Royal Drawing school – prints and research

December 5, 2020December 5, 2020

Lockdown week 34

Busy! December week

Busy Busy Busy. Monday the IMPACT Journal Volume 2 went public including my report on portraying through drawing and printing fellow researcher Ian Sergeant. The article was begun 12 months ago after completing the portrait, but as journal writing generally takes 12 months it has been through many refining iterations to get to a satisfactory conclusion. In that period, following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Black Lives Matter came to prominence and a postscript was added. Read here.

Ian Sergeant. Phd Passion. Two colour serigraph print. 84x118cm 2019

Surface tests

pressed and pitted perspex drawing surface (detail)

Visited the Printroom to test the pressed perspex surface drawing for silkscreen. Positive results with a wide range of tones achieved on the pitted surface. This was much more successful than the mullered approach last week. Collation of the results underway.

Appointments

Whether on Teams, Zoom or socially distanced meetings its been an important week with the new job sharing CEOs of the Birmingham Museum Trust getting into gear and looking to a progressive future for the City museum and its 9 city wide venues. A Principal of the new BOA Stage and Screen has been appointed – more news soon on this production skills focused school in the Ladywood area of inner city Birmingham.

click to watch recording of the participative drawing

No meeting but congratulations to Mac Birmingham who won a national Big Draw Best museum and gallery Award for the work inspired by the gorgeous drawing exhibition by Matt Shane and Jim Holyoak. Canadian artists who covered the walls in the main gallery with huge, intricate and mysterious landscapes and inspired many diverse families to make a massive participative floor drawing that was hung in the Arts Centre

Web Presence

Much screen time focussed of creating a much needed new home page for photographs taken over the last 20 years. It required great assistance from Rei at Ionos to get all the folders in the right hosting space. Ionos recently took over 1and1 that I have used for fifteen years for personal email and web hosting. So many files!

Lest we forget

SEVEN times world champion, soon to be Sir Lewis Hamilton.

The world Champion has had to withdraw from the weekend’s Grand Prix as he has contracted Covid. George Russel, a 22 year old driver is taking his place.

covid update

Seemingly vaccines are on the way, but the figures just keep rising with the UK a terrible third in the world rankings.

Personal health

I recovered from the angiogram performed on my heart last week at the wonderful Queen Elizabeth Cardiology Department. The Consultant that has overseen my heart condition including inserting two stents in 2002, and replacing them with five in 2016, gave me a ring to confirm more work will have to be done to prevent a worsening of the condition. More on this nearer the day.

Thats it

November 29, 2020November 30, 2020

Lockdown week 33

A winter week

Congregate for Culture

There were no opportunities to view art indoors this lockdown winter week. However an unexpected exterior opportunity appeared. We went outside to a big old house with an even bigger garden and saw photographs. International garden photographer of the year was on show at the Walled garden of Shugborough House in Staffordshire. A damp, foggy and chilly day was not an obvious welcome for lockdown escapees, but it was worth the effort to venture out. Seeing a real world, as opposed to our saturated online world, photographic exhibition, in lockdown was a treat. As were the misty scenes including the Garden Pond, which could be seen in varied ways.

Garden Pond spun around. Vignette starry sky.

More photographs from our afternoon out of the house at another house.

Participate

Many weeks ago in early lockdown, television audiences were invited to participate in live life drawing sessions by BBC four to which thousands of drawers tuned in. Sky Arts, which has recently come free to air, has run StoryVault‘s Portrait Artist of the Year for 7 years. It is a prerecorded competitive show which invites amateur and professional portraits painters to paint a selected sitter. It is a popular format attracting artists and interested viewers alike. In the later months of lockdown the producers have developed a lockdown live version which brings portrait artist together with a recognised sitter in two locations brought together by the magic of television. But it takes many hours to paint a considered portrait and the event is transmitted not on TV but on FacebookLive.

As well as allowing a 4 hour transmission, introductions and interjections from the show presenters and judges, it has a constant instagram and comments feed from viewers. The show is fully interactive and engaged with by participants. globally. One comment as the show begins says the show is their: ‘lockdown treat of the week.’ This week’s sitter was the Newscaster Jon Snow in front of his bookcase, introduced by the veteran presenter Baroness Joan Bakewell in front of her bookcase, and painter Cathrine MacDirmid is beamed in from her Cumbria garage studio in front of her paintings and daubs. As the portrait and conversation develops comments come in from the Philippines, Houston and California who wake early to paint. From time to time the sitting newsman reads from the comments board with glee. Intermittently the painter’s friends and colleagues let her know how well she is doing. Personalised broadcasting through the internet.

Joan Bakewell introduces Portrait Artist of the Week sitter, Newscaster Jon Snow

One commentator observes: “The Pandemic is a million miles away when the brushes are flowing.” During the show the producers throw up a screenshot of the sitter and invite the audience to screenshot it, as you can from FacebookLive, and paint your own portrait.

Reflecting on the live, online portrait experience.

*The portrait is done after 4 hours have ‘whizzed by.’*

The Portrait will be finished to Catherine MacDirmid’s satisfaction tomorow and be posted on #PAOTW. 100’s of participating artists will be posting their works on #myPAOTW.

Lest we forget

covid update

I was going to write about the Covid vaccine news and the various responses to it, but time has run out. I will return next week, when we can only hope our paying attention to Lockdown restrictions show in the reduction of the frighteningly high numbers of deaths.

In conversation Jon Snow reflected that he had never experienced anything like this pandemic and drew an analogy with it being our Third World War. He noted that we are nearing 60,000 deaths in 10 pandemic months, in comparison with the Second World War where 70,000 people lost their lives on the British mainland over 5 years.

Thats it

November 23, 2020November 23, 2020

Lockdown week 32

Nearly the end of November

Congregate for Culture

No real cultural congregation this week. It looks like there will be no open galleries until xmas, when they are traditionally closed. However this week has offered three online visual art interactions: View, Participate and Contribute.

VIEW: Royal Drawing school webinar with Bharti Kher and Subodh Gupta showing, sharing and describing their sculptural works from their New Delhi bases. Introduced by Catherine Goodman. The artwork shown is by Bharti: The skin speaks a language not its own. 2006.

PARTICIPATE: DRAW NORTH – Drawing with zoom participants in the room each is occupying. Begin facing North, then swivel 90 degrees to East, and South then West and draw each view superimposed on the last. Hosted by Drawing is Free, Trinity Buoy Wharf at Duncan of Jordanstone , University of Dundee.

CONTRIBUTE: A ten minute presentation on experiences of peer review of a recent journal article submission. A webinar of the ME University Cluster Research group based at Birmingham School of Art, but open to all researchers.

academic activity

Moseley School of Art at Moseley Community Hub

As the days draw to a close more and more quickly, research continues in the Moseley School of Art studio into the making of serigraphic film positives. Having ‘mullered’ a sheet of perspex with carborundum grit the process of drawing on a new and untested surface has begun.

There are unexpected bright circles from the mullering. They could be stars. They could be an overall pattern for the portrait. Drawing on this rigid surface is noiser! The pencil stick resonates with sounds against the hard textured perspex. There is a physical substantiality and robustness, even ‘scratchyness’ to it that is more than on the flexible drafting film. Drawing was very tentative as erasing graphite looked to be difficult, and might be impossible as a test had resulted in the graphite being spread into a dense mark rather than being erased. Cross hatching is too harsh, leaving lines rather than shades on the surface. A new methodology was employed: letting the pencil lie on the surface then moving it without any downward pressure, to allow graded build ups of impressions on the surface. Using 9 and 2b sticks more circular motions rather than horizontal, vertical or angled were applied. I am not as confident in laying down delicate marks. Heavy gestural marks (hair, clothes, shadows) are made with much more confidence on the surface. Skin, face, hands demand a slow build-up of graphite with regular returns to the emerging drawing to add with confidence across the highlights. Having to watch where leaning as graphite will be removed with the slightest unplanned engagement of heel of hand or cardboard leaning support on the surface. A delicate ‘swish away’ of excess bits of graphite with cloth takes away top layers of lead leaving dense backgrounds to contrast with hair and circles.

I decided to try rubbing lead shavings into the left surround. On exposure and printing this will provide contrasting markings. Rubbing the shaving is reminiscent of the mullering with grit.

Transport to the print room will have to done delicately.

Treat

Graphite pencils are running low, especially the softer leads that are sharpened more frequently. Researching suppliers a new brand was ordered from Czech manufacturers who have an esteemed history: ‘A number of significant innovations in the field of writing instruments comes from the KOH-I-NOOR HARDTMUTH factory. For example, the production of graphite and clay pencil lead, patented as early as 1802, the principle of machine-made pencils or division of graphite pencils into individual grades 8B-10H, according to the hardness of the lead.’

https://www.koh-i-noor.cz/en

Lest we forget

Covid App update

Fourth ONS Test Survey result: ‘Negative’.

There is a constant anxiety around Coronavirus and whether the sniffle, cough or tiredness is a sign of contracting it, so the Negative result is a relief. It is also positive to contribute to the data gathering to inform policies – we hope.

Thats it

Tag: Royal Drawing school

Lockdown week 34

Lockdown week 33

Lockdown week 32

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