Art Drops, new drawings, crossed fingers and Tate St Ives re-opening.

Thursday:

Above and below are the two drawings that I completed in last evenings drawing session. The first seems to be a bit of a tribute to Howard Hodgkin who died a couple of weeks ago. I have been a great fan of his work ever since I was introduced to his work my my now wife.
The drawing below seems to be channeling something else entirely and I don't really know what, as my work started off being made entirely of dots maybe these lines on this drawing are 'long dots'. Maybe not.....

I did start another drawing last night but I didn't bother to take a pic because it is it's very early stages.

Today has been a day of updating our events for Easter so I have been working on Facebook and our website and we are now hoping to get some early bookings in as money is tight as it is at this time of year so very little time for art. Zoe my wife has been sorting out stuff at the workshop for our Your Face My Art portrait studio for the weekend and we are hoping there will be enough people around to pop in on us and get their portrait done with us what with The Tate St Ives reopening, so tomorrow is getting more posters around and a bit of an awareness campaign. Of course the Tate re-opening is going to help the town but we are still hindered at Barnoon Workshop with the footpath to the beach still being shut and it has been since the beginning of November. It has certainly cut off our income somewhat and made it a hard winter to get through. Hopefully this will all change after the footpath is open again just before Easter.

I am looking forward to attending the Tate opening tomorrow evening and looking forward to bumping into lots of old pals too, have already arranged to catch up with Shanty Baba, the St Ives Story Teller and I am sure there will be more arranging tomorrow.

I am also looking forward to the publication of the Spring edition of Art Spread and I have a two pages so fingers crossed that will bring a bit more interest to my work and get my name out there a bit more.

On that note views of my blog have gone up quite a bit over the last month or so and I am now getting something like a 1,000 views or so a week, mainly in America. So maybe maybe ,y work is getting out there a little bit more. So this year I am hoping to get more sales than before and some interesting exhibitions to be in. With this aim I hope to make more deadlines than last year and to seek out more opportunities.

I am going to try and find time to get a few art drops together for this weekend as there will be a higher proportion of arts people around. I will leave this blog and you tonight with some previous art drops.

Work in Progress, previous work and stuff.

Wednesday:

Above is the drawing that I was engaged in last night as I got further into the drawing it seemed like I was getting into a Howard Hodgkin vibe, having seen a recent documentary that was re-shown after his death maybe I am a little influenced on this on. I do not think it is finished yet but up until now I have no idea what I will do next. I will find out later when I start drawing.

Today has been a quiet cancelled workshop kind of a day, however I did have a guitar lesson tonight, my regular student didn't make it tonight but a lady who is in town for a few days did and I think she will get back to playing now after a few years absence. During the course of the lesson she revealed she worked for The Whitechapel Gallery in London.

After the lesson I have returned home to write this blog and as it has been quite an uneventful day I will leave you with some drawings I did a while ago as part of various projects and they are in various books but give you a good flavour of some of the work I do.

I hope you liked them or find them interesting.

I am off to draw and relax and take it the fact that our government have triggered Article 50 and I now wonder what the hell will happen to our country. I am becoming less of a believer in politics after this last nine months. I hope it goes better than I suspect but I do think the whole idea of referendum and the narrow margin of the 'leave victory' and the way it was sold to the public was packed full of lives and it now looks like the whole of the UK could break up to. Is that what 'we' wanted, I doubt it. It all seems a bit dumb to me and I am waiting for a good explanation of why this is a good positive thing to do. I still feel European and British, will that change? Who knows I can only imagine what will unfold and it worries me.

Cheers all.

Art Tour, Drawing and a social media seminar.

Tuesday:

When I wrote yesterdays blog I had two pictures started but not finished so I embarked straight away on them and here they are above and below, more squares added to the first and more circles and dots added  to the second. I think they work as variations for this latest book that I am working on as I have mentioned in this last run of blogs.

Above is the new drawing I started in last evenings session, it was nearly finished when I stopped last night and during the course of today I managed to put the finishing touches to it. It seems to be more translucent than any of the previous works in this book. I am only about a quarter into the making of this new volume of 'Obliterarty' and I do wonder what I will draw in it tonight.

Today I conducted an Art Tour of St Ives, I really enjoy taking people around our fair town and pointing out some of the iconic art spots around the town. It ran over by about ten minutes but I was work showing of the two large paintings in the Guildhall.

I returned home after the tour had lunch and then we went out to get a few more posters around and then on to a social media seminar back at the Guildhall, although we seem to be reasonably upto date with that sort of thing I still found out a bit more about trends and some analytic tools to play with.

As I think a bit more of what I will draw tonight I leave you with this 'bleeding narrative' drawing above.

Cheers!

New drawing, works in progress and Barnoon Workshop.

Monday:

Above finally is the drawing that has taken some 10 hours or more to complete. Once you start adding dots and circles to the original pattern the hours just melt away, even with taking this amount of time on one drawing I am trying to keep them somehow free and not over ordered, if that is possible.

 Above is the drawing I started directly after finishing the previous one, I am not sure it is finished yet but it might just be. For now I shall continue on with the book and worry about that later. Nice and free so far.

 This is the next drawing I started on and feel it is definitely not finished but how to move on? I didn't let that stop me drawing so today in a little gap I carried on drawing setting another up to be worked on tonight, so above and below unfinished but now tempting.

Above is a pic of something I was drawing this morning as part of DRAW! the Monday morning drawing class at Barnoon Workshop. Whilst I was doing my preliminary sketches had an interesting conversation with a member of the group about Paula Rego and the documentary that was shown on Saturday night. It certainly was a very fascinating hour and made by her son, intense honesty are the first two words that come to mind in summing up the program.

The Stennack

Above and below are a couple of pics from around town (St Ives) this afternoon whilst we were taking posters around for future events.

Tourist View

I am off to draw and think and relax and have a couple of ciders, cheers.

Drawing continues and a bit of beach time.

Sunday: The clocks went forward yesterday.

Above is the drawing I have been working on over several session and in this pic it is nearly finished off, perhaps an hours work left.

Today we went out and about and above is the little art drop I did earlier, I wonder if it has been found yet.

Also today it was so nice and sunny although a bit windy we headed down the beach at Porthmeor to do a little beachcombing and to take some benefit from this beautiful place we live in. It does take your mind off the mad things that seem to be happening in this world.

I grew up with some expectation that the world would be a better and more peaceful place with more hope and love and tolerance in it but hey that does seem to have been a bit of a pipe dream. Having said that it is a pretty good distraction.

It was so nice to spend time with my wife taking in the view and the warmth and just looking out to the horizon does restore your faith somewhat, time to breathe and think.

So I have a drawing to finish and more to get on with so I am off to finish my weeks work and look forward to next week.

Cheers!

Obliterarty Volume 3, first ten and work in progress. Contemporary Abstract Drawing.

Saturday:

Above is the drawing I did in last evenings drawing session and at the time half of me thought it was probably finished but looking at it now here I know it isn't and will carry on with it when this blog is finished. It is the 11th drawing in my latest project, 'Obliterarty Volume 3". This whole altered book will be up for sale or exhibition when it is finished, I am about a 6th in. So quite a lot to do until I reach that objective.

Today has been a lovely sunny if not slightly windy day, after getting a few posters copied we went around the town via The Arts Club and a quick beachcomb on Lambeth Beach, some sea pottery and sea glass was found then we mouched of to The Sloop Market to see Erin Lacy. Then we went home via the shops. Did some Barnoon work and ate a hearty meal with a glass of red, how cultured.

I will leave you with the first 10 pages of my new project.

I am off to draw and stuff!

Another day in my art world and stuff

Friday:

Above is a drawing that has taken me some time to finish off and somewhat different to any previous 'obliterarty' drawing that I have previously done and as I completed it and looked for a couple of minutes I chose a pen and went straight onto the next drawing feeling free and I embarked on the drawing below. It felt quite joyous as I didn't seem to need the same intense concentration I had put in to the last drawing. I have no real idea why this one was so much fun doing it just was. I didn't quite finish it in last nights drawing session but I had a few moments I finished the few empty boxes to make it complete.

Today has been a running around doing a bit of this and a bit of that day even a quick visit to the Arts Club to meet Dee and Dave Brotherton.

Back home now and thinking about what I will draw tonight whilst trying to avoid bad tele. We have one disc left of a David Hockney triple set to watch is entertainment runs out. The other two were quite fascinating, it still quite amazes me how much work and in his different styles most of which I get and enjoy, even the ones I am left drawn to still seem interesting and part of the whole pantheon of his work.

This Saturday night on BBC 2 there is going to be a documentary on Paula Rego, an artist that my wife first brought to my gaze and I find her work interesting and am thoroughly looking forward to it, it will be an education. We were given the heads up on this documentary because it was brought up in Barnoon Workshop drawing group on Monday morning by one of the drawers in the group. Over the last two years the group has seen many people join us once or many times more. They are a good friendly interesting bunch of people and a great way to start the weeks 'art' with.

Just before I go off and draw I will leave you and this blog with some close ups of some of the work I have done over the last year or so. I find them interesting and I hope you do too.