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