Homage to the Ancients

I went to an exhibition of treasures of ancient Peru – sculptures, vessels, textiles, jewellery, masks – spanning 2500 years. I walked around 3 times – overview, then more slowly then back to the peices i liked most.

I particularly liked the symbols used on many of the items for their simplicity in shape and direct symbolic meanings eg duality (male-female, sun-moon), three levels of existence (sky, earth, sea).

Not quite sure how some of the jewellery were worn – earrings the diameter of an orange and nose rings bigger than the wearers face.

Sorry about the cat – the way I’ve done the legs makes it look like a strange kangaroo.

Gestation

I have had a nest egg image in my mind for months since I came across Francis Orpen Morris’ work through the wonderful Tiny Aviary blog. Morris painted as an ornithologist naturalist in the 1800’s. For me it symbolises the gestation of an idea and the time and focus that needs to acccompany it. Like the thinness of the shell, so too is the fagility of many ideas.

Imperfect lines – even so, I had to be so still to paint them so close together. This style has been inspired by the meditative quality of the work of Olivia Jeffries.

Another perfect autumn day for us to enjoy!

Imperfect repetitions

Inspired by the many surface pattern designs I see on the internet, fabrics, stationary, I thought I’d have a go. Here’s what I did.

Put masking tape to set top and bottom border to create a square shape to work in.

I wanted to keep it simple and decided on a dominant line direction – verticals for both.

Covered the whole area with shapes. The little branch is based on an earlier sketch. The persimmon is drawn from the 1 piece of fruit but turned 9 times to get a slightly different drawing angle.

Decide on a minimal palette of 2 – 3 colours.

I particularly enjoyed filling in the background. I always wonder what to do with backgrounds. But in this case, the background broken up into many shapes was a pattern in itself.

Drawing shapes repeatedly somehow highlights a myriad of little imperfections.

Watercolour collage

Simple colouring in

Just wanted to do some simple colouring in. Came across these two pencil drawings I must have done a while ago. Perfect for colouring in using gouache. What you don’t fill in is as important as what you leave out. I ended up having fun with creating negative spaces too.

Stunning autumn day here – hope you’re having good day!

Just looking

Twenty minutes of sketching with a green fluro pen. This time, I used my left hand to draw. There’s less control but you kind of look more. Then I added some blue and grey washes.

Next day looking at it, it all looked a bit wishy-washy. So, I went over it to work on tone – darks, mediums, lights.

Quite a pleasure drawing in the morning autumn sun while looking for new plant growth.

One things leads to another

I started with a few blind contour drawings of my neice. She didn’t like any of them. Oh well. Thing is, I enjoy it and like the scribbly effect. From that I did a stylised drawing – the one you are looking at. She looks odd but undeterred kept going. Next a bowl turns up and of course with some plants. How do I connect her with the bowl? Oh, hands and she needs a body too. Background, what to do with that? And so the drawing kept going. Could do more but might stop…and see what next another time.

Layers (4)

Different views, different textures.

Layers (3)

Layers (2)

Looking at and drawing the object one view at a time is a bit like peeling the layers of an onion. Drawing each view on a separate piece of tracing paper and then deciding how they might all be placed / sequenced to form one total image is an interesting exercise in itself too.