I made this sketch a while ago ... (couple, ink and wash, A5 , 2005) My friend Sheri sent me a beautiful drawing recently and the subject reminded me so much of this one of my own.... then I thought of blogging some of these sketches while I am on the point of getting a studio and getting back down to work again. It will help get me in the mood after too long a break. 
Trying to get started again .. here's a small nude fashioned in a new medium for me. I have always been a needlewoman and have long been wondering how to build a technique around that and this is a new line of experimentation. I love Tracey Emin's blankets but I didn't want to imitate them .. maybe I can find a way to do something different with this roving wool and a needle combined with other elements. Words, in particular. And needlepoint with soluble canvas, perhaps.. here we go.. 
Happy New Year 
Sometimes you are in the middle of things and you have to leave.... this is a piece about packing up the studio mid-series. I always felt these rose paintings were composite elements of a larger work.. so here I find I was at least partially right. It may not be the end of the story. I may not know for some time. 
You can use a frame for a print of a self portrait but why not a cage? If you sometimes feel that you are in one it can be appropriate. But of course the door is open so it is all about choice. This is a detail from an installation I made as part of a show during January at the Goethe Insitute in Rotterdam. It was all about the effects of living from country to country on the work that I make. I will post the rest of the installation tomorrow. 
Three delightful models!... I made a soft ground etching - then used aquatint - which inadvertently put paid to some of the original drawing which hadn't completely etched. Grr. Then I went over with a soft ground again and added a few lines - especially to define the dog. Yes, its a dog. Then I totally forgot to cover the back of the plate so that meant the plate heated up in the acid and I etched a hilarious,unintentional, aleatoric abstract compostion on it for good measure - might print it off one day just to annoy myself.. meanwhile .. well. This process definitely isn't spontaneous but I am slowly catching on - only experience and our mistakes can teach us of course and I am a great one for wanting to run before I can walk..
Not my usual style but I do this every Christmas. I sit down before an array of coloured wools and "paint" with them until a Christmas stocking has made itself for this year's recipient. I make it up as I go along. We were so happy to have my Mother, Betty, with us on Christmas Day this year but I took this to the wire with the stocking finished at 2.30 in the morning and just hanging in time for Santa's boots to be almost visible descending the chimney. Most enjoyable.
My small daughter, sketched while she was asleep in 1997, aged about three months. She was not a beautiful baby and had a blotchy face but was none the less an absorbing subject whether I was drawing her or not.
Here's a drawing I made last time I went to SKVA in Rotterdam - very free and I got the ink to keep its flow by occasionally dipping my pen in the water (n.b. I love ink;I hate pens!) and started it off by shaking a few blots onto the page, one of which became his right nipple, albeit a a millimetre or so too low. 
The last and smudgiest of these monoprints. I think this was a very fast one. It is always interesting afterwards to find what I chose and notated from the scene in front of me. In this one the model becomes integrated with the foliage and objects behind her, and, as she leans towards me I just have time to note the back of her hand and the corrugated knuckles before the line falls away with the curve of her lower leg... and time's up.
Nearly the last of this series .........(monoprints, 30 x 30, 2008) tomorrow one last smudgy little one and then, since I am preparing an exhibition next month in the Goethe Institute in Rottterdam, who knows what strange miscellany all my sifting through and choosing will produce..
Two more from the monoprint series I am serialising. I love the accidental smudgy effects that are a by-product of this medium. Remember the actual drawing is on the back - a clean, 5b pencil drawing in a reverse image... I always prefer the print. Last examples tomorrow...
Just a couple of purely linear accounts of one-minute model poses... made a few weeks ago. Don't I make it look easy? Just try it... and these are far from perfect.
Sometimes, with models I know well, I really capture a likeness. It's not a portrait and getting a likeness is not the objective but it is quite satisfying when it happens. With this model on this occasion I was feeling her in a linear way. I was having some fun with the foliage in the background - I often feel the need for a context - even a narrative - though not always - as you will see tomorrow.
Another recent fast sketch.. when you have only a few minutes it is all about choosing.. note this.. omit that.. mostly omit, of course.. 
Even when there's only five or ten minutes to play with I rarely just notate the figure although sometimes if the muscles are good I get lost in the anatomy. Composing with the figure in the space is where the interest lies for me and especially where there are other people working in the room to give it a slight narrative edge. Monoprint again... approx A4.
When my friend Ruth left The Hague I threw a small party to say good bye and these roses were given to me by the guests. When people give me roses i usually paint them and then, since they were a gift, I give the painting away. (Birthday roses 50 x 40 cms oil on canvas 2008) I never try to get an exact observational drawing. I just choose the things that I want to paint from the flowers in front of me. I think there is a lot of personality in the leaves.. like a small nest of baby cobras.. the flowers have that lovely heavy floppiness that garden roses have when they open .. anyhow as an artist of the human figure I always run to this subject like a guilty lover to his mistress.. very enjoyable.
I am off to France for the Summer to my second home in the Auvergne - a place where the internet connection is so slow that it is not worth the frustration. So the blog resumes in September with the Autumn fruits of the Summer's productivity. A welcome return to routine. I leave you with a little sketch (nude, reflection, artist, oil on paper A3 2007) and good wishes for the Summer.
A painting I am making in the studio at Rijswijk. To be continued... I am going off to my house in France for a week - a wonderful prospect. 
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