A quick drawing from the daily sketchbook, done in pen instead of the usual china marker.
Drawings almost every day by Romney David Smith and Tarragon Smith. Occasionally paintings or etchings or silkscreens. Or whatever else catches our fancy.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Saturday, January 29, 2011
The castle at Murlo
A tiny etching of the castle at Murlo - a dainty Tuscan village a short way south of Siena. I didn't stop to visit: this is the view from the road, and I still had a fair way to cycle on that day.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Autoritratto
A decade-old self-portrait done in a Rembrandt frame of mind. It was winter in Tuscany. The turban was an orange scarf wrapped around my head.
Done with a china marker on paper with a very noticeable texture of vertical striations.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Florentine Suburb
A house in the Oltarno of Florence. Despite its rather rustic appearance, this view is barely five minutes walk from the Ponte Vecchio.
I'm sometimes amazed by just how many Italian landscapes I've drawn or painted over the years...
I'm sometimes amazed by just how many Italian landscapes I've drawn or painted over the years...
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Reinisa strikes a pose
The always lovely Reinisa poses for the Collective life drawing group. A twenty-minute drawing done with markers, china markers and pencil crayons.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
The Endurance
I distinctly remember my first discovery of Frank Hurley. The photographer of Shackleton's epic 1914-17 antarctic expedition, his photographs, printed using an old glass-negative process, have a resolution so high it's almost painful to look at them. His image of the Endurance illuminated at night is famous, but I prefer his panorama of South Georgia, which for me captures the impossible bleakness of the place in a way words never can.
Such things were on my mind when I made this small drypoint:
Such things were on my mind when I made this small drypoint:
The print was done rapidly on vinyl and printed on Japanese paper in a very wee edition of 7 proofs. It's about five inches square.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Saturday, January 15, 2011
waiting
Henri Bachelin:
"Those were evenings when, in old houses exposed to snow and icy winds, the great stories, the beautiful legends that men hand down to one another, take on concrete meaning and, for those that delve into them, become immediately applicable. And thus it was, perhaps, that one of our ancestors, who lay dying in the year one thousand, should have come to believe in the end of the world."
The anticipation of disaster - perhaps a personal (romantic, even) catastrophe, perhaps global - is born from sensory experience, not from intelligence or theology.
Henri Bachelin, Le Serviteur, p.102. The passage was translated by Maria Jolas, around 1964, for inclusion in Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space. I did the painting more years ago than I care to think about.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Berlin Airport #2
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Turning to spring
A painting from the bad old poverty-stricken days of painting on cardboard. When I saw how much colour she was wearing, I couldn't resist whipping out the paints.
I left out the hand to suggest movement; she's turning away from the viewer and her hand, due to its position on the circumference of the turn's arc, is moving the fastest.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Costa San Giorgio
Still in Italy:
At the top of Costa San Giorgio, looking back down the road in the direction of Florence.
A quick sketch done with water-soluble ink, on the same day as this one.
At the top of Costa San Giorgio, looking back down the road in the direction of Florence.
A quick sketch done with water-soluble ink, on the same day as this one.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Pieve dei Santi Giusto e Clemente
A page from a sketchbook I carried while cycling in Tuscany, showing the Pieve dei Santi Giusto e Clemente in the small village of Casciano. It's fairly high up in a saddle between two hills, a short distance south of Siena.
All over Tuscany, tiny villages partook in the glory of the big cities by embellishing their churches with green pietre verde. No one in a place like Casciano could afford an entire polychrome facade like in Siena or Florence or Empoli, so they had to settle with just the voussoirs of the arch above the west window.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Saturday, January 1, 2011
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