Sketch Back Sunday 3

Sketch back Sunday is now in its 3rd week and is already very popular. I am getting lots of likes on facebook and people think its a great idea. Although some say I should have a proper retrospective show in a gallery. But 7 years of my art was in Australia and I sold all my art there. 

In the picture above is a drawing I done at Cleveland college while studying illustration under Dudley Edwards. We went to Amsterdam and wont allowed to draw or photograph while there just to walk on the wild side and then come back and draw from memory to different themes. At that time there were a lot of drug addicts begging for 25 guilders to get a hit. They were mostly foreigners to Holland trapped in a cycle of drugs and could not get home. Drawing from memory puts everything out of perspective and gives it at more vibrant scene. This is biro and crayon on paper. I was a difficult pupil at college and my style changed every picture. I wasn't very good at being moulded to someone else's style.

Here is a sketch done round at my house of Ben Roberts who was playing the guitar. I always have had musicians in my life but never had the ability to hear. but music sets a tone and vibration. I can hear now thanks to lots of operations on my ears and can now hear music. This was in Bradford where I was doing an Hons degree in Illustration but got distracted by life as I had been at college now for nearly 8 years. I had a job managing a vege restaurant called the Java. I met up with Ben at a NYE party in manchester where I met most of the Bradford gang after 20 years. It was great to see they were all doing very well.

Matt Robinson and Ben Roberts playing guitar in Harlow Bradford. Matt worked at the Java and Ben was part of the boys gang that lived next door to me and then round the corner from me. Matt now lives in New Zealand and does electronic music and Ben lives in Prague works in the internet.

This is a picture of Bradford that won a trade and industry christmas card competition which I was a bit surprised at winning prizes as I always felt a failure. I liked colour so this ink style suited my work. I soon got obsessed with sculpture and lost my way with drawing for a while. Those were the days when there was still brick chimneys everywhere and every house had an outside toilet in the yard of the back to back houses. 

Upper St. Giles Street Party

Sunday the 6th of July from 11am to 5pm is UPper St.Giles Street Party in Norwich and I will be there drawing portraits of people and making little sculpted 3-D heads. Also I will be launching the smallest mobile gallery in the world. 

Art of Norwich 35 coming up

Coming soon on the 29th June is the Art of Norwich 35 at St. Margaret's church of art on St. Benedict's street Private view in the evening till 9pm. The show will be open for 2 weeks and it is a group show of an assortment of Norwich artists. This is a series of my new style of old fashioned ink pen and watercolour paintings that I have been drawing around Norfolk nothing is from the imagination it is what I see. Here is my Late International famous Granny Verily Paget's Aga cooker that followed her around from house to house. 

This is my in the woods series. 

Here is my Norwich Markets which I met Enid Blytons illustrator while drawing this one. 

art on the railings

Art on the railings at Peter Mancroft church on thursday and friday this week. I am hoping to go along with art work and postcards weather pending. 

Equal lives Banner at London Parliment

Last Saturday my Equal Lives DPAC Banner that I painted for Equal Lives made it to London for the Austerity protest. Equal Lives is a a group in Norfolk that support disabled people and are against the cuts. In the back ground is West minister in London. I didn't make it to the March because I got an allergic reaction in Norwich to peoples deodorant and perfume while out drawing. There is seriously some nasty chemicals in that stuff and if I cant cope then the person wearing it most be dying too. Natural smells is perfectly ok and normal. Unfortunately once a reaction is triggered I am out cold for days on end.

Here is everyone marching up the street in London with 50,000 other people

The banner even makes it onto a famous street.

People with disabilities can be any age and can be born with it, develop it or accidentally have it. 

Good to see Norfolk Can Inspire volunteer helping out Equal Lives.

Sketch back Sunday 2nd one

 Its sketch back Sunday. Every Sunday I will be posting sketches I drew in my past. There is a lot of them. My Art school days started at 16 years old in the mid 1980's and since then I always carried a sketch book. In the photo here is artist Nicola Lane she had come over from Dublin to Norwich to visit me. We were at secondary school together in Dublin. I have a lot of writing I also found while recently tidying up my studio with the sketches and that was the started of Sketch back Sunday. I am posting them on facebook too. Drawn in pencil on paper in 1987. I sent the picture via email to Nicola Lane who I have recently got back in contact with and she said she remembers the shoes I had drawn and she bought them in London when she was over then and I had drawn them perfectly. The picture has had a battering as my art has moved around peoples sheds while I was away at college and abroad for a few decades.

This is a photo of Alexandra Dansak a musician and biker. He had found me a house to rent with my college friend Holly Lerski on Adelaide street in Norwich. This is Alex playing the electric guitar round at that house. Done in Pen and paper in 1987. Even Back then I was not into the painting still life's exclusively for the rich and more into drawing of life itself for everyone as an inclusive thing.

A pen drawing of Mousehold heath in Norwich which was the first time I had made an effort to concertedly go out and draw for drawings sake. Drawn in 1989

The same view in crayon it was mesmerising seeing so much and not knowing where to start. I just drew what jumped out at me.

Art of Norwich 35 is on soon

                                             

                                              

From the 29th June till the 12th of July I will be part of Art of Norwich 35 exhibition at St. Margaret's church of art. The exhibition also covers the Norwich Lanes festival that happens every year and is on the 6th of July. 

I am hoping to have new work for the show and more affordable sized work of pictures of in and around Norwich. I have got side tracked with all the sorting studio at home. That I am not sure how much work I will get done for the exhibition. 

I will also have postcards of my past work on sale. Come along and see the show. 

Dido Belle is an O'Hare

My ancestor Dido Belle has been made into a movie and is out now in cinemas near you. It was about 10 years ago that my Aunty Margaret told me that I was related to Dido Belle on the O'Hare side. On my mothers side my Granny was a genealogist and historian so she had every relation discovered but the O'Hare side needed digging out, so my aunt went to the trouble of finding out the history. I am not sure if the film is completely correct. But I shall find out when I had to the cinema this week. 

Sketch back Sunday The first one

This week I been forced to tidy up my studio with all the festivities of Dandifest and everything going out of the house and then going back in no order it is now a complete mess. I thought would take a day to tidy and I am now into week 2 of tidying and will next time budget that into my arts grants. While tidying I came across some old sketches which I thought I should exhibit in my new "Sketch back Sunday" on facebook as a follow on from "Throwback Thursday" where people post there old photos of the past. My sketch back sunday seems to be favoured as it has had a few comments and lots of likes.
In this photo I drew my mothers front room when I was 16 and had moved over from Ireland to go to college in Norwich. I am now living back in the same house and the front room is one of my studio;s and the shelves are as wide as an A1 sketch book and there loaded up.

A sketch of Graham in a pub in Saltburn up north a big gang of us from college were off to a party and stopped in at a pub on the way only that we get thrown out because the landlord of the pub thought Graham was smoking something funny. He was smoking a roll up which some un educated people think are something else a bit stronger. Graham went to Leeds art college and his painting skills were amazing.

Oh my god this is a sketch that I dont remember drawing until I found it and started looking at. Its a very young Jeanie Finley and I on a college trip to Amsterdam where we carrying around a big video camera just filming what we find. We rested up in a brown cafe. I am sure we looked high and low for a brown bar to see what all the fuss was about them. Out side the cafe there is the trade mark 3 x bollards and the tall buildings and canal. Jeanie continued her filming and has directed some top documentaries since the early days. This could be 1990.

James potato Doctor Fowler has just spent a week in the fields digging his experimental spuds and come home to his lodgings with my Aunt in Cambridge. This would have been drawn in the late 80's felt tip pen and paper. I was at Yarmouth art college and went through a potato period and screen printed potato plants on t-shirts and many other potato mused things. Watch out for next weeks Sketch back Sunday.