Category Archives: Experiment

Sea cliffs

Posted by kestrelart on

On holiday near Bude in north Devon, my main drawing aim was to experiment with ink wash and bleach as a medium for sketching the scenery.

This first sketch was terminated by the threat of the incoming tide. It only reached the initial wash sketching out the rough shapes.

Safe on the hills above the sea, I had another go. I had not brought a dip pen, and I think this sketch was marred by over use of lines in fountain pen loaded with indelible indian ink.

I dusted over it lightly with conte crayon to give colour with the ink wash showing through.

This last sketch was done on another day, back on the beach with plenty of time while the tide was out. I painted in an initial light wash to give shape to the rocks and then went back and forth with bleach and ink, stripping pigment completely, giving light warm highlights or making deeper grey shadows. I added a few (still too many) black lines at the end.

Frida Khalo (left handed sketch)

Posted by kestrelart on

I am picking up on images on twitter as references for sketches.
This was a short drawing of much admired, amazing 20th century artist Frida Kahlo. this is on the great twitter stream @womensart1 by artist PL Henderson.
Charcoal on white paper with background coloured on photoshop.

Left handed life drawing

Posted by kestrelart on

So here’s a mix of drawings from our 90 minute session, and it will be obvious which were 2, 5, 10 and 20 minute sketches. We had a great model with excellent muscle definition. I switched media throughout, just for fun. Working only with my non-dominant hand is freeing. I think my lines are bolder, and this makes up for poorer fine coordination. I am generally working from inside out, blocking in content before finding the lines. One of the artists there is a professional sculptor recently moved from China, still looking at how to work here. Her drawings look like sculptures, extending off the page with wonderful definition of three dimensional shape. She was generous in her discussion of my drawings. The fourth down, the last I drew, was built on the contrast between the man and the red blanket he sat on. I felt I had struggled to control my materials. She, however, drew my attention to the abstraction and non-natural colours of Fauvism. I like this and I think I will try more for this sense next time.

Left handed drawing

Posted by kestrelart on

I have broken my wrist on my dominant side and it’s immobilised in a cast. Using my left hand, I write like a five year old, carefully printing each character. Each movement requires conscious control. Here are two left handed sketches. I am using as references images taken from my various twitter feeds.

This is Mo Mowlam, who as a government minister entered the notorious H block to negotiate with sectarian terrorists the peace that is the foundation of the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland.

This was my first attempt. Anita Berber, incredible queer Berlin cabaret star of the early 20th century, who did not survive to her 30th birthday. This is from the twitter feed Whores of Yore from historian Dr Kate Lister. I can strongly recommend her book A Curious History of Sex.

scratch

Posted by kestrelart on

Here are experiments with a Conte a Paris charcoal stick, on various surfaces, rough 100% cotton rag and smooth paper and with various layers of dampening to catch the lines.  Some have 2B charcoal over this or a touch of colour from Conte crayons.  Some are from my recent photos and others outdoors.  Above a disused aquaduct across a river, below the view down a gully to the sea.

Here I was trying to capture the lines made by fast flowing water down stream of a weir and the smooth deep welling as it reached the stones. There is a bit of Paynes grey watercolour used to wet the paper.

Here a small sketch of the trees on the opposite side of the railway line, waiting for a train.

The next three are all from the same vantage point on a bridge looking at the trees and woods stretching behind the bank of the canal, in the order of drawing.  It shows I have to draw and draw again to see something, which is that the composition is not made by the trees but by the three enclosed fields.

This last was done with stick willow charcoal outdoors and later reworked in brush pen, leaving the charcoal layer intact.

Fragments

Posted by kestrelart on

Race linked to White and Non-White skin colour is an invention founded in exploitation and slavery in Europe and its colonies over centuries.  Empire and capitalism created divisions to justify and facilitate the extraction of value from people through actual and economic violence.  Alongside this is a history of shared humanity and resistance to these divisions.

White is a fluid concept.  To make our lives and our children’s lives more secure, we acquire camouflage to mimic or blend in with privileged people.  There is more to this than skin tone, but colour is a key marker.  So, like many others, three generations of my ancestors progressively shed their poor Polish Jewish identity to redefine what it is to be White so that it included them, claiming the trappings of being middle class and privileged.  That must have been hard, but their skin was pale and no visible tag of that journey remains in me.

Being White, I need not think about race.  I can say: I do not have a race; race is a problem for other people, race is a problem for the people we group together as Black and Minority Ethnicity, race is their problem.

As a White social liberal I can say: I treat everyone the same regardless of skin colour and expect the same back; racism is a problem for people being abusive on public transport, or the deplorable Leavers or MAGAs and their antidiluvian attitudes; racism is not my problem; racism is a problem between racists and Black and Minority Ethnicity people.

If you challenge me on this, I can be defensive: I can say I did not choose my skin colour, did not enslave anyone, did not kneel on his neck nor fire those guns.

History is dynamic. We do not make what came before us, but we selectively mythologise historical events to build our culture and identity, continually making and remaking our society.  We choose what we see and what we ignore.  Privilege means we choose many things in our daily lives that reduce or perpetuate division and exploitation.  Being White and privileged, we determine what we expect of our public servants, the politicians, the unelected officials, the police, the teachers.  We are small fish swept along in the shoal, but we are also actors.  We make choices that influence the direction of the crowd.  So in this way, White supremacy is both perpetuated and undermined.

White supremacy is a problem for White people: so it is my problem to solve and if also you are White, then also it is your problem to solve.  When we duck the challenge, we support White supremacy.

When we own and oppose White supremacy, we have to actively see what had been invisible to us, seek out the history of empire censored from the curriculum and the news, give way and listen and promote the voices of those who are White supremacy’s most immediate victims, protest, bravely challenge not just the racists but our liberal friends, donate also if we can, make changes through wise and courageous voting.

There are many links.   Here are some, for which there is an opportunity to donate.  I have included speeches of the many that moved me.

Black Lives Matter

Minnesota Freedom Fund

The Stephen Lawrence Trust

Anti-racism book list

Rapper Killer Mike speaks: “it is time to fortify our own house .. plot, plan, strategize, organize and mobilize”  Note the police chief in the background: she went among the crowds of protesters and listened.

Tamika Mallory speaks “Don’t talk to me about looting. You are the looters”.

General CQ Brown speaks “I am thinking about our two sons and how we had to prepare them to live in two worlds”

Pilgrimage through the detritus of growth

Posted by kestrelart on

 

This piece arose from a reference photograph selected by Outside Authority.  Their interpretation of the same elements (with reference to both Henry Moore and Matisse I think) is here and here.

I flooded my original doodle with water, ink, white acrylic paint and ground chalk pastel, heated it dry and then worked back into it with knife, ink and watercolour.

 

Seven lines and two colours

Posted by kestrelart on

I invented a rule to abstract from the subject .  The rule limits any drawing to seven lines and two colours.

2016-08-22 Trerice 1

I consciously cheated on my own rule in these two drawings at Trerice, an Elizabethan house in Cornwall.  In the first, I followed the letter of the rule but not its spirit, drawing continuously to create more complex shapes and textures with a single so-called line.   Ironically, I wrote the rule above in blue ink then spread this with water to provide a third colour.   In the second, I used black crayon in addition to the permitted yellow and green, deciding black is not a colour.

2016-08-22 Trerice 3