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Plant to Page – drawing & mark making workshops

Join me on Saturday 11th May for a 2.5 hour workshop.

I’ll be bringing a sense of the garden into the studio and up to eye level with a collection of plant forms to inform and inspire.

We’ll explore line, texture and tone using a range of dry and wet media including pencils, ink and gouache on paper. And we’ll try some improvised drawing tools to challenge and refresh our mark making. The focus is on the process and experience of seeing through drawing, rather than creating a finished artwork.

Details and booking for the morning workshop here or the afternoon workshop here


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Horbury Herbarium

Redbox Gallery is a decommissioned K6 telephone box that has been renovated by Horbury Civic Society. Redbox Gallery hosts a programme of contemporary art exhibitions curated by Graham Roberts.


In February 2019 I was commissioned to create a piece for Redbox Gallery. I joined Horbury Walkers on one of their walks from The Cluntergate Centre, making notes of path side plants that we saw on our walk. I later returned to make sketches of the plants that I used as starting points for an installation of drawings in the windows of Redbox Gallery.

The drawings can be viewed from the pavement, the installation is illuminated in the evenings. Exhibition continues to 22nd May


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Inside outside

I’m interested in the adaptable and tenacious plants that are often overlooked & unwanted. I’m currently reading Weeds, How Vagabond Plants Gatecrashed Civilisation and Changed the Way We Think About Nature  by Richard Mabey. On the walk to the studio I made this kerbside sketch of Groundsel.

I’m thinking about how my on site / en plain air drawing and painting relates to the work done in the studio.

I’ve recently acquired some old fence planks and made first sketchy marks to explore working on different planes.

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Scale and proportion

This afternoon I was meant to be working on some small paintings.
I realised that my thoughts were toying with something on quite a different scale. Sometimes you’ve just got to make a physical start on something even if you’re not sure how to do it or how it’ll turn out.

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Kerbsides

Fascinated by the micro habitat that has formed over this iron drain cover.
Lots going on here that I want to explore.
Contrasts:
fragile organic plant forms /  heavy geometric metal grate
wildness / domestication
opportunist / planned

Several patches of weeds that I’ve been sketching have been cleared. I’m also aware that I could be asked to move on. My sketching and painting habits might have to adapt, mimic the weeds’ rapid development in order for some to take hold and grow.