Ερμαφρόδιος Hermaphrodite, one of a series of drawings using various media, - this one in watercolour with the figure drawn with a graphite stick, - taken from a sketchbook image I made when last in Larnaca. The original statue has the left leg broken off at the calf. In the sketchbook version I added the missing component but in the series of finished works I decided otherwise. I am coming to realise that part of the aesthetic to modern 21st century eyes is this ancient statuary in its incomplete state. It makes us appreciate what remains and in that way make a link with artists of the past.
Some of the series here on my studio walls.

Matthaias Grünewald made this drawing of a crucifixion some twelve years before his famous Isenheim Altarpiece which can be seen at the Musee Unterlinden in Kolmar. This drawing is a study for another altarpiece for a church in Germany. This drawing can be found in the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe, Germany. It is on paper 32 x 53 cm.

Grünewald's crucifixions marked a turning point in Christian art. Up to this time the crucified figure of Christ was portrayed as standing on the cross as if He could get down from it at any time. The brutality of being crucified was never really emphasised. He was depicted on the "Throne of the Cross." But Grünewald pulled no punches. He showed such a death for what it was, - painful. Not only was the posture of the corpora more contorted but the cross was crudely fashioned. It may well have been nearer to what actually was used. In some of the crucifixion paintings I've seen you'd think the Roman soldiers had had the cross specially made at Waring and Gillows, the famous Lancaster furniture makers!

Even for non- Christians, the Crucifixion makes an interesting and strong subject; the outstretched limbs make an ideal for anatomical illustration and the cross shape makes a strong impact on the psyche. The cross has featured in art for millenia. There are pre-Minoan examples of cruciform statuary which can very easily be mistaken for something made two thousand years later.

This is part of an ongoing intermittent project which I return to from time to time as a rest from my regular "bread and butter" Sea Pictures. I started exploring the Hellenic female figure in Cyprus and has now emerged as something of a recurring theme. It makes a change I suppose from the Enigma series which has been an obsession of mine for quite a few years.

We discussed obsession the other day during our lunch break at the studios and concluded obsession is probably the main driving force behind art. We do the same thing over and over but each time vary the interpretation and perhaps the medium used. I have discussed this at some length on my other site which you can see here.

All the drawings have been made on A3 size cartridge paper cut into strips about 10 cm wide. This interpretation shown here is a pen and wash effort, the line drawn with a 0.5 mm Rotring pen.

Mantegna's "Dead Christ" is, in my opinion a turning point drawing in the development of Reanaissance art. Mategna was a most draughtsmanly painter. This work is done in tempera on canvas and was completed around 1490. It measures 46 x 81 cm so is roughly A1 size. In the years when I was a life model at the art faculty in UCLAN in Preston there would always be a time when I did this pose. It was a favourite for it gives a classic lesson in foreshortening.

It was one of the more relaxing poses in a life class. The pose usually lasted all day, I don't suppose I would have been a "dead" figure but if I'm honest, I will have certainly been a sleeping one!

Drawing the foreshortened figure from life is a good exercise, it forces you to abandon preconceptions about what the human form looks like. You have to draw what you see, not what you think you ought to be seeing.

Rogier van der Weyden was a Flemish Painter based in Brussels and did this painting around 1435. It started out as the reredos at a chapel in Leuwen but is now at the Prado in Madrid. It is almost certainly one of his most famous pieces and I feature it here for comparison with a drawing he did later in 1460. What I find striking about this, apart from the composition being very similar to the painting is the style of the figures. They seem to have a quality very similar to a much later artist, Giacometti who was a twentieth century sculptor. Giacometti went in for elongated figures that posessed these same expressive qualities found in this Northern Renaissance drawing. You can read more here. Follow the links to Rogier van der Weyden.
Its worth switching on the speakers on your PC when visiting the wga site for its baroque music.

One of the images shown by the Drawing Research Network on their Flickr page.

Sarah Lightman
Originally uploaded by DRN_SWG

I started my working life as an engineering draughtsman and because of this I get the urge to draw something mechanical from time to time. This particular image, done in my usual way with graphite on 300 gsm paper, is the latest example. It is of a motorbike brake caliper. The nature of the piece meant I had to approach it as a technical drawing at first. Because the detail shows man made machined components the initial drawing utilised tee-square and set square. Then, once the line work was done, more traditional drawing methods were used. I think that well made machine parts have quite a sculptural quality about them. It elevates the everyday and mundane to the realms of so-called high art. But then that is what art is all about in my opinion, to highlight the mundane and say to the viewer, "Look at this."
There is another example of this "highlighting the mundane" on my other Blog where I have a photo of newly installed pipework beneath a boiler. The soldering is not so neat but I plan to make a drawing from this sometime and I'll probably tidy it up a bit.
Picasso once said, "Art is a lie. But through this lie the truth is revealed."

Beach #5. Graphite on watercolour paper with some tinting. Size A3. I used water colour paper to get the graininess for the stone texture. This particular rock pool is on the Morecambe Bay tideway where the rock is a soft variety of sandstone which means the sea's action makes the stones rounded but never smooth. Compare that with say, Cornwall where the indiginous rock is granite which can be smoothed to a fine polish.
I remember drawing this on site in a cold November gale whose only interruption from America was Ireland. Clear blue skies, an empty beach, the sussurating waves, the call of the birds..... and frozen fingers. Who says I don't suffer for my art?

Larnaka. This too is A3 in size but done on smoother 300 gsm cartridge paper. As above, blue skies, sussurating waves, birdsong but this time not frozen fingers but a risk of sunburn, even at seven o' clock in the morning.

Seeing I'd mentioned my "Sea Pictures" in the last posting I though I ought to show a couple here. Most of the series are paintings so strictly speaking, they hardly qualify for a draughtsman's Blog. But you can see some of the sea pictures here.

"Beech". Graphite drawing on A3 size 300 gsm paper. This is one of the coppiced beech trees growing by the Luneside cycle track that once was a railway in Lancaster. I did the drawing only a couple of days ago.
While still settling in to the new studio space the tendency is to produce very varied work. I should be working on Sea Pictures for the upcoming exhibition at Arteria Gallery here in Lancaster but...
.....watch this space, eh?

Having moved into new premises I have been sorting out some older work including life drawings. It is hoped that at some time in the not too distant future we may start life-drawing sessions again at Luneside, but not just yet. We still have a lot to do just getting the place straight.
This drawing, done in .35 mm micro-pencil on lightweight (90 gsm) paper, - layout paper, - was done some four years or so ago at one of our sessions. I drew it on an A2 sized sheet but cropped it down to 42 x 32 cms.
Sometimes it is a useful exercise to limit the means of drawing and to work with a set set of rules. The equipment I used is more compatible with a tight drawing technique and by extension, drew the floor texture with a straight edge. Definitely borrowed from technical drawing.
And yet...
I think I still ended up with a fre-flowing feminine form. Within the above mentioned constraints one still has to draw what is really there.

Botticelli's "Flora" from his Primavera painting that I referred to yesterday.

A drawing by Botticelli. I think its called "Allegory". What I like about it is the way the female figure's clothes are highlighted in such detail. It is a lovely drawing, pleasing to the eye. What more can I add?

I think the model was the same one he used in his painting "Primavera". Note the third figure from the right of the painting, - "Flora".

Drawing No. 11.
Another in the recent series of figure drawings. Graphite on 300gsm paper. size A3

An experiment with the Graphic Novel. I am putting together a graphic novel from a short fiction story I have written about a life model and a group of art students. It is simply an exploration of the form and I have no plans on publishing.
That said, the challenges of this format are interesting, arranging how the pictures should be displayed and how the story can be allowed to unfold. Another aspect of this is it requires me to make drawings of objects not normally within my ouevre, e.g. street scenes, close ups of hands etc. and objects such as cameras as shown here. Many of these things need to be drawn "from the life".
This project may take some time to complete as it is not intended as my mainstream work but a useful fill-in during fallow periods.

These images have been made from digital photographs of pencil drawings done on cartridge paper subsequently uploaded into vector format using CorelDraw. With this process the whiteness of the original drawings is lost making for a b&w photo effect. This is a sample page whose size is A4.

Thumbnails of the twelve figures as mentioned in the last Blog entry. I shall feature them all at a later date, probably after the New Year.

This is one of a series of twelve figure drawings I have done in the last few months. The images are from fashion designs and here I have been exploring images created with certain photography techniques. This white vignetting effect occours in pinhole camera photography. Used here in drawing it is a chance to show a fully developed drawing in the centre and then gradually reveal the stages of development as the eye moves to the periphery of the picture.
All the images are in pencil of varying softnesses (3B -12B) done on 300gsm cartridge. The size of each is A3. I plan to exhibit them as a self contained entity at some (as yet unspecified) time in the future.

Sometimes the boundary between drawing and painting can get a bit blurred. This was drawn in ultramarine watersoluble pencil and thin washes as layers applied afterwards.

There are dozens of headless and limbless statues lying about at ancient sites in the eastern Mediterranean. Its hardly surprising when we look at Greek history over the last two of three thousand years. What with the Phonecians, then the Medes and Persians, the Peloponesian wars to say nothing of the iconoclastic elements of later religious zealots. But the fragments that are extant make for interesting drawings. They've certainly given me an ongoing project to work on.

A couple of Hellenic figures. No comment really, I just fancied posting them from the last Cyprus sketchbook. The standing figure is the famous "Anzio Girl" and the other is simply a "Seated Girl", Γυνηη καθομι.

Harbour at Low Tide. St. Ives.

Drawn using two pages (full spread) of sketchbook. Interesting how the fold is co-incidently aligned with the sea margin.

St. Ives harbour. The beach at low tide. Pencil drawing on 150 gsm cartridge size 10 x 10 cm. I took a small pocket sized sketchbook with me to St. Ives. A handy size when working outside in an Atlantic gale.

I took with me my usual four clutch pencils; HB 0.5 mm., 3B 2 mm., 6B 3mm. and 4B 6mm. This latter functioned as a sort of graphite stick. I had a chunk of putty rubber and a collection of servietttes gleaned from the various cafés I visit.

I usually take along with me a (very) small box of watercolours. I carry the water in an old, small perfume spray bottle that holds about 50 mls. and a plastic medicine measure serves as a resevoir. All very cheap and easy to carry. I do allow myself one expensive item, the brush; it is a good quality sable that closes like a fountain pen. A good sable will shape to a very fine point. Its bulk holds colour well and when squeezed out, lifts excess colour off the paper with ease. The whole lot fits easily into a small satchel or as sometimes is the case, takes up no more room than two large anorak pockets.

Beach Margin No.2. Pencil drawing on A3 size 300gsm paper. I think this is a Mediterranean scene but it could be St. Ives where I will be for the next week or so.

This is the composite drawing I mentioned yesterday in which I used a mixture of paper types ranging from high quality to cheap wrapping paper. I also varied the medium too. The whole figure stands 130 cm tall so is almost life size. This was the first studio project that I got under way during this last stint in Cyprus. I did it, quite frankly, just to get something on to the bare walls. The studio space was newly whitewashed and more resembled a clinic than a studio. It took a couple of days to complete and became the jumping off point for a whole series of pieces on this theme. They were not all of necessity caryatids but the mythical theme was never very far away.

This is the left side panel of the head which is about A3 size ink drawing using a Rotring technical pen on tracing paper.
The right hand panel of the head is a watercolour painted on Bockingford 400gsm paper. The elements here were drawn initially using water soluble clour pencils and was was added later. This is my usual technique when using this medium. This is the most painterly panel on the figure; the rest of it made more use of line, sometimes in marker pen, sometimes paint (acrylic), sometimes graphite and again sometimes charcoal. Basically, if it made a mark, I used it.

Caryatid line drawing. I have been somewhat taken by the sculptures of the Hellenic perion (circa 500BC). Theiraccurate representations of the figure are quite striking. The caryatid is a pillar carved into the shape of a (usually female) figure. She is free standing but as a caryatid has the capital of the pillar sett above her head. I have taken the liberty to omit this.

Subsequent drawings have evolved into a more modern looking image but still with that quasi classical look. It is intended at sometime to do some larger work in the future based on this theme. Indeed there is already a multi-media drawing which I made while in Cyprus, - looking at the real thing, - and will show here probably tomorrow. On the left here she has evolved into a bookmark.

The original bookmark piece is a strip taken from a piece of A3 paper so is 42 cm long. I have copied this in to my PC, so copies 21cm long are available if you'd like one. Just let me know.

Arches within arches. Αγιος Λαζαρός church of St. Lazarus in Larnaka. A cloister runs parallel to the south side of the church and it has a vaulted cieling. It is interesting how we come to see more as we draw "from the life." The open arches in the arcading contrast with the solidity of the vaulted ceiling filling the spaces between the ribs. In this case, some of the ribbing is absent and the whole thing is held up by its own dynamic. Unlike English Gothic, the decoration here is minimal.

Solitary stone resting on the sand beneath the waves. While in Larnaka where the sea is warmer than the average swimming pool I often walked to and from the studio along the sea's edge and more often than not would walk along the shoreline but some 200 yards out to sea where the water was still only knee deep. The patterns created in the sand by wave action are fascinating on their own but I was struck by this single solitary stone. Its presence interrupted the flow of the lines in the sand. It reminded me of those zen gardens in Japan where isolated stones are surrounded by sand or gravel. Overlying all this is the bright sparkling reflection of the sun. The light tracery dances briefly over the more static imagery beneath..
I had to draw it.
4B graphite on 300gsm paper. Done in five minutes flat. Totally spontaneous.

Life drawing in Larnaka. I don't normally show my life drawings but this at least illustrates some of the wide ranging activities that take place at CYCA.

"Life Drawing is the last bastion of bourgiose art," I once heard quoted. Sorry but I strongly disagree. I have written my opinions on the other blog which you can see here.

Just as a matter of interest, I used the cloth the model was sitting on for my key refence points and one of the vertical folds as a proportion measuring tool instead of the model's head as a standard unit as is the norm. See Euan Uglow's work to see what I mean.

The Sea at Larnaka. An exercise in pure line drawing. Taken from an A5 sketctchbook.

"Sleeping Amazon" taken from a statue of the Hellenic period circa 400BC.

The sleeping myth image drifting on the Mediterranean tide, nothing solid, just a dream formed from the foam. The Eastern Med seems to do that to me. It plays on my northern European romantic streak.

The work is on 300 gsm cartridge paper, A3 size and line drawing using soft pencils, 4B, 6B and some 9B. An exercise in line only drawing. This is one of several pieces done at the Larnaka studios.

Sunrise on the Med. Water-soluble pencil drawing. This is from last year's Cyprus sketchbook. Finished work as paintings have followed from this in the series "Sea Pictures".
I will be on the bus to Heathrow later today. I will be in Larnaca, Cyprus, for the next month.

A finished drawing of stones on a beach, a logical conclusion to yesterday's image though this is not a finished version of that. Mixed media on Bockingford paper. 21 x 21 cm.

Stones on a beach.... Taken from a recent sketchbook. I do many of these little studies. I am interested in the way random objects lie in relation to each other. They are the still-lifes that occour in nature, whether it be bricks, gravel or a collection of other objects. There should soon be plenty of scope with the onset of autumn.

But I forget one thing: in a weeks time I will be back in Cyprus and will miss the English autumn . I am posting other drawings from the sketchbooks daily during the run up to departure on my other Blog.

Pages from a sketchbook showing forest landscape studies which resulted in a finished drawing...
...called "Faraway." A graphite drawing with charcoal underdrawing done on 400 gsm paper. You can also view the image here.

Window in the ruined abbey at Whitby. Taken from a sketchbook dated 2004.

I was at my daughter's place in Wales last week. We weeded a huge garden part of which I did a drawing of here. This was at a halfway point in the weed clearing operation. The image is from the current sketchbook. It is about A5 size.
The garden sweeps up a steep slope and is terraced with drystone walling and in this case, overgrown with bracken and brambles thus making up a chaotic mixture.
Well it did.... but now the weedings done.....

In my other Blog, the posting "Beachcomber" features a day doing just that and associated artistic activity. This drawing was done not on Morecambe Bay but in the eastern Med last year. I was sitting on the beach doing the usual sea studies when I noticed this footprint (not mine) beside a stone also the track of the mountain bike I had borrowed.
Apart from its qualities as a drawing, the image is quite evocative. Memories.

Stony Shoreline. "Sea Pictures" is an exhibition of paintings. This image supports the show in that it is one of many drwings done in preparation.
Observation -> drawing -> idea -> more observation -> more drawing -> painting. Seems a logical process. But it never quite works that way. Often the painting is a retrospective look at the drawing. The drawing shows what I saw. The painting shows what the drawing said.

"Sea Pictures" is now on show at the Art Lounge Gallery in Merthyr Tydfil. You can find the gallery here.
There are thirteen works on show, eleven are acrylic paintins on board, and two are mixed media drawings.

Another of the "new" drawings, part of the series on which the profile portrait was featured last Tuesday. They are featured here as well and on another site here.

New drawings. I am currently making a series of drawings on separate sheets of A2 cartridge paper. I was impressed recently by some minimalist b&w photographs and decided to make a few drawings where only the centre of the field has any great detail and then periphery is considerably lessened. I find the result rather encouraging.

By coincinence, one of our Studio members showed me some photos taken with a pinhole camera. Visual field is almost 180º but what is striking is the white vignetting which looks not unlike what I have been doing. Pinhole photography, by the way, has an aperture around f400 and an infinite depth of field. The exposure time is almost glacial.

But back to drawing. The information on the paper is enough. I think the eye can read what has been omitted. Or the imagination of the viewer can fill in the gaps, perhaps.

Edgar Degas was noted for his portrayals of ballet dancers. Its not only his paintings that are worthy of note, but his drawings too. As can be seen from the above example, he gridded off the paper to arrive at correct proportion. What I find interesting here, is that although the size of the squares equals one "head" as is the general rule of thumb, the rest of it appears at first to go out of the window. Normally a free-standing figure is about seven and a half to eight "heads" tall. But here, the figure only takes up six squares. Yet the thing is right. And the reason is, - foreshortening of some of the limbs. The lower part of the forward leg is correct at two "heads" from foot to knee, but the upper leg is angled away from the viewer. This is neatly hidden behind the dancer's dress. I could rabbit on.....

The message is as always in life drawing, - draw what is really there, not what we think is there.

There is another aspect of Degas' depiction of these ballet dancers; while the dancers themselves create the illusion of grace and delicacy, Degas shows in his work the sheer hard work that goes into doing this. Backstage the grim reality is far removed from the floating dreamworld shown on stage. Indeed some of the "dancer" pictures have a lot in common with his Ironers, a picture of girls working in a sweatshop.

What Degas had to say about drawing: *

"Drawing is not what one sees but what one can make others see".

"I am a colourist with line..... To colour is to pursue drawing into a greatetr depth."

* = " DEGAS by himself " edited by Richard Kendall, Published by Time-Warner Books

ISBN 0-316-72810-1

A ballet shoe. Some time ago, circa 2003/4 I did a series of paintings of dancers, an example can be seen on the Luneside website, click on the image to enlarge.

This drawing is from an old sketchbook. Its about 15 cms square, pen and wash.

Its interesting, is it not, how some of these sketches, never intended to be finished works become such in their own right.

Some of the "Dancer" work is unfinished business. There still are avenues to explore. Perhaps I shall get back to it some time...

Progression #2. Something I did in 2004. It shows the same piece of forest but (reading left to right), increasing density in drawing techinque. Starting with pure line and progressing to full tone. I had planned to show this at Kielder this year but the glass is broken. No time to rectify that now. Pity.

This is a fore runner of the sea series such as the example here. [Please click.]

"Fade" is a large drawing 100 x 70 cm done exclusively in pencil with the exception of the centre foreground tree which was prepainted in watercolour. Compelted in the summer of last year it now hangs in the Studio Gallery of the Dukes Theatre in Lancaster.

Pencils used ranged from HB to 9B.

The title fade refers of course to the way the background recedes into the mists; a common feature in dense forest. Easy to get lost but despite this, there is beauty to be seen here. But if one does get lost, then finding a way out or getting one's bearings can override appreciation of the forest's aesthetic charm.

Patterns made by sea foam over shallow water. Long sunny days spent filling a sketchbook and observing these patterns, how they shift and change. If the water stays calm long enough, the pattern holds itself. Then even the slightest ripple changes the whole thing. Fascinating to watch, - frustrating to draw accurately from the life. This is where the camera comes in. An instant in time frozen for more detailed study later.

This image was drawn using 3B and 4B graphite sticks and a fine point 3B pencil. Image is 21 cm square. This was drawn into a sketchbook while outdoors enjoying the summer sunshine. 25ºC here in North-west England. It could have been Cyprus!