CONGREGATION FOR THE CONFERMENT OF DEGREES

Tuesday 13 December 2011 at 9.45 am saw the culmination of an impressive learning journey: Private primary education, entry into the Grammar School system, spiced with adolescent anecdotes, such as an accompanied visit to a Police Station and very mild alcoholic poisoning and finally through to completion of an Bachelor of Arts degree course at the University of Leeds.

Megan Baynes was ‘admitted to the Degree of Bachelor of Arts First Class Honours - Sociology.

We had a nice cuppa in the Sociology Department after the Ceremony.

Cynthia's Drawings

Friend in Cyberland Cynthia Scherb recently bought a copy of DRAWING on EXPERIENCE having discovered me on BBC.com in the US.

More importantly she shared some drawings from her Moleskine which I think are great!

Train Times

I am thrilled to be connected with Train Faces

Train faces is a super-blog inspired by Jay Snelling and aims to put the art back into the art of travelling! Well done Jay! I will be dusting off some of my earlier commuting captures to be one of the 'regulars'

"The train now leaving from Tim's Moleskine is the . . .. . "

PEMBROKESHIRE 2

Sunday Monday – each day a walk long the beach at White Sands just below the house. Few people about and I take a dip in the sea thinking that it will be sometime before I can next be in seawater swimming. We take a cliff top walk, five miles, a wonderful coastal path and look down the cliffs to the sea below rushing against rocks 750 million years old, the Cambrian age. Eventually we reach the lifeboat station at Porthstinian and here we are scooped up by Kate in the Land Rover and bounced back to the house for lunch.

I take afternoon nap, on a towel outside the house in the sun and the down onto the beach for a swim and an ice cream, chocolate with chocolate cornet.

Sunday evening: Church Beer and Fish and Chips. We attend Evensong at St David’s Cathedral. Warm grey stone sits on this town’s hillside basking in the last of the evening sun. The collects give us hope: Then, Lord, in your mercy grant us safe lodging, a holy rest and peace at the last, through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN

Then bump bump in the Land Rover to Porth Gain and the Sloop Inn for a goodly and godly pint! The place was packed and live music was the draw http://www.sloop.co.uk

With warm welsh bitter which we sat and supped taking in the sights and people watching. Mike and I tarried longer over out pints contemplating more at The Shed http://www.theshedporthgain.co.uk/ the fish and chip bistro in the village where I tucked into haddock and chips with a little more pale welsh beer. All in all a wonderful evening and on the five-mile ride back to Whitesands I was nicely insulated through food and drink to the bump bump of Mike Land Rover.

One of my artistic hero’s is John Knapp-Fisher. I have salivated over his work through re-reading his wonderful book Pembrokeshire. Mike drove me over to his gallery in Croesgoch only a few miles down the road. John was in and we engaged in conversation and I was able to show him with immoderate praise and as importantly to actually see his work close-up! This experience included seeing his wonderful sketchbooks and colour palettes and all the paraphernalia of his work – everything was on display to touch and feel! These three short days in Pembroke, talking to John about his work, the location and hospitality afforded by Mike and Kate has ensured that I am bonded to this part of the world and willed to return. This is a particular landscape, unpacked before me in short order: tiny fields, hedge row-walls punctuated with slate roofed farms and often a blue blue sea.

For more on Mr. Knapp-Fisher

http://www.johnknapp-fisher.com/John_Knapp-Fisher/Home.html

Pembrokeshire

PEMBROKE – A TIME IN WEST WALES

All shades of grey and ochre. All shades of green punctuated with purple and orange. Green landscape that reaches through slate stone and igneous and on to broad beach of sands that carry the reflection of walkers, surfers and the others.

Craig yr Awel is a lovely 1930’s cottage dear friends Kate and Mike have taken for a few weeks and invited us. This lovely house wedged into a hillside that looks out over the sea, which today shades grey green blue and changes every minute. The day is grey with wind and rain lashing everything until the mid afternoon.

One looks out on a sea, which changes colour directed by the light that may or may not break through a cloud and alter the temperature of the view. This is the light fantastic, or Fantasique, in a part of Wales that spawns painters and makers.

We arrived at noon in great wetness and wind and after a great lunch of local crab and roe with a nice green salad and a glass of rosé Sancerre. Then I climbed into a wet suit for a lesson on body boarding in the afternoon. I made a quick drawing on the beach (which was coloured in later).

This evening as I sit in the conservatory at Craig yr Awel the light continues to change, the colour of the sea, islands three miles out, and the sands immediately beneath this blessed house.

Secret Regent's Park

Discovered only day's ago, a secret garden in The Regent's Park and the entrance to which most of us will miss! Such colour! Colours of high Summer.

With a hey , and a ho and a hey-nonny-no

Shakespeare - As You Like It -

Act 5, Scene 3

ith a hey, and a ho, and a hey-nonny-no

More on Maylandsea (back at the Presse de Lock)

Well the trip to Maylandsea yielded a whole bunch of ideas that distilled down to three strong images that were, yesterday, taken to the studio of Christine Lock Print maker and by me, through great artifice and some skill translated into mono prints.

Here are the baseline drawings.

The prints themselves are still drying, pressed under a great weights. They will be photographed and shared soon.

The good news is that one can visit a place, collect some material and ferment ideas over a seven day period and then turn all this into moderately wonderful work. To be proven of course. Trust.

I have actually filmed the 16 stages of printmaking yesterday and hope to stitch these sequences together to explain how it all works (for me).

A good printmaking day yesterday. Lunch hitherto and a continued feature was home-made chowder and garlic bread for lunch, with a modest (there's that word again) dessert of home-made apple crumble and (single) cream.

We are back and working towards the Autumn show.

The Tree of Threads

Last Saturday super-cyclist chum and ex-oil man Chris and I were out cycling an we came across a curious piece of debris in the road. It looked like some sort of twine or strap that had fallen off a tractor . We pulled up and I took these hallowed threads and drapped them round a small tree, a la Andy Goldsworthy.

One week later Chris and I past the same spot and lo, the threads are still in place. However, having settled down after the initial excitement I see that things have changed with the disposition of certain strands across the tree.

Pictures featured from last week and this. We will monitor progress as we pass by across the coming weeks.

Moleskinerie

Moleskines = the best notebooks on the planet

Moleskinerie = the best blog in the world = http://www.moleskinerie.com/

Me = I am occassionally and gratefully featured on the site. This time in connection with my foray into mono print www.moleskinerie.com/2010/07/tim-baynes-moleskine-to-monoprint.html

THANK YOU SO MUCH

Delightful drawing

Last evening I was desperate for a scrap of paper to write a number down. Bron handed me this!

"What is this? I asked

"Oh its was what my friend Gemma did to describe her caravan holiday! replied B

I thought this drawing was quite wonderful; lightly executed with great confidence. I delicately set it to one side, to share here. x

NORFOLK
Where were you last week?
Where was I?
Norfolk - chillin' owt and drawing.
Curlew’s cry, fresh crab dressed and priced, kiss me quick he’s coming to take the money for our deck chairs. Posh pottery, tea shops sky’s as big as your heart and horizons as broad as the imagination

Thanks to super chum and fishmonger Mike Muller for the photographs click here by the way, for great fish.

THE DRESSER AND HER MODEL

The idea behind this piece, being the final project in Bron’s A2 course:
Start point is Dolls and >> onto Barbie Dolls. Barbie is an icon of beauty - perfection. Everyone is seeking perfection, some will pay for it. So into plastic surgery and the finished piece represents the pure body gone wrong; the folds of the leggings, for example, represent cellulite.

Location: Undisclosed
Model: Megan Baynes
Hair and Makeup: Model’s own
Photography: Bronnie Baynes

Chalkland Flowers

A wonderful bike ride early yesterday moring. In May, where we are, on the edge of the Chilterns, the flowers are quite lovely at this time of the year. Along one side of the road home I noticed three shades of blue.

Foreground Forget-me-Not and Blue eyed Mary, right at the back , Bluebells.

Felt up

Super friends Chris and Liz came to stay and run a felt making workshop in the kitchen throughout the whole of Saturday.

Felt making is as old as time: The story of Saint Clement and Saint Christopher relates that while fleeing from persecution, the men packed their sandals with wool to prevent blisters. At the end of their journey, the movement and sweat had turned the wool into felt socks.

Hard work. Results great. I made a bag for carrying camera, two Moleskines, phone and wallet. (detail photo) If you want more background on the wonderful world of felt click here

The longest journey - flashback #1

Volanic Dust Busting: On the journey back last week across the Middle East and Europe it was appropriate that we should enter Europe through Istanbul. During our brief time there I was lucky enough to meet Emre Icilensu who owns the Constantine Gallery. A delightful haven of wonderful work, a stone's throw from the Blue Mosque and the Topkapi Palace. We spent a brief time together - hopefully we will collaborate in some way!

Emre is delightfully intelligent in his response to the artists he currently represents and in the way he talks about creativity.

Please visit him at http://www.constantineartgallery.com/index.php?lng=eng&page=ana

Clever Trevor

Memo to self: Its great to know someone really talented.

Trevor. Architect, helio pilot, cabinet maker, musician and builder of fast cars, bee keeper, what have I forgotten, oh yes - maker of sausages, bacon and saucissons.

Chris (creater of picture frames and another talented friend) and I went round to see T's woodworking set up the other day. Trevor laid on a modest breakfast, as a prelude to the tour of his place, grounds and wood working shop: sausages, fresh made bread rolls and strong coffee.

Illustrated: Tevor's beehives. Trevor. Trevor in his 'shop'

Drawing in Print

In print making there is a lot of experimentation, rolling up ink on odd bits of paper to determine an effect. I have taken some of these experimental scraps of paper and drawn into them with interesting results (I think) Featured here a 'before and after' piece - its exciting to attribute architectual lines to the forms created merely by running an ink roller across a sheet of paper.

Tracey Emin, she can draw

Shown: Red Girl and Reclining Nude

With this monoprinting thing there is an inevitability that I should discover Tracey Emin.
There was a wonderful Radio 3 interview with her at the beginning of the year. Yesterday I withdrew a book from the library Tracey Emin Works 1963-2006.

Her drawings are precise and fragile. If they are incomfortable then that is as it should be.

" There should be something revelatory about art. It should be totally new and creative and it should open doors for new thoughts and new experiences" Tracey Emin

Bright colours on a dull day

My friend, framer and ace photographer Chris mentioned the other day, when we were out on a bike ride that in dull conditions pure colours stand out. The example he gave was pointing to a moss covered piece of wood that positively vibrated with colour. I have been thinking about this since and proved it to myself this evening on the commute home, randomly grabbing a shot of this tube train in wet dull Northolt.

Cafe Society 2

Knowing really cool people in London increases one's chances of discovering cool places for espresso. In the Clerkenwell area the "most go" place is Coffee at Goswell - details here

Excellent interior, up todate issues of Wallpaper and fit photo of a Tom Cruise.