Sketchbook Circle : My Seconds Out

Time to reveal the additions and responses I made in my sketchbook sent this month to my Sketchbook Circle Partner, A. The first set of three are pages I prepared last time; A chose not to work on these (there are no rules), so I've added something of my own to them.

The next three are pages started by A and added to by me. 

[Later: At her request, I've removed them]

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This third set shows a response by me (the matchbox) to a page by A (the matches), followed by some additions by me to her pages.

[Later -  here I've again deleted all of A's images, with the exception of the spent matches, which I feel are important to my own contribution]

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Finally, we have three new pages by me. I don't regard most of these as being complete in any way, so if A does nothing to them (she can, of course, simply respond with images of her own), I'll be working on them again when the book returns at the end of the month.

Technical note: in working on these, I used black and coloured markers, watercolour, gouache, acrylic paint and coloured pencils, as well as collage, of course.

Sketchbook Circle: Second Round.

I've received Becca's sketchbook this week, so my thoughts turn to additions and responses again. The first image below shows Becca's additions to one of my pages in her book, and the three after that are her new pages.

 

Mail Art Envelopes

I'm about to send out my Sketchbook Circle sketchbook to my Circle Partner A, so that she can begin her second round of additions to it. As soon as she's received it, I'll show you what I did in it over the last month.

In the course of unearthing suitable material for the sketchbook, I came across a cache of Mail Art envelopes. I've written here about my short involvement with the world of Mail Art and while these envelopes are far from being works of art in any way, they do demonstrate the sense of fun, anarchy, serendipity and plain silliness the movement embraced. Circulating these through the post was our way of bringing art into everyday life.

Look for collage, rubber stamps, photocopies, magazine cuttings, drawings, marker pens and fake postage stamps.

Sketch Crawl # 8 : Central Station to the Laing

I didn't go to last weekend's Sketch Crawl.

One day, when I was very little, I left one of my toys on the pavement outside our terrace house; within minutes it was gone, probably into the house next door where a family of petty criminals lived. My Mum gave me a good telling off for being careless with my things and I began to learn that not everyone was worthy of trust.

That episode may be the reason I've lost almost nothing of consequence in the sixty-odd years since and why, when something goes missing, I obsess about finding it. Experience has shown that eventually that which was lost will turn out to be that which was mislaid. 

The day before last weekend's Sketch Crawl I realised I didn't know where my pencil case was. An old blue one I've had for over 25 years, it contained my favourite pens and pencils. Despite turning over the stuff on the studio floor and searching in several bags, I couldn't unearth it and still haven't.

Perhaps my little anecdote about the lost toy helps to explain the extraordinary effect the loss of my pencil case had on my mood, especially at a time of year when I never feel good. By the time I was due to get ready to go out and meet the other Sketch Crawlers, I'd sunk really low. So I spent the rest of the weekend trying to find the pencil case. A huge pile of papers was sorted and binned and the studio is now in a much better state than previously, but still no pencil case.

I've put together a replacement set of instruments, although I'm going to have to buy a new Pentel Brush Pen, but even now I still find myself looking under chairs, down the side of the sofa, in bags I know I've checked before, in the hope that the familiar blue pencil case will jump out and shout "Surprise!".

Luxury, a Green Man and Bill Viola

Pat and I were in Surrey and Hampshire last weekend for a rather late wedding present stay at the Four Seasons Hotel. We had a terrific time and I took umpteen photographs which I've hardly had time to sort through. One I did like immediately, however, was this one I took at an antiques shop in Surrey. This has to be the friendliest Green Man I've ever come across.

After our pampering at the Four Seasons we spent a couple of days in the rather more prosaic Premier Inn next to Kings Cross Station in London. Not as luxurious perhaps, but clean and comfortable and really what more do you need? 

From there we were able to get to one or two galleries. The John Caple exhibition at John Martin of London was shown to very good effect in their new upstairs premises in Albemarle Street and the staff there were, as always, very welcoming. I've yet to determine how Caple gets such creamy whites (just like flake white oil) in his acrylic paintings, but they're lovely.

For me, one of the highlights of the V&A's Botticelli Reimagined was Bill Viola's Going Forth by Day. I'm not usually one for an art video installation, but Bill Viola really is The Man for those. Inspired by Botticelli frescoes, the video simply shows people of all ages and races walking down a path in a sun-dappled wood. Walking in ones and and twos, and in groups, they walk slowly from the left edge of the very long image and leave at the right.

They're dressed mostly quite casually, some of them in sports equipment, and many carry objects - sports trophies, musical instruments, flowers in pots and bunches, suitcases - and the speed of their walk has been slowed by a fraction.

We didn't intend to watch the whole 36 minutes of it but we were drawn in by its mesmerising quality and didn't leave until the old guy with the walker came round again.

Studio Reconfigured

A weekend of clearing shelves, moving furniture and replacing books on shelves has resulted in this new configuration of the studio. I'm much happier with this layout, especially now the desk has moved from the corner to the bigger skylight.

Some of the lighting is still only temporary; and then there's the stuff accumulated in a pile in the middle of the floor which will need sorting out. But hey! I can now walk round it!

Sketchbook Revealed

Now that Becca, my second Partner in the Sketchbook Circle, has received her sketchbook back from me, I can show you the additions I made to her book.

The first four show Becca's original pages with my additions. On her introductory page she spoke of new beginnings but chose to include a number of skull drawings which we tend to associate with death. Working with those apparently opposing ideas, I started thinking about sprouting bulbs and new growth and went on from there in the first three. For the fourth, I had a blank page opposite a skull, so introduced the uniformed figure of "Major Death", complete with military medals.

For the five pages of my own I began by looking at scraps of collage material I had on and heads. Two anatomical diagrams of parts of the head, intended for students of life drawing, came together with a fragment of red stained etching paper on a background of  a map to give me "Skinned". More simply, I found an old photocopy of a cross-section of a head with what appears to be a foetus for a brain and laid it on another fragment of blue stained etching paper.

The girl from Whistler's Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl was a torn fragment Becca had left in the back of her book for future consideration. I used it with some other ideas of "white" and made a new image.

"Onion Head" happened by accident. While looking for images of sprouting bulbs to use with the skull drawings, I had printed off from the internet an image of a sprouting onion but found it was too big for the any of the skull pages. Laying it down on a blank page, I suddenly saw it as a head; with the addition of a pair of eyes from the front page of an Observer Colour Supplement and some gouache, the mysterious character came to life.

Finally, the "Owl Queen" is a fragment of a photocopied image I put together in my days of Mail Art exchanges. Coming together with another curiously shaped fragment of old cut up brochure and a bright flame-like piece of etching paper, I think I made something mysterious.

Now comes the exciting bit: what will Becca make of all of this? Will she add to my images? Will she find something in them to strike some sparks? Time will tell.

And what do you make of all of this? I'm always interested to hear from you.

Meanwhile, I'm waiting on tenterhooks for my original sketchbook to come back from Ang with her additions.

Mr Walker's Suitcase

Some drawings readily lend themselves to a little colouring in Photoshop. Here's Mr Walker's Suitcase given that treatment.

Sketch Crawl # 7: The Discovery Museum

Mr Walker's Suitcase
Discovery Museum
(Black markers in A4 sketchbook)

Holeyn Hall Turbine
Discovery Museum
(Black and grey markers, A4 sketchbook)

The Discovery Museum in Newcastle has changed quite a bit since I was there last. In addition to a huge new atrium accommodating the famous Turbinia, the world's first steam turbine-powered steamship, there is what seems to be a maze of rooms full of all sorts of engineering and historical stuff. 

Perhaps I should have been more adventurous in my choice of subjects on this, our seventh Sketch Crawl, because others seemed to find things that had somehow missed my attention, and while I thought Turbinia couldn't be drawn, Mike and Richard proved me wrong.

Still, I was happy with my suitcase, carried by a Mr Walker on his voyage on RMS Franconia. I don't know if there's anything special about Mr Walker or indeed his choice of steamship, but the suitcase served to illuminate the possibilities of world travel brought about by the introduction of steamships, in this case by the Cunard Line.

As for the turbine, I wish now that I'd not gone along with the black painted pipes,because although they were what drew me to the subject in the first place, I had to make a decision about the panel bearing the name of the manufacturer, C A Parsons. It was also black but couldn't remain so and still be legible; I think now the drawing would have worked better without the solid black. Oh well, you learn by your mistakes (sometimes).

Finally, as I'm pleased to say is often the case with museums and Sketch Crawls, I can recommend both the Americano and the fruit scone in the cafe, although Allan would rather they didn't serve Lattes in what he regards as glass vases.

Next time: a venue in Newcastle to be decided (Don't you just love a mystery?)

Sketchbook Circle Snippets

(More snippets from Partner B's A5 Sketchbook)

Being full of cold usually means a befuddled head and sure enough, that's what I found I had over the weekend. Nevertheless, because I knew I had to get Becca's Sketchbook Circle book into the post back to her this week, I pushed on and found myself going down strange pathways.

Again, I'm unable to let you see what I've done with her pages until she receives the book and can only post the little snippets above.

What I found fascinating about the whole exercise is that I began working intuitively again, picking out things that Becca's original entries reminded me of, then trawling through bits and pieces of saved paper, magazine pictures and photocopies, and putting them together. Putting them together in a way that seemed to work and at the same time surprised me with what appeared.

I'm really quite excited about this.

Realisation of Space

Snippets from Partner B's Sketchbook

I've spent some time over the past few days working on the sketchbook sent to me by Becca, my Partner B of the Sketchbook Circle. I'm not allowed to show my interventions in her work, or any of my own additions until the book is returned to her at the end of February, but I can share these four snippets.

While working on the book at my desk in the new studio, I came to the realisation that I'm not comfortable working in that corner and that it would be more appropriate to have the desk under the bigger of the two skylights.

As you can see, that means a big job of removing all the books in the nice new Ikea storage unit, taking out the drawers from the desk, switching over the desk for the storage unit and then putting everything back in place.

I'll start ... later in the week.

And now it starts ...

(Various media in A5 sketchbook)

Now that my Sketchbook Circle book has been safely received by Ang, I can show the pages I prepared before sending the book off to her. At least, I can show you all of the pages except the inside front cover and Page 1, which somehow I failed to save when I scanned them in. I hope to add those when they become available again.

Having no previous experience of this kind of exchange, or indeed of this kind of sketchbook work, I simply set to and played with the pages. Some are collaged from magazine photographs with watercolour and body colour added; others are clearly straightforward marker drawings. There are a couple that use fragments of failed etchings salvaged from the bin of the print room at University.

And the last one should be of interest to my old science fiction pals - it's an imprint left on a folder that contained an inked stencil used in the production of one of the many Gannet fanzines.

The stencil imprint and the etching fragments have been in my studio for twenty years or more. A hoarder? Me!? I knew they'd come in useful one day.

What my sketchbook partner will make of these pages is anyone's guess. But that's half the fun. I've now received a sketchbook from Becca, my other partner in the Circle, and I have to start thinking about what I want to do to that. That's the other half of the fun.

Sketch Crawl # 6 : Baltic and Sage

(The usual and some not so usual suspects in the Baltic)

The weather is never really kind at this time of year and while it was a decent enough sunny day on Saturday for our sixth Sketch Crawl, the wind was howling a gale and icily cold. So meeting in the cafe of the Baltic was a good move and we had a good turnout: 7 or 8, unless I'm mistaken. But Mike likes to put the pressure on and said "Well, I'd like to try drawing outside for a while." Who there would say they thought it a terrible idea?

I tried to get out of the wind by walking round the side of the Baltic and standing on the narrow quayside path but I soon realised I was in something of a wind tunnel. Still, having decided to draw a boat on the other side of the Tyne, I set to and tried to ignore my streaming eyes. About an hour later, my freezing cold fingers (Note to self: remember fingerless gloves!) had made this rather shaky drawing. I tarted it up a little later on with some firmer lines and a grey brush marker.

Across the Tyne 
(Black markers and blue and grey brush marker in A4 sketchbook)

It was a relief to meet up back in the Baltic on the observation deck, but the view from there is so complex that I think no one really fancied attempting it. So out we went again into the wind and climbed the stairs to The Sage.

The Sage is something of an intimidating space too, although I suspect that after a while it would be possible to get to grips with it. I eventually settled on looking down from the first floor gallery onto the tables of the cafe. For no particular reason, I decided to use a 4B pencil for this drawing and I have to say I enjoyed using it and like the result. The only problem with such a soft pencil is that it wears down very quickly and while sharpening it outside wouldn't be much of a problem, leaving pencil shavings all over the floor of the Sage probably isn't looked upon favourably by the staff.

In the Sage 
(4B pencil in A4 sketchbook)

Next time : The Discovery Museum!

Sketchbook Circle

(Front and back of Sketchbook)

The Regular Reader of this blog and its partner, The Cartoonist's Hat, will know I've always had an interest in working interactively with other artists. The Moly exchanges of a few years ago (see links in the sidebar) were really quite stimulating and responding to other's ideas kept me producing new ideas of my own.

So when I discovered Sketchbook Circle in a post on Facebook, I was intrigued.

How does it work?

"Each January a circle is established and then every artist makes work in a book of their choice (although it needs to fit through the letter box.)  They post their books to the person next to them in the circle by the end of January.  Then every artist makes work in response to the work they have received and posts the book back to where it came from.  This means that there are two in-depth artistic conversations occurring over the course of a year (it goes back and forth like a pendulum).  Artists work in any medium and on any scale, sometimes working outside the book and using it just as place to record their making. [.............] It is a demanding project as it is stretching to respond to someone else's artwork, but it is also incredibly rewarding."

The original Sketchbook Circle brought together artist educator friends using sketchbooks as a vehicle for collaboration, who were looking for a way to commit time to their own making around their busy lives working in education and wanted to develop a community of practitioners. I was a little concerned that not being a an "artist educator" I'd not qualify, but it seems this is not the case. So here I am, a participant in Sketchbook Circle 2016.

I'm not by nature a sketchbook artist. I tend to work out my ideas on canvas, but I've come to the conclusion recently that a lot of my unrealised ideas are still unrealised because the initial important stages of investigation and experiment are missing. I'm hoping this Sketchbook Circle experience may go some way to changing that.

In a painfully slow fashion I've started my own sketchbook for this project. After some attempts at just creating covers for the book, I stripped off all the additions and left it as the  somewhat minimalist thing you see above. 

The pages are taking just as long, but I'm starting to get a feel for it. In a way, it may be easier, if a little daunting, to respond to someone else's work, which is what I'll be faced with next month.

The People's Show

London Millennium Bridge 
(oil on canvas, 20 x 20 in)

I went to the Private View of the troubled People's Show at the Northumbria Gallery last night and must say I have no problem with the hanging of my painting; it's in the downstairs gallery, on the far wall staring at anyone who comes through the door.

Overall, however, I couldn't help feeling the exhibition was a lacklustre affair. No doubt because of uncertainties about the exhibition even taking place, following the shameful dismissal of Mara-Helen Wood and her staff, there were only around 70 submissions. Out of those, thirty-five were chosen for the show. A high proportion of these are photographs (I'm still a bit sniffy about photographs in an art exhibition. So bite me.) and the rest were, well, by and large, OK paintings. There were some good portraits, but it puzzled me to find that one person had two portrait paintings in the show and another had three. Maybe I misremember - were we allowed to enter more than one painting?

The attendees were what I might expect from a university show - mainly students and liggers. Gone were the people with cheque books who would have bought work at previous People Shows (I've often done well there). I was pleased to find a couple of friends there to have a chat with, even if one conversation was interrupted by the prizewinner unexpectedly hitting on my friend's daughter. Tsk tsk.

I came away with the feeling that the show was put on because the new regime found they'd taken over the Gallery with some submissions already in place and invitation forms distributed all over town. Cancel the show, hand back the submission fees (and the donation from the late Norman Cornish's family)? Or go ahead with an exhibition you don't really care for? I think I know what I'd do, but maybe I'm being unfair. Only time will tell: will there be another People's Show next year?

It's Always Boogie Street

"It’s always Boogie Street: Boogie Street in the monastery, Boogie Street on Times Square. You don’t get away from it, No one masters the heart. The heart continues to cook like [a] shish kebab in everybody’s breast, bubbling and dripping, and no one – no one – can escape."

Leonard Cohen quoted in Look Who’s Back at 67: Gentle Leonard Cohen by Frank DiGiacomo (New York Observer, Oct 15, 2001)

Happy New Year to all my Reader!