In the pink

As well as continuing work with my pure coloured pencil drawing (see the two pictures below), I've begun another piece, which I intend to be in coloured pencil again. This time, I began by sanding down the smooth side of a piece of hardboard, then adding several layers of thin gesso mixed with white acrylic paint, sanding down once again between applications. Then, I gave the board another coat of gesso, this time with a pink tint. On this I began my drawing, in graphite pencil, the gesso has a nice tooth to work on with pencil, though it's difficult not to smudge work in progress by leaning on it. Rather than fixing the pencil drawing with fixative, I gave it another coat of this time clear gesso. This smudged the pencil a little, but I didn't mind that at all as my scene is a watery one, another beach scene. Now the pencil is fixed, I'm going to work on it again, maybe with coloured pencil, or perhaps some more graphite again. This is similar to the way I began my Silver Sands of Morar picture, though I hope this time to produce something a little more refined.

The pink gesso beach, by the way, is again taken from a photograph of the silver sands area of the western Scottish coast. The composition this time is quite abstract, with lots of space. An empty beach, my idea of heaven.

I've also been progressing with a pen and ink drawing I began a few weeks ago, it's another slightly abstract composition, smaller than my gigantic tree drawing of last month. Pen and ink, the way I work with it, is extremely time consuming, an aspect I both love and lose patience with. I love it though, because stippling, hatching and cross hatching, can be extremely relaxing procedures. Before the wrist and back ache sets in, that is!

I've done very little with the revision of my novel since last week, and despite my promise not to chase any more literary projects until I have completed this one, I've found myself tinkering with poem ideas, mainly haiku length, or one draft poems. I can't seem to write much these days however, thinking in words has got a bit frustrating and a bit painful for me. It's at times like these I'm glad that I'm 'Jack of all trades' after all.

But there are so many distractions lately, I’ve launched a Facebook page, something which I wasn’t really that keen on doing because I don’t really like the ‘closed’ network thing, it reminds me too much of playground cliques, but after finding a couple of messages waiting for me on my un-developed Facebook account, I decided to give it a go. I must say it’s a very slick and complex set-up, with so many ways of interacting with groups and other Facebook people (even if you aren’t their friends), there are so many poets on there too! I was very impressed, if not a little anxious and daunted once again by the ‘closed network’ aspect of things. Yet the widgets and the ways of bringing into Facebook other elements of your on-line existence are amazing, my main problem turned out to be how not to let myself get carried away with this highly addictive on-line environment. Hours of fun (and anxiety, if you’re like me).

STANDING STONE ON THE NORTH YORKSHIRE MOORS

Using my pencil sketch and my 3 photographs, which I printed out on my inkjet printer, I worked up a graphite drawing on a piece of paper I had stretched earlier. I seemed to have lost the knack of stretching paper lately, a little piece always seems to escape the gumstrip and the paper bubbles, or maybe the gumstrip I'm using just isn't very good.

Anyway, I primed the paper, because I plan to use oil pastel and I'm still not sure whether it's safe to use this on unprimed material or not, I seem to find conflicting information when I try to do a little research. So I primed the paper with a mixture of acrylic gesso and acrylic paint (white with a little blue added to give a cool tint). I leave the brush marks in the gesso, so when it sets it gives a nice tooth to draw on. I hadn't planned on making more than a few marks in pencil, but I enjoyed using pencil on the rough surface, and I thought that making a tonal drawing might help me make a more rounded piece, finding the tonal values would help hold the 3 photographs together more convincingly compositionally. I've never worked this way before, but then to a degree art should be an on-going experiment, shouldn't it?

The photograph of the board and source material at the top of this page isn't my studio by the way. I'd love a studio, ideally one with a glass roof and a window looking onto the sea, here maybe, but I don't have one, instead I make do with finding space anywhere I can, mainly on the bed in the spare room, or in the evenings, I join Mum in the living room and work in front of the tele'. Part of the beauty of visual work is I don't need silence, not in the way I do when I write. At the moment I enjoy listening to Radio 4 in the box room, or watching (well listening) to DAVE on Freeview, Mock the Week, QI, Have I Got News For You, Never Mind The Buzzcocks, entertainment while I work.

Here's where I work sometimes, when I can, on the bed in the spare room!

Anyway, I gave the graphite drawing a quick burst of fixative, but it's still coming off on my sleeve, so I decided to give it another coat of gesso, just plain acrylic gesso this time so it sets transparent and locks the graphite beneath the surface.

I'll start working on this next, just got to think how I'd like to do it.