Ithwark (what happened to the Sunday self-portrait)

The Sunday self-portrait did not happen. Firstly, I forgot about it. When I remembered late afternoon and sat before my sleeping computer screen to draw, I couldn't see much of anything. Some dim face. The late sun coming in the window didn't help; nor did a small reading lamp fixed on the mug. So I went with indistinct. Using mostly a brush and ink, I fashioned a face whose first lines were based on what I could see of mine. But then I stopped looking at the image in the turned-off screen and the brush painting went off somewhere else. I rubbed the ink around with water sometimes and used a dip pen for a bit before deciding less is more and photographed it balanced on a chair in the remaining dying sun.

It's been finished digitally for this blog post - some zoom, a little smudging, a bit of old photo, and so on. I may keep working on the original and show that later on too.

Then I went scouring for some writing and found some of the crazy text I'm working on. But it needed an appropriate font (something you could never use in a business letter, for instance). I went searching for some free add-on fonts to get this particular one. It's called Slabtag. I like it with the drawing and the writing (which is meant to be hard to impossible to read).

I'm calling it Ithwark. A made-up word, the kind that come when you are busy and try to make mental note of so you don't forget but of course you forget though you made a little mind puzzle for the phrase and through that puzzle you find the words that beckoned. What writers go through. The norm. Words and phrases swim to our surfaces or are dropped by passing angels and we are expected to remember until we can jot them down. Since they are like dreams which tend to disappear easily, it's not easy to do this. So we have to use other mental tricks to enable recall. At least, I do. It's mental mental acrobatics. Don't ask.

Anyway, once you write them down the ones behind them come too - like the tail of a kite. Or the rest of the thread on the spool. Or a pool of word genes who are all connected in DNA links.

Ithwark,  ©Brenda Clews, 2014. 15" x 12", Noodler's black ink, Arches watercolour block, 100% cotton, 140lbs.
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Sunday morning self-portrait

Is it becoming a chore? Sunday morning, draw woman! I was impatient to have my second cup of coffee. C'mon ink, c'mon drawing, hurry up! The point is to be fast. I can't say resembles or not - don't want what a camera could do, that's all. And I want to be ruthless with myself and use unforgiving ink. This woman needs caffeine! Line after line - it's not right! Dots then. Oh, my. Just get it done. And my lovely Lamy fountain pen is no longer 'scratchy' - it flows properly. Dang, huh.

'Sunday Morning Self-Portrait,' 8 June 2014. ©Brenda Clews. Lamy fountain pen with Noodler's black ink and some other stuff, 15" x 11", Pentalic 130lb archival paper.

(Cloudy out and so the white balance isn't the same as if I took it in direct sun. Colour looks accurate on my iPad Mini for the type of day it is.)

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Dr Sketchy's Burlesque Drop-in Life-Drawing - June Session

Toronto now has a Dr Sketchy again. I went last Friday night. Burlesque life-drawing, short poses, at a bar in Kensington Market. The theme was quite gruesome - cannibalism - and gruesomely funny in its own way. The first model began with a burlesque strip and came out holding a silicone severed wrist and hand which she gnawed on as she twirled and pranced and shook her goods while removing her lingerie until she was splattered in 'blood' - something I didn't have time to draw in but other artists did. Other props were a huge fork and spoon. It was a ribald and fun evening. Every so often there was a 'challenge' - make a poster with a caption (I love you so much I could eat you up) - and then artists who want bring their drawings to the front and the audience chooses the winner by clapping harder. Prize was a free drink. Or we were to work on one drawing in groups of 2 or 3 - I forgot to photo ours. Prize was some t-shirts. And the final pose was the MC (in top hat, silver suit and lots of fake hair beard and stuff) with a burlesque dancer/model on his shoulders holding a knife - and a fabulous 'action figure' artist won the audience prize for his rendition, a photography book. Most of the folks work in the arts field and it's a wacky, friendly, fun life-drawing venue even if the poses are way too short for someone like me. The food is excellent and so is the beer on tap.

These are my drawings from the evening - beginning with the only one I've tinkered with since - and inked it in - it looks very Beardsley-like doesn't it? I am reminded of Beardsley's Salome series, sort of gruesome and in a 'theme genre' I guess.

They're done in pencil, conte and charcoal on 18" x 24" Strathmore med drawing paper.

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sketch

Drawn this week. Some of it while watching a movie, 'Times and Winds' (Turkey 2006) dir. Reha Erdem. I think that's an imagination of the olive tree. It is the children (young teens) who sleep, not the men, so I don't know who he is. Maybe Blake's 'Albion.' Written late last night on the back: "The land is impregnated. Post-Edwardian man sunbathing while the plane crashes into the grass, but it's paper. Airplane. Man." ©Brenda Clews 2014, 11" x 8.5", Lamy fountain pen and Noodler's black ink, Pentallic 130lb archival paper.
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Sunday morning self-portrait

Sunday morning self-portrait. June 1, 2014 ©Brenda Clews. So far, I don't like this sketch. That may change: sometimes it doesn't. I thought a portion of the face might be interesting and so used an oval mirror and included the glasses lens so the eye is a bit over-sized. Probably I look a bit better than this - if one took a photo - but I want to be ruthless with myself. Still, while I wasn't into drawing this morning, I did manage something, and should keep this up since it is currently the only drawing I do and a few hours once a week is better than nothing. I hope to go to a drop-in life-drawing session next week. 11" x 8.5", Lamy fountain pen with Noodler's Black Ink, Pentalic 130lb archival paper.

I am still without a computer, so this was photographed with an iPhone and uploaded to a specific album in Picasa with an app I had to buy (Web Albums - A Picasa Photo viewer & etc by Pixite LLC), and then posted to my blog via my small iPad mini with another app I had to buy that would allow me to post from a Picasa album (Blogsy). It's sort of nuts, but Google only allows you to upload photos to G+ and  not to a Picasa album of your choice, and their Blogger app only gives you the option to upload directly from your device and not import from an album in Picasa. Justifying these small expenses since I now have a stream-lined portable system that fits easily in my purse to go anywhere, anytime.

NO idea how to re-size the images, though! Don't see an html option in Blogger. I'll try opening Blogger in a web page and see if I can do it that way - if they're smaller, you'll know it worked!

Well, that's not a lot of fun - you can add your photos from Picasa into your blog post in the Chrome app. Dang. So that was wasted money on Blogsy. But I did not find any way to upload from your device to a specific Picasa album - not even in Chrome - so the Pixite app is useful. I also found Puffin Web Browser which is even better since it can access Flash on the web - Steve Jobs had a thing about Flash and so all device iOS systems do without (though I still can't upload to a specific album through Puffin, so the Pixite one is good).

Later that evening I did another sketch in semi-darkness from an indistinct image of myself in my iPad Mini screen. A lot of it was done without looking at the paper. 

Posted with Blogsy

I'll be without a computer for about a week - but of course will be on-line via 'devices' - a cell phone, a tablet. I'm trading in my 6 year old iMac and a laptop. I'm presently in the process of stripping them. The format option in Disk Utility simply is not working, so I am deleting everything manually -which is hard. Even though I have everything backed up, I am manually deleting files, deleting years.

And something I have been wanting to do for 10 years and finally did today: I submitted four poems to a journal.

A day of endings and beginnings, then. And beautiful Summer has at last arrived in Toronto - finally!

Have a lovely week!
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Another Sunday Morning Self-Portrait

Between first and second cup of coffee this morning. Another self-portrait done looking into a turned-off computer screen, so not a real mirror, lol. Last Sunday I did one, and now this Sunday - maybe it's a Sunday Morning thing. Anyway, I never seem to make it out to life-drawing sessions, and I will sit still for myself. (c) Brenda Clews. It's on 130lb archival paper, 15" x 11", Lamy fountain pen with Noodler's Black Ink.

I photographed this in direct sun, which I find best for white balance, and then I darkened the lines a bit - and yet I am not seeing the same full scope of the detail in the drawing as I did in last week's self-portrait that was scanned. This one is too large for my scanner.

detail

full-size

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