that last post I wrote:

"if I make a sale I will be happy or if I gain a commission that would be nice too"

Well, with regards to prints, I covered my printing costs and ended up in profit on print sales. I sold all four copies of my book Portraits of Khartoum that I had. However, the biggest news was that I sold the framed original of Khalifa's Gate. I'm sad to let it go, to be honest, but I know the new owner will give it a good home. Two of the prints sold were also of Khalifa's Gate, which I have to confess to being a favourite. Still, as one of our guests said,  'Duke Ellington, who, when asked what his favourite composition was, replied that he hadn't written it yet'. I guess my favourite is the next one I draw.

SOLD! With the happy new owner of Khalifa's Gate.

A special thanks goes to my fantastic friend Karen who hosted the day, a big thank you to all my friends who came and supported me, and finally thank you to everyone who bought something.

With the event's wonderful hostess.

If you wish to purchase one of my limited edition giclée prints, or wish to commission a drawing, please use the contact form above. 

Full details on print availability were in my newsletter and will be available on a tab here in the next day or two.

Busy, busy, busy

Hanging pictures ready for Art Event: Private view this Saturday.

So much has gone on these last two weeks it is hard to know where to start.

Synchronicity occurred during the first week of October when I entered an online facebook competition to win a book of b&w photos with the Qatar Museum Authority (QMA). Sunday lunchtime - I was drawn from the hat, and Monday I collected my prize over a cup of tea and quick chat about who I was. Tuesday nasty photo published of me and my prize on FB plus my FB page & blog details. (see below) As I wrote on my facebook page "I won a prize and got some publicity for my art too".

If only I had known how much... The same day I was called by their senior designer who wanted to commission some illustrations after looking at my work. Last Thursday, I met her and  she commissioned some drawings for her concept towards a collectors exhibition. You may notice from the example below that it is not my normal style, I was requested to do them in a woodblock/scraper board effect. As with all these things, there was little time to do the work, this morning, a week later, I delivered 3 illustrations. Fingers crossed the concept is accepted because that will mean lots more work for them. A big thank you to all of you who replied to my email asking for help: all your answers were very useful.

Khanjar (QMA commission) © Sue Pownall 2011

Now, a normally sane person would take a break after working too many hours to get the illustrations done on time, but no... This Saturday, a friend is hosting an art event to showcase my original drawings and new limited edition prints, which has involved making posters, promoting it, signing prints, hanging pictures (see top photo), converting prices into local currency and the to-do list is still a mile long too. However, if I make a sale I will be happy or if I gain a commission that would be nice too.

Another thing I have been doing, is working on a new book of drawings and photos from this summer's trip, but I haven't finished it yet. To the left is the contents page. I'm currently calling it Cuban Scenes, but if you can think of a better title, all suggestion are appreciated.

Finally, I wrote and distributed my first newsletter. Don't worry if you didn't get a copy, you can still sign up and receive it, just use the tab above.

Trees for Life Charity fundraiser.

The President's Tree, pen & ink, 160 x 230mm © Sue Pownall 2011

This drawing has been done for the Trees for Life charity exhibition. 

Trevor Jones explains all about it. 

"Through the magic of Twitter and other social media tools, artists from around the world are coming together to create beautiful artworks inspired by their own natural environment. Each signed, original artwork will sell for £45 with every artist very generously donating 100% of the sales to the award winning Scottish charity Trees for Life!

The United Nations General Assembly declared 2011 as the International Year of Forests to raise awareness on sustainable management, conservation and sustainable development of all types of forests. With only 1% of the original Caledonian forest remaining it's crucial we do all that we can to help Trees for Life with their mission. This year Trees for Life aims to plant its one millionth tree! This would be an amazing achievement and we want to help make this a reality by raising £10 000 through this exhibition."

You can visit my contribution here. All pictures are for sale on the website and at the November exhibition: 1 - 13 November. Out of the Blue. Edinburgh
 
This is the 3rd time I have drawn this tree. It gets its title from the original sketch, whilst in Khartoum (below), and the story, which you can read in this post Moved on by the police!!!

On location sketch of the President's tree.

Next, I used the sketch combined with some photos to produce a finished piece (below), which was exhibited in Muscat last December. Here is the post on the Muscat exhibition.  

Khartoum Chai Ladies, Pen & ink  200x400mm ©Sue Pownall 2010.

 Looking at the three pieces I notice the changes in the tree. Can you?