Design/sculpture

All are  pencil and pencil crayon in Moleskine sketchbook.

These sketches are from the wonderful exhibition of Ron Arad's work, on the cusp between design and sculpture, at the Barbican Centre in London. 

Near home

Black and sanguine Pitt pens and pencil crayon in big sketchbook.

I don't like the threat of summer in the air, but it would have been churlish not to recognise that yesterday was a seriously beautiful day.

Walking the dogs

Pencil, pencil crayon and graphite pencil, plus watercolour and pencil crayon collage in big sketchbook.

Pencil and watercolour pencil crayon in big sketchbook.

Pencil and pencil crayon in Moleskine sketchbook.

Our neighbour Marion is a saint to all animals in the neighbourhood. In every kind of weather, she's out there mucking out the stable, feeding the sheep and pony and talking them - all are rescue animals, as is Ziggy, her very old Dalmation. 

Testing

Best dog in the world

Pencil, conté pencil and pencil crayon in big sketchbook.

Pencil, conté pencil and pencil crayon in big sketchbook.

Pencil, conté pencil and pencil crayon in big sketchbook, with collage in pencil and watercolour.

I found a big hardback sketchbook I'd bought years ago in Israel and never used - nice big pages. Today I cleaned up my watercolours, that were getting pretty grungy and the container scraped down so I could use it as a palette again. 

 

Healthcare at home

Pencil and pencil crayon in Moleskine sketchbook

Pencil, pencil crayon and ink pen in Moleskine sketchbook.

Pencil and pencil crayon in Moleskine sketchbook.

Pencil, pencil crayon and brush marker

Pencil crayon, watercolour pencil crayon and sanguine Pitt pen.

My husband having his long chemotherapy session today. It's the tenth in a cycle of twelve, so nearing the end. There's this amazing nursing service that administers chemo at home, where patients can feel more comfortable and at ease. I always give him lunch on a tray while the poison's being pumped into him and he talks politics with the nurse.

I love those plastic pouches they use for the drip infusion: they are mysterious and scary, but at the same time they seem like pouches of miracle-working potion. They catch the light and you can't quite distinguish between surface and depth: they seem to be constantly in motion.  You can see the liquid slowly making its way into the body. I've drawn them a few times here, and also taken lots of photos over the course of the treatment.

I've never liked using markers, but there are such fabulous ones available, now that illustration and graphic novels and manga have become so popular. I couldn't resist the three-for-the-price-of-two sale yesterday at the local art shop, and bought two different tones of the same grey and an umbery brown. They're probably a bit too flat and bold for me, but they are very seductive to use. I am especially taken by the ghost of a drawing that comes through on the other side of the paper, a bit like the shroud of Turin picking out the salient features of the underlying form, so in the last drawing, I just used pencil crayon to trace the bits that had seeped through the page before, definitely a kind of cheating-drawing. I think I will take that idea of re-using the reverse side of the paper and try it in my studio drawing, see what happens.

Sweating it out

Pencil and pencil crayon in Moleskine sketchbook.


I'm rather getting a taste for trying to capture figures in movement now. I worked out before drawing, so that no one would think I was a weirdo. Next thing will be to learn to draw while I'm exercising, a true challenge of multi-tasking.

Multicultural food

Easter and Pesach leftovers.


Staedtler black pigment liner and watercolour in Windsor and Newton sketchbook.

Kontakthof: komm tanz mit mir

All in pencil and pencil crayon in Moleskine sketchbook.


I made these drawings while watching Pina Bausch's Kontakthof at the Barbican yesterday. There are now two versions, one with teenagers, the other with people over 65. I saw the teenagers: wanted to stay on for the other, but wouldn't have been able to get home afterwards. I had to draw very quickly and half in the dark to capture the movement and the mood.

Pina Bausch mesmerisingly portrays the dynamics of men and women trying to make contact at a social event, the preening, the self doubt, the small vanities, the insecurities. I don't know any other choreographer who so heartbreakingly captures and uses the tiniest and most revealing gestures from our daily lives - things as insignificant as fixing an uncomfortable bra strap or checking to see if there isn't spinach stuck between one's teeth. Most poignantly, the piece showed the way tenderness and cruelty are intertwined in people's longing for love and yet desire to thwart it.