Tag: Mantaray Bag

Just my Bag

mantaray bag

I dream about drawing, literally; in one dream I was looking through a booklet thinking these drawings look like mine but I don’t remember doing them and is that really my signature?

In another dream I was trying to find a space in a busy workshop to continue work on a rough splodgy oil painting.

mantaray bagIt’s my subconscious reminding me – as if I needed reminding – how frustrated I’m feeling because of my current enforced break from creative work.

tree tops

foliageTo make things as simple as possible I wanted a discrete still life kind of object; not my hand which is my usual subject when I’m stuck for anything else to draw and not, for instance, a tree, attractive as the autumn colour is just now, which raises the issue of simplifying the foliage.

I wanted something with a definite outline and simple interlocking shapes. And, heavens to Betsy, what’s this, yep, the A5 art bag that I take everywhere with me.

mantaray bagI was drawing this in subdued light and picked up the purple crayon instead of the black, but I like the high colour key that gives the drawing.

mantaray bag
I’m  getting on with this new pen, a Uni-ball Signo Gel Grip, which is free flowing but, unlike the liquid ink pens that I normally prefer, it doesn’t bleed through the absorbent paper of my current sketchbook.

gel penEach of the bag drawings took between half an hour to an hour, drawn while Barbara was catching up on episodes The Great British Bake-off Masterclass, which makes reassuringly homely background viewing.

satchelA hour is about right for getting involved in drawing a bag. I didn’t have as long when I drew this green satchel the other day. But that’s not my bag.

Links; a larger version of a Mantaray bag, as sold by Debenhams. I like the idea that for each Mantaray bag sold a donation goes to the British Marine Conservation Society.

Uni-ball Signo Gel Grip by Mitsubishi

Spotlights

spotlightsWITH BUS routes over the hills disrupted by the snow, we ended up taking a taxi to the matinee at the Theatre Royal and Opera House in Wakefield this afternoon. John Godber’s adaptation of Stan Barstow’s novel A Kind of Loving was as funny and evocative as the read-through which we attended in Ossett last summer had suggested. One of the hazards of a live performance; John Godber strolled onto the stage at the start of the production and explained that because Christine Cox who plays Vic’s mum had lost her voice he would be reading her part, while she continued in mime only (we did very briefly hear her in one scene).  I’d like to see the play again and hear her speak her lines but in most scenes you could have understood her character’s emotions without any dialogue. Every live performance is different and it didn’t detract from the experience, if anything it was another way getting us to use our imaginations to draw us into the story and the lives of the characters.

In those days cigarette smoking was an everyday activity and you couldn’t evoke the late 1950s and early 60s without having the characters smoking in various situations. A silver cigarette case, a 21st birthday gift, features in the plot. But it was strange to catch a whiff of smoke indoors again after years of it being banned. Luckily it didn’t set off the alarms. It reminded me of a time when any cinema, bus (upstairs) or pub that you went in would have to varying degrees a fug of stale smoke which you’d carry it back home on your clothes. But I should explain that this was just the slightest hint of fresh smoke and we were close to the stage on row E in the stalls, so don’t let it put you off attending when the production moves on to Hull and Stoke!

corner of the room

Here’s a subject that most of us get a chance to draw every day, except perhaps the people who live in the old windmill further up the lane; the corner of a room.

jug

Moving a little to the right, this jug on the hearth came from Barbara’s mum’s. I guess that it dates from the fifties but it could be slightly pre-war. It’s hand-painted with orange flowers. Marrying the curvy vase with the geometric pattern of bricks proved beyond me and I was unable to match up the proportions of the vertical and horizontal sections of the fireplace when I came to draw the bottom righthand corner of my drawing. My guess is that I drew the jug slightly larger than the bricks that I’d already drawn by the gas fire on the left.

mantaray bag

So for my next drawing I went for something with no geometric grid. This is my A5 size art bag, a grey Mantaray bag which I most often take with me for everyday drawing, such as this afternoon at the theatre.