A Rose For St. George

I was late beginning work on a piece for St George's Day this year.  It has been a weekend of morris dancing around the Meon Valley in Hampshire, with two sides visiting from Devon.

The jaunt was full of things to draw:  there were bells, sticks, hankies, tankards, hats, tabards, badges, drums, squeezeboxes, pies, cutlasses, hats, ribbons, flowers and a nice green vintage bus.  Saturday ended with songs being shared - oh, and some more dancing.  John wrapped the session up with a song I didn't know called Saint George.  The chorus knocked all my other ideas for six and I even got a little emotional.

For St. George's Day 2017

It became an on-the-morning piece, drawn first thing this morning between getting up and going to Oxford to watch more morris dancing at the Folk Weekend.

You will see featured figures George and Guy, respectively leaping in a jig and playing the melodeon.

Here's that process in full:

• Go over jig videos
• Sketch
• Draw
• Colour
• Drying time!
• Rub out
• Scan
• Whack it on the Twitter
• Dash to the station

Happy St. George's Day!

Clock Tower and NST City

Axis Towers:  my screenprint for a weekend of two tours.

At the weekend I went on two tours in the cultural quarter:  two places that form an axis around Guildhall Square, as shown in this quick print in honour of the two.

First, Southampton's long-talked-about new arts centre.  While the complex will hold a few different arts organisations, the one on show was NST City, the Nuffield Theatre's new venue in the city centre, in addition to the copper-topped wonder remaining up at the university.

It's really a lot grander than I expected and, although it's not finished yet (we were in hard hats) I was impressed by the ambition.  There are two theatre spaces, rehearsal spaces, a bar and café and lots of room for milling about.  It's a full-sized regional theatre and genuinely exciting to see, in advance of its opening later this year.
The entire development, Studio 144, is up for an award (Daily Echo) and it's being talked about in lists of new developments in the art world (The Arts Newspaper).

Being on second and third floor level, overlooking Guildhall Square, afforded views not seen since Tyrrell & Green closed, across to the side windows of the art gallery and council offices.  I got that view in reverse the next day on a tour up the Civic Centre clock tower.  These run one or two weekends most months and can be booked through Sea City Museum.  I won't spoil it too much - there were all sorts of stories.  It's spiral stairs from one level to the next, up to the inside of the clock and then up to the bells.

I've been looking at the clock tower all my life and I've drawn it many times, often trying to find new ways to represent the Civic Centre's many aspects in one image.  Here's one, from a Christmas card design in 2013.

My Southampton card design, with the Civic Centre on the right.

Just a few pictures from the clock tower tour - you can go on a sunnier day and take better photos.

I'm On A Teapot

I feel a bit like Eric Ravillious - my artwork has been put on crockery!

The design that I made for Southampton Solent University a couple of years ago was always intended for plates.  This year the project was pushed through at last and, beyond my expectations, expanded so dramatically as to include a mug and a teapot.

Prototype printings, on crockery!

As for the design:  the borders (there are two, for the outer rim and for the bit that dips down) show a lot of tall or long things in Southampton.  The centre is split into several sections representing Southampton's history and symbols, the university's history, the art school, the maritime academy at Warsash and the figures that the university's main buildings are named after.  Here goes:

Buildings at East Park Terrace

• Sir Christopher Cockerell, who invented the hovercraft at Thorneycroft in Southampton
• Lord Mountbatten, Baron Romsey and celebrated elsewhere in Southampton
• John Everett Millais, pre-Raphaelite painter, born in Southampton
• R J Mitchell, who designed the Spitfire at Southampton's Supermarine Aviation Works
• Michael Andrews, mayor of Southampton, who sadly died in a seaplane accident in 1998
• Herbert Collins, suburban and garden city architect, prolific around Southampton

Buildings off the campus and student halls

• Sir James Matthews, educationalist, councillor, and post-war town planner in Southampton
• Lucia Foster Welch, Southampton's first female mayor
• Emily Davies, women's activist from Southampton

It is very satisfying to see the artwork printed out and to see that it printed well.

The Treasures Of Jordan

My sister is flying to Jordan right now, to visit a friend in the capital, Amman, and see the many historical sites.  I knew nothing about Jordan, so I'm looking forward to hearing about it.  In preparation, here is the sum of what I've looked up this morning, based on my sister's plans and other itineraries that are available - ancient sites on the Kings' Highway; crusader castles; snorkling...

The start of a learning journey about Jordan.

A search throws up some great mosaics in Madaba, and the fact that King Abdullah had a small part in Star Trek Voyager.  My apologies to the Jordanian interior and for any names that are wrong.  Oh, and once again I've skirted with potential offence by trying to draw Arabic text.

Fruits Of The Press

My badge.

Two weeks in a room full of presses had to result in a few things to show, printing from lino, card and silkscreen.

As I have a supervisory rôle, I needed a badge to adorn my apron, to accustom the student body to my capacity and to show that I mean business.

Rebecca said that, upside-down, it looked like a toothy grin.

Painted pebbles.

The shelves and sills of my family home used to be dotted with painted pebbles.  My mother had picked out nice round ones and painted detailed butterflies.  Now they are outside the back door, in a little bed of varnished stones, and butterflies have given way to flowers.

That became a little lino print for Mothering Sunday.  It was quick and sinuous and simple.

Vegetables and fruit.

Now that Adam and I have an allotment, I expect its produce to creep into my work.  By the end of the year I will be drawing only squashes and peapods.

Working with card on card (for super-embossment), on the etching press (which required some tinkering with the Big Spanner), this piece is a quick celebration of our new endeavour:

broccoli, tomatoes, courgette (or marrow, depending on depth perception), onions, pumpkin, carrot, runner beans, chillies and rhubarb (or chard, depending on preference).

Silchester walk in detail.

The three-colour screenprint of a walk near Silchester fits into this post, although I wrote about it last week.  Here is a crop.

If you like a neat rural jumble, or the silent brashness of a farm field, look at the work of Carol Lander and Carry Akroyd.

As for screenprinting, the lesson to learn is to think about registering the layers.  To think about it early and to keep thinking about it at every stage.

Three little cakes.

Finally some card-cut cakes, which are a test piece for something to come.

Any other projects are under my hat for now.

Silchester

Silchester must be Hampshire's largest Roman site.  Calleva was a Roman town on the road from Londinium to Sorviodunum (Salisbury).  An uneven octagon of low walls filled with farm fields and abandoned excavations might not be the most potent historical experience.  Still, it was a satisfying goal-post for a country walk.

Starting at little Mortimer station, the route wove along the border of Hampshire and Berkshire, skirted the edges of farm fields and passed under lines of pylons, over stiles and along deep-set drovers' paths.  The Roman road marked on the map appeared to run under a field.  Most of the trees are still bare but the oilseed rape is beginning its display and the hedgerows are coming to life.  Fairly early on a sunny Saturday morning, everything was quiet except for chattering pheasants, shouts from riding practice, the distant rushing of trains and the trilling and mewing of what might have been a buzzard.  A red kite flew up right in front of us; a snake hissed and slid gracefully into the grass; sheep's wool fluttered from where it had snagged on a fence.

My screenprint of a walk near Silchester. 

I put this print together yesterday.  I almost threw it together and I'm glad of the urgency in the drawing and the registering.

Here is Adam's lifestyle photo of tea from a thermos outside the Calleva Arms ("4 Michelin Tyres!") in Silchester village.  We went in and had their stilton chips.

Tea in the sun at Silchester.

Bunting Update

A quick update on the current project - which I've been referring to interchangeably as bunting, banners or flags.

Here are some of the fruits of many hours of screenprinting.  It was going badly; it got worse; and this week it got much better.  I think I finally got the right mixture of paint and medium, and the right scale of pull (individual instead of three at once).  I've had numerous trips to Fabricland and carried great volumes of cotton around town on my bicycle, often at the same time as poster tubes.

Of the good prints, this photo shows just an eighth.  There are many more that didn't come through so strong.  Maybe they can go in less prominent positions.  One hundred and nintety-two is more than enough for the main area.

Await photos of the hanging!

Graduating

My degree course finished in June 2012, so this one is a little late.

My degree exhibition:
SOUTHAMPTON.  All of it.  Well, as much as I could fit onto three metre-wide discs of paper.
I wanted to talk about the city's architecture, development and mythology.  From the idea of a map, the project became three separate pieces:  Places, People and History.

The process involved a lot of drawing, research and photography around town, mixing standard tourist facts with little details that I remember hearing about Southampton over thirty years here.

The borders are lino-printed by hand and the rest is a jumble of ink drawings and text.  I wanted to keep it light and immediate - which is tricky when every mark is final.

To round off the display, I etched two sheets of brass with similar images, for brass-rubbing.


The show was held at Solent's new studios, which were then opened officially by Sir Peter Blake.  I met him, but had no idea what to say.  I won a prize for drawing, selected by Paul Osborne, our life drawing tutor - an astounding honour for me.

Solent Illustration had a stall at D&AD's New Blood fair at Spitalfields Market.  For me, it made up in part for our London exhibition falling through.  I was awarded one of the thirty "Best New Blood" rosettes.

Since then, my three pieces were framed; put on show in the Solent Showcase over the Summer; then bought by the university; and now are at Quay Arts, Newport, Isle Of Wight.

Meanwhile, a similar piece -  a plate design for the university - is on display at the Wightlink terminal in Yarmouth, Isle Of Wight, along with other work by graduates from Solent's creative courses.


Here are some close-ups:

Tag Tool and Philip Schlee

Right now I'm preparing for the opening night of "Drawn Together, Drawn Apart" at Southampton City Art Gallery.  The exhibition presents the Philip Schlee Collection - new to Southampton - and makes connections with works already in the gallery collection.

My role is to draw with TagTool, a newly-released iPad app for drawing and simple animation.  The images will be projected live in the gallery's lecture theatre.  At the moment I'm the first up, followed by five other artists.

Several of us did a similar thing in November at Lighten Up in Guildhall Square, Southampton.  I have always loved the Civic Centre and the art gallery that is inside, so I was excited to be projecting onto a part of it.  I drew a lot of pieces from the gallery collection and was soundtracked by an electronic musician, Natalia Data.  There are some photos at the BBC website.  Here are some screenshots of what I put up:

I did some in advance and some live.  I'm often surprised by the results of a very quick copy - the challenge is to accept the unpredictability.  The portraits of women all came out looking much grumpier.  The huge beard is that of Lorenz Herkomer, painted by his son Hubert, a Southampton artist in the 19th century.

Tonight I have a longer session and I'll be responding to the Philip Schlee Collection.  The exhibition is about the role the drawing (preliminary drawing) plays in artists' practice.  I'll be playing with the different approaches to drawing and construction.

Drawn together, drawn apart: The Philip Schlee Collection of Drawings
18 January - 21 April 2013

From Southampton City Council:

The Philip Schlee Collection brings together drawings, prints and paintings by 44 artists working between 1920 and 2004. It includes examples of life and observational drawings, landscapes and compositional sketches.
Drawn together, Drawn apart reflects the eclectic nature of the collection and of the artists’ own approaches to drawing. The exhibition includes work by, Gillian Ayres, David Bomberg, Christopher le Brun, Roger Hilton, David Hockney, Peter Lanyon, Henry Moore and Paul Nash.
Philip Schlee (1924-2001) assembled the collection, with the assistance of his brother Nick Schlee, between 1992 and 2004.

Edinburgh to Southampton

I've just spent a week travelling down through Great Britain, seeing places that I felt I should have seen by now, making rough sketches wherever I could.

Edinburgh:  The Albacini Collection, Scottish National Gallery
Birmingham:  Smallbrook
London:  Prommers in the gallery, Royal Albert Hall

It was quite an itinerary, by plane, train, bus, taxi, underground, coach and a lot of walking.  Here goes:

Saturday:  Southampton to Edinburgh
Sunday:  Glasgow and Edinburgh
Monday:  North Queensferry and Edinburgh
Tuesday:  Edinburgh to Berwick Upon Tweed, Morpeth, Newcastle, Durham, Darlington and New Marske (near Redcar)
Wednesday:  Darlington to Northallerton, Ripon, Harrogate, York, Wakefield and Birmingham
Thursday:  Birmingham, Coventry, Rugby, Milton Keynes and London
Friday:  London and Southampton

Some of these were very short visits.  In the case of Morpeth, a delayed train left me with only enough time to try a hat on in Green (Agriculture) Co. Country Store.  In some places I had time to visit cathedrals with the help of the 1960s Pitkin guides.  I heard the accents change and enjoyed stayed with a couple of friends.  But really, I did a lot of walking.

Here is nearly everything from the sketchbook:

North Queensferry:  The Forth rail and road bridges (3)
Edinburgh:  Scottish National Gallery (2)
Berwick-Upon-Tweed:  The Royal Border Bridge
Newcastle:  station portico
Durham:  University library and Cathedral (2)
Northallerton:  The Fleece
Ripon:  market square and town hall (2)
York:  Minster (2)
Wakefield:  Hepworth Wakefield gallery and The Black Cloud; Unity Hall / Unity House / Buzz Nightclub (3)
Birmingham:  Smallbrook (2)
Coventry:  Cathedral and Bull Yard (2)
Rugby:  St. Andrew's Church
London:  Prommers in the gallery, Royal Albert Hall (3)

I didn't get the colours out much.  Here is the train across the Forth and another view of the Proms.