blind contour amenomes

That's the flower, not the sea creature.

Yesterday, I bought myself this bunch of flowers to cheer myself up after the expected arrival of Lotty & Jakey didn't happen as planned. We are hoping it is still going to happen, but who knows when!

Anyway, they're very pretty and I love drawing flowers so I decided to have a go at drawing them blind and then colouring them in with watercolour afterwards. I quite like how they turned out, what do you think?

my week in mandalas

Drawing Paul

Blind Contour 1

Blind Contour 2

Completely blind (drawn while blind-folded, from memory)

Single line drawing

Drawn "normally"

Paul and I decided to have a go drawing each other. These are my drawings of him. My favourite is the one I drew completely blind. Which one do you like best?

Experimenting with drawing

I spent yesterday afternoon drawing with a couple of friends. We drew each other in a variety of ways, blind contour, single line, and even a combination of the two.

These are drawings I did of my friend Vicky. The top one is a blind contour drawing (drawing without looking at the page) and the second one is a single line drawing (drawing without taking your pen off the page). The energy of the drawings is very different. I personally prefer the freedom and looseness and expressiveness of the blind contour one.

For more drawings from the day, go here.

More "experimental" drawings

Here are yesterday afternoon's "experimental" drawings that I did of my friend Mad. The first three were done in ink. The first was drawn in a single line without taking the pen off the page, the second was drawn blind contour (without looking at the page), the third was drawn both without looking at the page and drawn in a single line, and the fourth was done in willow charcoal with my left hand (the hand I don't usually draw or write with).


































It was great fun experiementing with all these different ways of drawing and I was surprised to learn that I enjoyed the blind contour drawing the most, I liked the freedom of doing it, the excitement of not knowing how it was going to turn out, and I also liked the end result of the blind contour drawing the most.

For more drawings from the day, go here.

More mandalas from the last few days

To see my first post about mandalas, go here.

Communication, or "It's not everyday that a hip panda speaks to you."

Telepathy has always been up there as one of my favourite forms of communication. Sadly, it is a lost art in our modern society overly taken up with texting in dismembered and misspelt words. So you can imagine my joy when I was wandering round the ruins of Monte Alban and heard this little fella speak to me!

Now, it's about time that I let you in on a little known fact - something that Paul and I discovered on our trip to Mexico. After we'd done a lot of walking and were weary and aching, we simultaneously said to each other that our hips were hurting (stay with me...). That was when we found out about hip pandas.

Apparently, by our simultaneous utterance of those words in a place endowed with magical powers, we had inadvertently invoked the ancient gift bestowed upon weary travellers by a band of mostly secret hip pandas.

These are baby pandas who have been rescued from a life of orphan hardship who wish for the opportunity to travel combined with warm human companionship. When you invoke the spell, the hip pandas appear and magically hold your hips to prevent you from feeling the ache of many hours on your feet. In return, they ask only that they be treated with kindness and be taken along on exciting adventures around the world. For many of them, this beats a one-way trip to the zoo.

We were told that hip pandas don't appear to just anybody, but were given no further explanation, so we realised just how lucky we were that they appeared for us. Happily, they were keen to come back to London with us and rest till our next adventures (North Wales in April), and one of their merry band kindly agreed to pose for me for this week's Illustration Friday. So here he is!

Next time you're hiking somewhere really magical, just try invoking the spell. You never know what might happen...

Mandalas, inspired by Teri & the Tibetan Buddhists

A couple of weeks ago, I was inspired by Teri's Mandalas to draw a mandala a day. I'd never tried it before but had always been intrigued by this ancient art form. I believe it was the Tibetan Buddhist monks who started it all, creating huge and intricate sand mandalas which are then swept away, as a kind of meditation on the impermanence of life.

I don't do anything fancy like that. I just draw them in my lined moleskine diary with no specific aim in mind, not even the aim for them to come out looking like "art" or to make a good drawing. I do find it very soothing and absorbing to draw them and, like Teri mentions on her mandala blog, I really enjoy the spontaneity of not knowing what's going to happen when I start. It's very freeing and therefore it really doesn't matter if I end up not liking how it turns out.

I did a bit of reading about mandalas and discovered that Jung used them in his work, believing that they are the ultimate expression of the self (he wrote about this in his book Memories, Dreams, Reflections). This idea intrigues me though I don't draw them with that intention or aim in mind. What I did want was a different way of "documenting" or capturing my day to day life in my diary other than in words, and the idea of drawing mandalas really captured my imagination. It may be that when I look back on these one day, I will learn something or see something about myself that I'm not able to see now. Who knows. In any case, I just really enjoy doing them.

Here are a few of my favourites from the last ten days or so.

still life at zero gravity

You know when you have an idea in your head for a picture but it doesn't even come out half as well as you intended? Well, this is one of those times. Instead of the objects looking like they are floating in space, they just look like they've been piled on top of one another on a flat surface. The zero gravity chamber wasn't working, so having the floating still life to work from was mostly in my imagination. Neither was my brain or else I would have realised that a background to set it against might have helped with the illusion of weightlessness. My sincere apologies. I kinda like the way the panda turned out grumpy though. That wasn't intended either.

Still life with panda and drum at zero gravity, pastels on watercolour paper.

Burning heart with peas ('tis better to have crashed than to have stayed in the garage)

This is for my pea lover...who likes to try and sneak stray peas into places where peas don't belong (like custard, shoes, belly buttons, soft furnishings, stir fries, sandwiches, tea, water bottles, Hank Williams' nostrils, Johnny Cash songs and the bath tub). Mind you, that's the worst thing I can say about my lovely Paul. I'll put up with that thank you very much. He didn't want a card for Valentine's Day, and neither did I. We don't need a "Special Day" or a commercially made greeting card or chocolates to say I love you and all that shrubbery. We have chocolate and shrubbery every day. But I did want to draw something. So here it is.

I crashed into a burning heart with peas, I went down, down, down, but the peas they outdid me and they burned burned burned, those big green peas, those big green peas...

For my lovely Paul, pastels on black card.

Back from Mexico!

I'm back from Mexico, where we had a fantastically colourful and possibly the best holiday I've had for some time. We saw tons of art, including numerous Diego Rivera murals, and visited Frida's Blue House, amongst other things. I don't think I've ever been to so many galleries and museums in my life. We also spent some time in Oaxaca City and managed a few days on the beach as well!

This is an ink and watercolour drawing I made of a portrait by Jose Luis Cuevas, one of my favourite Mexican artists.

Also liked the work of the Spanish painter Remedios Varo, who later lived and worked in Mexico. Some of her paintings reminded me a little of Ros Foster's work.

I didn't do as much drawing as I would have liked in Mexico, but I have come back with a few ideas for drawings inspired by the trip which I hope to complete in the next few weeks. Plus, I took loads of photos which I'll be posting to my photo blog soon.

I'm on vacation...see you in mid-February!

Layers for inspire me thursday

This is the final piece. I used dry pastels on black card.
The various stages are below.

Snow on my birthday!!

My friend Iole was just over from Boston and she said, "But it never really snows in London does it?"

Yes it does Iole, look!!!

Happily, I have the day off today, and tomorrow, and Friday and two weeks after that as Paul & I are off to Mexico on Friday! This morning, I've been lazing around listening to BBC 6 Music and doing a bit of drawing in my journal...here's a snapshot. The drawing is of the hot water bottle that my friend Mad gave me for Xmas, and which was used last night because it was soooooo cold!! Paul kindly got out of bed and filled it up for me after I moaned at him for at least five minutes about how coooooolllllld it was! Thanks Paul :)

The Striped Avenger for IF

This is Horatio, otherwise known as The Striped Avenger. He moves stealthily and wisely, and helps to counteract and fight writer's block. He is not one of those unhelpful bunnies that snorts, "There's no such thing as writer's block" or other intellectually snooty and most unhelpful comments when you are suffering. No. He gently guides you back to what you need most: writing, and trusting yourself. Not as well known as other super heroes, or as flamboyant or dramatic as anal probe man, but I'd never wanna be without my sweet little Striped Avenger.

Eight T's for Illustration Friday

Better late than never! Inspired by shadows and clouds, I decided to draw eight t's as well, eight objects beginning with the letter 't'. A nice way to ease me back into drawing. The eight are: toaster, tea bag, tray, trinket box, toilet paper, Toby, teaspoon and a tail that someone sent me the other day.

Thank you

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who's been sending their sympathies about Caesar. It really means a lot and it does help to know that you understand what it's like. Paul has his own tribute to Caesar here.
It's been an emotional week and continues to be. The night he was put to sleep, we brought him home and buried him in our garden. We buried him with a short letter that we wrote saying our goodbyes. We put it under one of his paws. Laying him in the ground, he looked like he was just fast asleep. We left a candle burning for him, and a few hours later, we noticed through the glass panel of the back door that his candle was still burning. So we went outside and saw that the sky had cleared, the air was crisp and fresh, the moon had come out, and even though the light of the moon was bright, we could still see some stars (a very rare occurrence in London) and there were also a few beautiful white streaks moving slowly across the sky. It was as if the night sky was welcoming him. It was a great comfort.

I haven't done a single drawing since he died. The ones I've posted recently about him are all old drawings. The one in this post was the first ever drawing posted to this blog, just over a year ago. I'm slightly trepidatious about picking up a pen to draw, as Caesar was one of my favourite inspirations. But I will do it soon, one of these days. In the meantime, thank you for stopping by and sparing a thought for the little guy.

Goodbye Caesar

I'm very sad to write that Caesar is no longer with us. He had kidney problems, and during this last week, his kidneys had started to fail. He was put to sleep on Friday, 5th January. He is now at peace and is buried in our garden. He was 12 years old, and his last couple of years with us was very happy. He was sweet and special and we're going to miss him very much.

Caesar

Caesar is unwell and I'm worried and sad. He's just not himself at all. He had a check up on Saturday and he was fine then. But since we brought him back, he's lost his appetite, hardly moves and doesn't even say hello to us anymore, and he's usually such a sociable and talkative little fella. If you're reading this, please send happy thoughts to our little cat. Thank you.