Wednesday 29 December 2021

DANCING WITH JO

It was some weeks back  we were given a link to watch a particular piece of dance performance. https://ndcwales.co.uk/plethu-weave-swyn-gan

I eventually got round to watching it and realised that the dance artist, Jo Shapland, was the very same person whom I’d been drawing during our class a few days earlier. And the exercises we were set included drawing her whilst she was dancing and doing the same without looking at our paper.




From a web link available below ‘Swyn-gân / Summoning, by poet Clare E. Potter and dance artist Jo Shapland, listens deeply to instinctive and mystical aspects of communication, how body, land, the nature speak. Jo also made the film. 

 

Astonishing. 

 

Plethu/Weave saw four dancers from National Dance Company Wales and the four dancers independent sector, partnered with some of Literature Wales’ commissioned poets to create short solo performances during lockdown.

 

Link to a remarkable film also https://youtu.be/FWBDYbIsH2k


Dancing with Jo, across this first semester - here are the drawings....








 

 

Sunday 26 December 2021

MORE MOORE

Most of our workshops at art school conclude with a tsunami of links and suggestions of artists we should investigate and through this enquiry determine the his/her importance and relevance to one’s own work (practice). Note the use of the word ‘practise’ to imbue the practise of painting and related active with supplementary airs and graces.

Henry Moore was called out a couple of weeks back. My diligence led to this: 

 

Drawing to Sculpt.

Henry Moore was a sculptor passionate about drawing.  In the online the archive of his work, there are 1678 landscape drawings. 

 

He works in charcoal, wax crayon (wax resist) watercolour collage. When the ball point pen was available that was a favourite.

 

Moore has been drawing in sketchbooks throughout his life. He takes these drawings into printmaking as well as sculpture. He led the post war sculpture revival. and he has always looked carefully at his drawings to see how they could become sculpture.

 

His leitmotif is the reclining nude.  It is easy to see how he draws parallels with reclining nude and the landscape. There was an interesting passage in a BBC film about him [details below] where he takes a drawing by Albrecht Durer and sees lines on that drawing becoming landscape.

 

BBC film was shot in 1978 interview with John Read. In the film we see his landscape drawings, use of wax resist, as he walks us through his sketchbook. Moore has been a constant drawer working away at ideas.

 

The countryside was always hugely important to Henry Moore. Exemplified by a series of drawings of tree drawings on blotting paper. He looks at tree roots and says they look like figures “tree trunks are human, almost” 39:09 min into the BBC film*.

 

Aside from being one of  the most important sculptors of late 20th century his drawings are a rich resource. 




 

Drawing from nature makes you look more intensely” says Moore in his interview 

 

The Henry Moore Foundation is embarking on an exciting new project to publish Henry Moore’s entire artistic output in one comprehensive and illustrated online catalogue. 

https://catalogue.henry-moore.org/search/*/objects?filter=department%3ADrawings

 



 

*The Lively Arts - Henry Moore at Eighty (1978 von John Read) (engl.)

9 Jan 2017

moriundmori - Kunst-Dokus

Henry Moore gives a private viewing of his sketches.

BBC 1978, Producer: John Read. 

First Broadcast: 30 July 1978

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGWaiB_nraM

 

Importance and Relevance, oh yes…

I am much in tune with Moore’s dictum ‘Drawing from nature makes you look more intensely’. I always have, 

I walk past trees and see their roots and I am smitten by the need to draw them. 

Seeing trees and other forms akin to the human form is a great start point for developing a visual language.




Tuesday 21 December 2021

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

30 October 2021,  tidied up 21 December 2021

 

Well, it was a bit of a funny start...

Coming onto a degree course*, painting, drawing and printmaking, with little or few qualifications at the age of 68. 

 

Now I have been exposed to all kinds of weird stuff: dancing art, art that uses various parts of the body to make itself manifest on paper (a link a tutor sent round). 

 

There is a desire to move us to abstraction.




 

And we are s t r e t c h e d!


Now the instant response is not to do same old, same old, but using materials that I used to hate which now I love: charcoal and chalk and Conte crayon.




Why

Because these materials are much more expressive, they focus on tone and shade which are the fundamental principles of great drawing and painting.

What am I getting through these materials (charcoal and chalk and Conte crayon)? The confidence to work at speed. Applying pressure to the material gives different result, using the edge of these materials makes different marks. I have flexibility and options.

 

 

*Yr.1 BA (Hons) Fine Art/ Painting, Drawing and Printmaking

Saturday 18 December 2021

THE BISHOP’S CARD

Joy to the World

Proclaims the Bishop of Oxford’s Card, above a Christmas version of an illustration I did earlier in the year, on a visit to Church of the Holy Family Blackbird Leys, Cowley, Oxford.




 


 

Dearest cousin Wendy and I sought this church out. I’d made a drawing at the time. The vicar of the church had it made into greetings cards. Full story: >> https://timbaynesart.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-church-of-holy-family-blackbird-leys.html

 

The Bishop’s Executive Assistant approached me about their office using my illustration for the official Bishop’s diocesan Christmas card and wondering if I could make it more Christmassy?

 

Being up to my eyes in preparations for the first semester assessment at Carmarthen School of art (yr.1) I suggested that they might use local resources available to their office. This they proceeded to do, local graphic design elves were deployed, and the outcome was joyous. Literally. 

 

800 were popped in the post by m' Lord Bishop

 

And I received a handful complimentary cards (with posh envelopes) and the feeling that I have in some way contributed to Oxfordshire’s Christmas.


The original sans the festive cheer