Using Up and Re-Using

Fun and more fun this week, finding different surfaces to draw on now that my sketchbook is full and I have my self-imposed rule of no new art stuff till all other available materials are used up.

 So, lets have a look:



That same morning I stopped at Hyde Park to sut for a while under a tree. There were clumps of Strelitzias there, so I drew them on the back of a cardboard box that had contained ginger sweets. This is a detail:



At South Beach, having breakfast on Friday I had my Moleskine blank exercise book with me. I'm getting used to the semi-bleed-through, and don't mind it any more. 



Then yesterday I went with Colleen and Ingrid to a spot along the river at North Fremantle. So quiet and secluded, only a couple of friendly dog-walkers came by. The sun shone, boats bobbed gently on the water, altogether a glorious afternoon. The white boat is drawn on a system card with pen and watercolour. The red one is on a piece of card from some packaging. It is drawn in pen and watercolour pencils.






Finally, this evening, after a day of sorting out and reorganising and filing things away, I sat down with an opened out mushroom bag and a brush pen and oil pastels and drew a fast selfie. I look quite manic - which is not usual for me!

So that's it for my week of drawing on different surfaces. I hope your week was also exciting and filled with delight! Till next time,

Evelyn

Madness？Maybe

I can't take credit for this idea. I read it somewhere. Someone suggested it and for some reason it stuck. Partly, perhaps, because I'm keen to declutter and simplify my life. Also because it is full of potential excitement, innovation and craziness. It's this:

Before I buy any new art materials, I'm going to use up all the stuff I have.

A few days ago I filled the last page of my sketchbook. Here it is: three water containers all made of glass. I was house sitting for a friend and these were on her kitchen bench. 

But I digress.

So, end of sketchbook. I don't keep a stash of sketchbooks. I like the choosing part - the 'what kind of book will I get this time?' thrill. So at the end of this book, I looked around at my options. 

Aha! A nice little blank Moleskine cahier. Creamy paper, but thin, designed more for writing than drawing  Still, it works ok and it is thin enough to live unobtrusively in my everyday bag. It even quite graciously, accepts some watercolour, 

Something else I found was a box of system cards. Large ones. Mostly blank. I don't have a system that they can be useful in - indeed I really only bought them because they were such tidy and inviting white surfaces... so I've started drawing on them. My plan is to get a box that they can all be put in.

I have some other ideas for sketchbook alternatives - I'll keep you posted. So far I still have watercolours, though I'm running out of Naples Yellow and my lovely orange is all used up. 
I'm weirdly excited to see what will come of this. Will I end up drawing in my least favourite colours until they have all been used? Or will I mix media - watercolour plus crayons?
Stay tuned!!!

Communing with Everyday Objects

Cup, mug, teapot, milk jug.
I'm here. It is there.
It has a history of existence before we met in this place.
Me too.
And now here we are, together for a short time.

Never before
in all my life
have I sat before this cup, this mug, this teapot, this milk jug in just this way. 
With this scent of spring in the air, 
this boy asking me if I'd prefer to sit outside, 
this feeling of not wanting to go to work today...

Here we are, together as never before.
I turn to a new page, pick up - mmm - a brush pen. 
I want the responsiveness of it.
And begin.

Look.
The lovely shape of the hole in the spout, 
the belly of the jug, how full it is; 
the line of the handle, 
the shape of the shadows, 
the changes in colour. 

There is the architecture. 
The delight in sensing design,
feeling the weight of the curves in my mind, 
sensing them as if I'm holding them, 
As if we are holding each other.

Drawing is not a one-sided thing,
It is a communion,
where we - milk jug, teapot, cup or mug and I,
become greater
than the sum of all our parts.

not a sketch, not a drawing....

The sky is a deep blue today. The wind blows cool and steady from the south. There are spring sounds: a duck somewhere over near the lake, the chirp and giddy twitter of birds, kids squealing and yelling in the park.

When I sat by the river earlier in the day, the waves were dark blue, a deep cold dark blue and the boats tied to yellow buoys did not stay still.

Why am I suddenly inspired to write something here after an absence so long that these posts look like the work of a stranger? Because with some delight and exultation, I have rediscovered the phenomenon of 'the study'. Not the room full of books, but the drawing whose purpose is to look, observe, notice, explore, study a thing to understand it better, to become familiar with the way it is put together, its different angles, the way it occupies space. To learn it, not in the way of 'now I can draw faces' but in the spirit of recognising how jawlines change with age and how an eye sits in its socket and  brows can perch like hedges on the outcrops of the brows.

A study. Not a sketch. Here's the difference: a sketch is a (relatively) quick capture of the thing. A study is an exploration. Sometimes a dissection.

Because the boats moved around so much I worked fast, looking at how they changed shape as they moved. The result is not really a result. It is just the record of a learning process.

This is exciting to me because, for a long time, I have been uneasy with the way I feel about my sketchbooks. I don't want them to be nice, well composed, filled with 'great pages'. I don't want to think about my drawings in terms of how good they are or how satisfied I am that they capture something. Really what I want is for my sketchbooks to be full of activity, unselfconscious, dynamic, lively things in which beauty emerges in the way you see the beauty of a windswept face with wild and tangled hair, a song escaping from its lips, its eyes bright with adventure.

Christmas afternoon: down by the river

We put our folding chairs in a dense patch of tree shade and looked out across the river.
There was hot water in a thermos for tea or coffee, spectacular home made nut and cacao and coconut confections, leftover homemade ravioli, a bag of chips and some cherry tomatoes. In other bags we had sketching supplies.

At first one of those delicious afternoon-shady-spot-hot-day-well-fed lethargies settled around us and I thought a nap might be a better choice than dragging out the sketching gear. But, pleasant as it was to sit there in a dreamy daze, the itch to make marks was strong.

I am between sketchbooks at the moment, still waiting for my new one to arrive. I had a small watercolour pad with me and decided to play with watercolours. No pen today.

At first I used the watercolours as I usually do - just as a way to add colour, mixing the colours I want and slopping them down.

Then I tried working very wet, letting the colours run around and visit each other:

Finally, in the third sketch, I put down washes, let them dry and layered other colours over them:

All in all, a lovely Christmas afternoon!

Chancing it Again: micro travel #2

Sunshine, a pleasant breeze, blue skies - a perfect day for micro-travelling.The plan for today involved dice (again) and cards ( white cards the size of business cards). I could have used bits of paper, but fanning out a hand of cards has a je ne sais quoi that wrinkly bits of paper absolutely lack.
So what do you do with the cards apart from fanning them out in a je ne sais quoi kind of way?
Take a look.

Each card has, written on it, precise instructions of something to observe, notice, and draw. Here is the whole spread:

With dice, cards, sketchbook, the usual drawing kit and my $2 K-Mart folding stool, I left my car in South Fremantle and walked to the nearest bus stop to wait for the CAT bus. This is a free bus that does a loop around Fremantle. There's a bus every 10 minutes. While I waited I rolled a die. Five dots looked up at me. According to my plan...

that meant I had to get off the bus after five stops then pick a card at random and follow the instructions.

What I hadn't counted on was zoning out on the bus and losing track of how many stops we passed. I think I may have gone one stop too many. Never mind. Micro travel is not an exacting discipline, but a cheerful embrace of the unexpected as well as the ordinary.

There were a lot of Spanish and Italian passengers on the bus. When they got off they left clouds of Ciao's and Hasta la vistas and Muchas Graciases in their wake, the way some people leave a fragrance or little bubbles of happiness. At my stop, once I had added my own farewells and thanks to the atmosphere, I stepped onto a sun drenched pavement and took out my pack of cards. Fanning them out ( with that certain je ne sais quoi ) I selected one and turned it over. It said:

Notice Foliage

There was a big Plane tree just around the corner casting deep shade onto the footpath. I unfolded my stool, parked it against an old limestone wall and looked across the street at a group of small trees. Different coloured foliage, different shaped leaves, different textures. Two of the trees had red flowers. Behind them another large Plane tree and in the distance a Norfolk Island Pine. As I drew, a group of children inched their way towards me. When I looked down at my sketchbook they took tiny steps closer. When I looked up, they stopped. They didn't speak to me at all until I asked where they were from. Then in a chorus they all said 'KL'. They watched me silently until a parent hustled them away. I drew and coloured the foliage 

and by the time I'd finished I was ready for a coffee. 

Blink Cafe is a tiny hole in the wall. I sat on a wooden cube at a table on the pavement  sipping a long black out of a glass. Justin, the barista, brought me a flourless sweet thing on a really pretty plate.  As I drew it a young woman glided in wearing an academic gown. She'd escaped from her graduation ceremony with her brother and wanted him to take photos of her in the cafe, since that's where she'd spent so much of her time as a student. 

Back to the bus stop, back on the bus, a quick stop at the station for the loo and a roll of the die that told me to get off after six stops. La la la... bus ride through Freo.  The card I picked said:

Draw your fellow humans.

but when we reached the sixth stop there were no humans to be found. Just blank walled buildings and blue blue sky. Not even a bit of foliage!! So I cheated and went one more stop to a place where there are cafes and shops and plethoras of people. There, at Ootong and Lincoln, I occupied a large table, ate a salad of sweet potato, green beans and a whole glorious gallimaufry of  salady things and drew some of the humans around me. 

How quickly the time passed, but how utterly delightful to explore in this way. Here's the complete page from today's micro-travels:

If you are in the area and feel like joining me next week, let me know. If you are far away you might like to try something like this in your own neck of the woods. Keep me posted, I'd love to hear about your adventures!

Marking Time: 3 Calendars

Around this time each year I gather together drawings or photos and make them into calendars on Redbubble to give out as Christmas gifts.

This year, I have made three calendars. Here are the links to Redbubble and the cover images to give you an idea of what's inside!!

1. A collection of drawings made in cafes, mostly featuring cups of tea or coffee, sometimes with cake.

2. Drawings of landscapes, ocean views and scenes along the rivers in Perth.
It's called Land, River, Sea

3. Assorted sketches - some cafe drawings, some land and riverscapes, some random objects.
It's simply called Sketchbook Drawings