China

It wasn't exactly a secret but that is where I've been - in Beijing, Xi'an, Guilin and Shanghai. I had hoped to do a few sketches, and I felt very disappointed I couldn't do more, but now I'm back they don't seem so bad and I feel quite proud that I can say I sketched on the Great Wall, at the Forbidden City and in Xi'an where I sketched the Terracotta Army. I'm going to post sketches that were done there, that were started there and completed later and also some sketched from photos.

The first drawing above is of something I have looked at in photos and always wanted to see in real life. This is one of a pair of Imperial Guardian Lions at the Forbidden City. I'm only posting it first to have something pretty to start with!














I've never been one for order so here are some drawings done on the flight home. The first one I was quite pleased with as it was the man sitting right next to me and I like the lines. This flight must have been the longest, most tedious I've ever been on - 11 hours from Beijing but we started in Shanghai and didn't realise until we got to the airport that we would be flying back to Beijing. The rumour was then that we would be sitting in the plane for two hours but then it turned out that we would have to get out and check in all over again! This rather large man was only on the Shanghai-Beijing leg and he immediately fell asleep and snored so loudly it startled a couple of ladies in the next row! He came to when the food was being handed out and eat his and his wife's share. He then called back the attendant for a drink and as they handed him the drink he gulped it down and handed the cup for a refill about four times!













Beyond the snoring man, another passenger on the Beijing leg.
















Beijing-Paris, it was as if time was stretching out in front of me. At one point when I thought we must surely be close to landing someone said there was 'only 5 more hours to go'! It was tortuous! After we got back on the plane everyone just wanted to sleep. Fair enough, I thought, they'll serve breakfast and open the shutters later and maybe I'll get enough light to draw but no - all but about three people in our section kept their shutters down for the entire flight! I can't help wondering if it were possible for anyone in the past to time travel to the present day, what would they make of a plane load of people totally disinterested in even looking out of the window to see what their planet looks like? The plane passed over Mongolia and Siberia - have they all been there, seen it already? I drew what was in front of me, a paper cup - the lady next to me had seen me drawing the other passengers so I thought I had better behave! The sticker was stuck on my jacket to identify me as a transit passenger in Beijing airport, and I took it off and put it in my sketchbook to use later only it stuck fast to this page so I added the pattern from the packet of wipes to balance it out.





















Hours later, Alex asked for a Coke so I drew that too. Not a great drawing but when I look at it I'll be always be grateful I'm not as bored as I was then! It was 24 hours door to door, and I still don't feel I've recovered.














As we toured with a group, I soon realised that there would be very little chance for drawing. A greater proportion of time was spent waiting - at ticket desks, for coaches, in hotel lobbies - than was spent in the places we came to visit, something I found very frustrating. One of the rare times I could make use of this was sitting in the coach outside the hotel in Beijing. Opposite the hotel was an interesting wall with figures in relief. I don't know who this man is*, but he looked cool and reminded me of Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics!

*I think now that he may be Li Dazhoa.

Toodle pip!

Typically I have left everything to the last minute and have now started to panic - we leave tomorrow. As the blog won't be updated for a while I'll leave you with a photo of art supplies, they always go down well! It's amazing how quickly I can sketch if time is limited, I hope I can do that next week - I'm still dithering over which pads to take and needed to try out the Albrecht Durer pencils on the Green & Stone pad. I've decided I'll take this little pad, I love the paper and it's a great size for sketching without being noticed. I'd love to take the Cretacolors but the weight of them means I can't even consider it, so a few Albrecht Durers have replaced them. The mechanical pencil I mentioned earlier did in fact have a B lead (it seems harder) so I now have one with a 2B lead also. The little sharpener in the cap is actually very good so I'm even more impressed with these - if it had a little eraser like my Mars Steadtler, it would be just perfect! I'm taking my square format Winsor & Newton pad but as it's quite large (for me) I suspect it may not be used so much, but we shall see. I can't promise a lot of sketching will be done as the trip is pretty hectic, but I'll do my best! See you soon!

Much ado about nothing

I went out shopping yesterday hoping in one day to make up for the time I lost last week. You know how you set out with a long list, limited time and a sinking feeling that fate is going to conspire against you? Well yesterday was just the opposite when miraculously everything seemed to be right there just waiting for me! No traipsing around endlessly either and I came home blister free!

First though, I took the obligatory detour to the little art shop. It sounds silly now I've come to realise it, but part of the reason for not drawing much recently was down to not being able to get really sharp points on my coloured pencils. Nothing seemed to work satisfactorily and the constant need to sharpen was a bit of a nuisance. The Aquamonoliths are very hard, the Albrecht Durers slightly wider than normal and both go blunt pretty quickly. Hence the detour. Ask for advice - and here is what I found.

I haven't a clue about sharpeners, I never use them so I was surprised to find they have changed a bit since I went to primary school! I explained about the problem carrying a craft knife on holiday, different lead sizes etc and the assistant showed me a few different types. While I still think it would be great if someone could invent one with different size holes and make it enclosed to catch the shavings (I hate when they go all over my hands!) I thought these two were brilliant. The little one at the bottom comes in a tiny leather case (!) and the thing on the right twists so that you can sharpen the pencil to taper to three different lengths (I like a long, long tapering angle). But when he showed me the one at the top (it shaves the wood and the lead separately so there is less stress on the lead) I asked about the two little blades and he demonstrated how it's for mechanical leads and got out this 2mm pencil by Caran D'Ache (The sharpener has two tiny holes at the sides, just visible in red in the photo). Well blow me down, I can leave the pencils and craft knife at home and get a really sharp point on this instead! I've never liked mechanical pencils, especially with the fiddly little leads that feel like the edge of a tin, but this sharpens to a point like a normal pencil plus it feels just like silk to use!

After feeding teenagers and friends, I sat down in front of the telly - hubby is away again - I got the cheapo paper out and prepared to do some TV sketches. Oh yeah, it's 'quiz night' here Chez Grace, when we normally watch Mastermind and University Challenge (and I feel good if I can answer a question!). Those cameramen at the Mastermind studio are much more hyperactive than I realised - I never noticed before but those cameras weren't static for a single moment! University Challenge finished the series last week so I hadn't expected the next programme - Unknown Africa: Comoros. Wow, I've had a fascination with the Comores as long as I've had one with Madagascar. But when I saw that presenter, much too beautiful and a constant smile, I was reminded of Nigella and thought she was going to gush and ruin a potentially great programme. Well, the opening scene was perhaps one of the most surreal I'd seen on a nature programme! She (Saba Douglas-Hamilton), asked about the local flying foxes and was taken through some tiny back streets and from that simple enquiry was immediately taken off up a mountain, diving into pools, under fountains and into a cave (just how does a girl dress for a day like that?!) and the camera panned up to the most amazing sight I'd seen in a long time. Like in a classic cartoon scene when the light goes out and suddenly a million pair of eyes are revealed! All hanging upside down but in a frenzy of activity, like a mini civilisation!

I got a couple of sketches out of it and she won me over by the end, so much so I didn't want it to finish! The place is totally unspoilt, and still looks the same as when I first read about it. I doodled a bit more with the TV still on in the background when the new Delia show, How to Cheat at Cooking began. Well, I could write a whole post on Delia, this show and how I felt at the end but suffice to say, this lady ought to be the next Prime Minister, the next President of the US of A if necessary - she could sort out the world with her gentle no-nonsense approach. What a relief it was, to see some honest, straightforward but very polite 'tell it like it is' on TV. I was so taken with the show on the Comores I wanted to take it in a savour it, not see Delia but I can only say that word again, it was such a relief that there are still people like her. The lack of inspiration with the art is due in a large part to me having information overload. 'Information' being a euphemism for total and utter pretentious and misleading crap - constant breaking news of absolutely nothing at all. Normally after a fallow period, inspiration comes back and things are pretty much as before but this time I feel I have made significant changes. I can see a barrier between me and all this advice, the hype and general blah, blah, blah that has been building up and getting me down. Just as in the art world, in the world of celebrity chefs with it's, as Delia calls it, poncy cooking (all towers, drizzles and sprinkles), pretentiousness has blinded us to the blindingly obvious. So this post is too long, so my blog is not A-list, so my drawing style is not contemporary, so I don't work loose (loose, is that the be all and end all these days?!) so I'm not in with the in-crowd, so I don't do this or do that, it's endless - but is it all about winning popularity contests? Do we all have to play along too? And what then? There has been too much getting in the way between me and my paper, and right there, that's what it's all about. I think Delia would understand.

P.S. Speaking of TV programmes, one of my faves is a political comedy show Bremner, Bird and Fortune. Recently one of their jokes hit a nerve and has been adapted and adopted into our vocabulary. A regular sketch involves the middle classes at a dinner party discussing topical issues. One of them was trying to explain Facebook and how popular he had become, with hundreds of friends, to the horror of the other guest who said ' Hundreds?! Isn't there a 'piss off' button?' Now, wouldn't that be useful in real life?! So I got back yesterday and was so pleased with my sharpeners that I showed them to the boys. One of them patted me on the head and said 'you really do think this stuff is interesting, don't you?' Undeterred, I tried the other one (with the million on-line friends) and he smiled at me sweetly with his big, kind eyes and said 'Piss off, Mum!' I wouldn't have it any other way!

Putting my feet up?

Feet up, not a care in the world. That's what it looks like, doesn't it? One very nice person said recently that I never do a bad drawing but I was busy disproving that theory over the last couple of weeks! Everything I did turned out bad and even this one, the best of the bunch admittedly, I haven't really finished, I just got tired of looking at! I went to life class a couple of weeks ago and even that was too poor to post. Sadly it was a model whose shape I usually struggle with and I finally got a good outline but then ruined it with the colour!

Inspiration fails and sometimes you can only wait it out. I was starting to come out of the fog last week when I got a rather nasty migraine. I try not to write too often about them as it might sound like I'm exaggerating but I lost half a stone in four days and it may take a few days to get my energy back. Valuable days I wanted to spend sketching and getting into the swing of things as I have a rather exciting trip coming up next week - but I will keep the destination as a surprise. It will be a test to see, if time allows, how much sketching I can do but at the very least there should be lots of inspiration and great photos to post! (If I have any readers left and you'd like a hint - it's an 11 hour flight from Paris!)

Back to the drawing. The main problem I've been having is with skin tones and drawing from life. I think perhaps I've paid too much heed to advice about using blues, greens, purples in shadows and cools, warms etc., and not paying attention to what I actually see. (In fact, advice like that in general I'm beginning to think is for people who need to analyse and make art a science.) I find skin - in reality and not in photos - to be quite grey. The life model's skin looked so white and grey I thought it would be dull to depict it as it actually appeared and inside tried out a few colours, all of which looked strange. Here, with my feet, I tried using blue for shadow but apart from a few light touches, it didn't seem to work. If the shadow looks grey, I think I'll be a rebel, I'll just use grey! The first few colour drawings gave me a false sense of security perhaps, because now I see that skin in some lights is very hard to make look as if it's a living thing. Lots more practice needed, in fact you could say I'm still finding my feet, and there will be plenty more bad drawings to come!