Tag: Hepworth

Hepworth

casting bronze
Barbara Hepworth
Dame Barbara drawn in pen and wash in a real sketchbook.

An exhibit at the Hepworth Wakefield shows the method Barbara Hepworth used to cast a small bronze sculpture.

I could draw vice, mallet and hammer at home but I’m taking the opportunity to practice using my iPad Pro on location so the well-worn tools in the display here are suitably familiar subjects to get me started.

I’m sticking with Clip Studio Paint, drawing with the ‘Textured Pen’ for an occasionally blotchy varied line. The colouring is all from the ‘Lasso Fill’ tool. The possibilities for different pens, brushes and textures in Clip Studio are endless but I want to keep things simple to get into the process of drawing on location.

vice
Parkinson’s Patent Perfect Vise (that’s the US spelling)

This is the first time that I’ve used the Sketchboard Pro iPad drawing board on location and I find that it works well. Usefully, the gallery has a supply of comfortable folding stools and the spaces are so light and airy that you can set up without getting in anyone’s way. Well except the people who particularly wanted a close-up view of stage 4 of Barbara Hepworth’s bronze casting process.

hammer and mallet

The hammer was my first drawing and you can see that I got off to a shaky start pre-coffee break (I can highly recommend the Hepworth blackberry and apple flapjack and sitting at a table by the window looking out at a foaming weir and autumnal willows on a mid-river island makes a suitably relaxing break from drawing). But the great thing about iPad drawing is that you can correct mistakes without scratching away at the paper or touching them out with white gouache.

When I was drawing the bronze casting process I discovered that I’d run out of room on the right-hand side of my virtual canvas. I simply selected the whole drawing and moved it slightly to the left.

building in Horbury
Building behind the library in Horbury.

Waterside Mill

THE RHUBARB FESTIVAL at the weekend created a great deal of interest and they sold out of my walks book in town and at the Hepworth so we’re here delivering more.

It’s so tempting when we’re calling here to stop for lunch. The tables looking out over the river and Chantry Chapel so we make for the other window where I sketch the old waterside mills.

The View from the Hepworth

IF YOU STAND on one of the bridges in Inverness you can see to the bottom of the river but it’s a surprise to find that you can do the same in Wakefield, looking into our lowland River Calder. This is the view from the Chantry Bridge side of the Hepworth gallery.

You’re looking down towards the Roman river crossing – which was probably a ford. The bedrock is sandstone, which might explain the pebbles although the riverbank has been restored using landscaping fabric here, so these pebbles might have been tipped here to protect the bank.

This is the inside of the bend on the river so you’d expect slack water and deposits of silt here however there’s a weir not far upstream so the strong currents will scour the riverbed.

We’re here to deliver books but we manage to time that to coincide with a late lunch (goats cheese and spinach risotto, a good winter warmer on a cold, wet breezy afternoon) at the table with the view of the Chantry Chapel so I get chance to make a quick sketch as we wait for our meal.

One of my paintings, Waterton’s World, a large acrylic on canvas from 1984, is in the Hepworth collection but wasn’t hanging in the public galleries today. Perhaps one day . . .

Actually I say it was a large painting but it was tiny compared to Clare Woods’ mighty composite panel paintings of Brimham rocks which are getting on for the size of the actual rocks themselves.

Link: Waterton’s World image of my painting on BBC Your Paintings at the Public Catalogue Foundation. You’ll also found a student picture, acrylic on board of Denby Grange colliery.

A Bear at the Hepworth

SOMEWHERE DEEP in the vaults of the new Hepworth Gallery by the river in Wakefield, in the reserve collections, there’s one of my paintings; a 6ft 6 x 4ft acrylic on canvas of Waterton’s World, along with a sketchbook of the working drawings that I made for it. These were of South American birds collected by the naturalist Charles Waterton between 1812 and 1824. The sketchbook is handmade; a large-format section-sewn hardback filled with Saunders hot-pressed paper. It proved too cumbersome for everyday use and I only ever filled a quarter of the pages. I must pop in to the Hepworth and draw something special in it some day!

My painting has yet to make it into the public galleries but this cuddly bear and the bear tile, the work of our talented neighbour Alice, aged 6, have been exhibited at the Hepworth as part of a show of work by local children. An artist came into her school to work with them.

Alice tells us that her favourite modelling clay creation is this cheerful hedghog (right) but she explains that as it was made more recently it wasn’t included in the show.

Finding a battered butterfly in the garden, she used her watercolours for this large painting which she kindly presented to us.