Thursday, 31 December 2020

2020 - sharing is caring (but wear a mask, keep your distance, wash your hands and stayathome)


I'm not doing a review of the year in the usual sense as this has not been a usual year. 

Some time last year, I tried bullet journalling (not in the pretty journals sense - more like a messy list /scrawl) but it helped me note down key points and to my surprise I kept it up - looking through it this year, I realised, amongst other things, that, thankfully, I still kept on learning this year and so I thought I'd share some of the seemingly random things I enjoyed so much that I noted it in my journal and that you may be able to dip into yourselves from time to time if you need inspiration.

Apologies in advance for the format of this long blogpost but it captures links I can refer to in future so it's useful for my future self.

Online festivals (some of which contain links you can still watch)

Cosmic shambles Stay at Home festival (I watched a few of these on days off and the note in my journal says 'fish belch' so I'm trying to find out more but I think it was related to the science ones!)

The Festival of Digital Disruption (we bought the tickets to this fab annual festival by Curious Lounge but was unable to attend so will have something to dip into over the next year). Previous ones have been excellent.

DANCE READING - Initially, I considered watching and sketching but I just followed along the fun Hip Hop Social Groove class mainly,  what I learned is I'm too old and oh my knees. None of my friends and family wanted to join in - more fool them.

Towards the end of the year, I ended up finding out about the Digital Craft Festival (with the judges from the Throwdown popping up there) and spent a fun, cold afternoon making a plastecine reindeer with Jim Parkyn who apparently has been doing daily clay animals for us all to follow along with.



Courtauld big draw - this was so inspiring and the link to the recording contains so many fun , short workshops (15-20 mins max)  - including how to make charcoal ink, fantastic figures, making dyes etc. and printing

I had signed up for an artful box that had contained a lino cutting set  and this festival introduced me to the work of Ade Adesina  who used a dremel for his huge, gorgeous prints, Inspired, I had a go too and the wonderful local artists Emily Gillmor and Mark A Webber helped me out when I struggled with inking.

Matisse Drawing with Scissors Workshop  - inspired me to try drawing with scissors - they are running this session again next week.

Karen Abend Sketchbook Revival - Every year, the sketchbook revival comes along and I give it a shot and learn something new. Carla Sonheim's free online drawing blast had some fun 5 min exercises. My favourite was the haiku drawings and I spent some time practicing this (drawing in 7 lines) this year. 

She also introduced me to the concept of box journalling. 

Melissa Lee taught us about character drawing and that the first cowboys were in fact African American or Hispanic. She also pointed out that  line of action was an excellent resource for drawing practice.


Nina Rycroft - short workshop on animal characters helped me out when I struggled to draw animals quickly. This was useful for the Illustration workshop with Linda Newcombe I did later this year.


Writers HQ  I'm not planning to write but the two people had some wonderful, fun and entertaining online events on that I enjoyed just watching them. They have a free journaling course in Jan if you'd like to check them out.

Reading Fringe Festival - some gems in there.

What's On Reading online events - if you want to check out more local, online stuff

Reading Guild of Artists online exhibitions - explore these to find local artists and their lovely work https://www.rga-artists.org.uk/online-exhibition.html and https://www.rga-artists.org.uk/online-exhibition2.html

And speaking of amazing exhibitions - this curator tour of the Kimono exhibition at V&A is fascinating

Online art workshops and regular classes

Rebecca Vincent - ran a Sunday art Club during the 1st lockdown and a friend introduced me to these.

All the young nudes - online life drawing - I did this class pretty regularly during the first lockdown and support them on Patreon. They, like others, discovered the power of online classes.

Linda Newcombe Illustration Thursdays via Jelly Reading - Another useful resource for this was the RBdigital app via Reading libraries - I was able to look at New Yorker and New Scientist Illustrations to look at awesome examples of editorial illustration before I had a go myself. Other resources from the library include: driving theory, audio books via BorrowBox, books via 



SketchbookSkool ran a few workshops this year and I had a go at some of these and learned skills I didn't think I had in me.

Frances Van Stone portraits using pencils 

AugustWren and painting from old photos using gouache

Ohn Mar Win and ink and paint workshop

Gigi Chen and Ballpoint birds

Pottery/ceramics

The wonderful Great Pottery Throwdown has introduced a lot of us to aspects of ceramics we may not have known or considered before. I learned about Nerikomi (assumed it was Japanese but originally practiced in Egypt , China and via the Romans) and the work of Dorothy Feibleman

Thanks to the rabbit hole of Youtube, we also discovered amazing work by Barbara Gitting and Walter Keeler . I also came across the work of Angela Mellor who does paper clay amongst others and spent a good part of the pandemic watching potters throwing clay which was oddly relaxing. 

Reading-related link: if you want to learn from the lovely Cait Gould (whom you may have seen in a previous series of the Pottery throwdown) then she runs classes, has a shop and also sells a clay kit for home with proceeds going to charity and tips on her site. 

Nature and all that malarky

Bird Watching game - we bet how many birds will be in the tray regularly - in the process we learned a couple more bird names!

Tristam Gooley - we've seen talks, read his books and considered going to his walks but lockdown inspired us to sign up for his course (that he finally tried) and watching it cemented some things we had learned through his books and now our walks and the way I look at trees are never going to be the same.

If you like trees and learning about ones local to you (London) then check out Treetalk

Food

YouTube - learning from makers 

There's obviously so much great stuff on Youtube. Tested.com has aamzing stuff, 

We also enjoyed woodworking and resin videos but haven't noted links. Woodworking is specially hypnotic once you have had a go (and we did thanks to Reading HackSpace at the end of last year)

Racing and betting

MarbleRacing, DIECAST RALLY are races you can bet on (well, not bet money - just play for fun) 

Commute/Travels from the sofa

You can travel/commute from your sofa and enjoy SLOW TV 

BOTOBER

Janelle Shane challenged us to Botober this year with challenges including concepts - these were generated and were the first time I really enjoyed a daily challenge for the WHOLE month. 



Toilets in various stations


Inspiring stuff to watch, listen and enjoy

Here's some series etc. that we enjoyed

Sketching

Just wrote a post on all the art that Urban Sketchers Reading group have been doing this year - check it out to find out about local urban sketchers.

Finally - favourite sketches I did this year - thankfully I did this thread so I didn't have to write it at the end of the year. 




Sunday, 27 September 2020

Saturday, 11 April 2020

Covid19 urbansketching at home

Here are some of my urban sketches at home (#uskathome) during the time spent at home. We started working from home a week or so before the lockdown and decided to stick with our two week pre-planned staycation after a bit of consideration. Am glad we took some time off and after doing lots of art, finally found the energy to set up a very lo-fi effort Urban sketching at home session with @Rdgsketchers next Tues https://twitter.com/RdgSketchers/status/1248961119038963712?s=19

 These sketches follow the urban sketching manifesto so I haven't included ones I have drawn live but don't give a sense of time and place...eg coffee pots and vases etc with no context of the setting