Prayer
Category Archives: Sketches – People
Vulnerability
Here are selfies – staged poses of myself, photographed with as ten second time lapse to allow me to get into position, and then drawn. The technique is to draw invisibly in clear water then drag a dark sepia conte crayon across it to develop an initial image.
Miri
Small miracle
two days ago I became a grandfather
less is more
I used photos from a gig I went to last Tuesday in a series of watercolour exercises aimed at gradually reducing the amount of line and paint I apply to the paper. The top two were the last I did, the rest are a jumble of earlier attempts. The more white paper I leave the better the effect. The gig was by the fabulous Bonfire Radicals, an experimental folk band.
life drawing
This is the usual mix of 2, 5, 10 and 20 minute poses drawn directly in gouache.
Frida Khalo (left handed sketch)
I am picking up on images on twitter as references for sketches.
This was a short drawing of much admired, amazing 20th century artist Frida Kahlo. this is on the great twitter stream @womensart1 by artist PL Henderson.
Charcoal on white paper with background coloured on photoshop.
Left handed drawing
I have broken my wrist on my dominant side and it’s immobilised in a cast. Using my left hand, I write like a five year old, carefully printing each character. Each movement requires conscious control. Here are two left handed sketches. I am using as references images taken from my various twitter feeds.
This is Mo Mowlam, who as a government minister entered the notorious H block to negotiate with sectarian terrorists the peace that is the foundation of the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland.
This was my first attempt. Anita Berber, incredible queer Berlin cabaret star of the early 20th century, who did not survive to her 30th birthday. This is from the twitter feed Whores of Yore from historian Dr Kate Lister. I can strongly recommend her book A Curious History of Sex.
Resistance
This sketch in gouache (ultramarine, burnt sienna and white) is based on this tweet from @AuschwitzMuseum.
Ala Gartner was a member of the active resistance against the Nazis and stole explosives to enable the Sonderkommando (who operated the crematoria) to sabotage the Auschwitz killing machine. Before being transported to Auschwitz in 1943, while enslaved as a worker and living in the Sosnowiec Ghetto in Upper Silesia, Poland, Ala married Bernhard Holtz. That too seems like an act of resistance.
She was murdered two weeks before the camp was liberated.
Killed by Russian shelling
This monochrome sketch in gouache (white, crimson, ultramarine) is based on the following tweet.
In memory, Oksana Shvets, a person like so many others, trapped and murdered in a brutal imperialist war.
kestrelart 