Category Archives: Colour Drawings

Lockdown and long-term projects

I have to say that lockdown in many ways has been an absolute gift! It has allowed me to concentrate almost full-time upon an old art project of mine I was never able to do justice too – until recently.

That was a set of Tarot cards, that is 78 designs for each card, created to express the research and ideas I had for the symbolism for each card. Just before Christmas, I got my hands on a laptop that already had Photoshop, which I had lost many years previously, after the c drive on a rather ancient PC died a death. Gimp became a reasonable alternative to this until they in their wisdom, no longer allowed its users to save in either jpg or PNG.

Then someone from a group on Facebook for Tarot card designers very kindly showed me how to professionalise the borders and labelling on each card. After that I used Photoshop to edit the designs themselves and to improve upon the colours of the original artwork. This took many evenings working into the small hours of the morning. The fruit of all this midnight oil burning can now been seen in my new Tarot section, here.

The first page gives more information about he Pack and the ideas about it, then the link at the bottom on bold will show a page of samples.

Most other art projects have been on hold in the mean time. It did seem a good time to stand back an reevaluate. 2019 was a landmark year in terms of getting into a stronger position rather than being a hostage to fortune and let’s say I always knew it was, well, on the cards, that 2020 would bring some kind of a serious global crisis. But there were some big disappointments too – the best opportunities last year were through a society of life drawing artists, but the world of art in general can still be a very challenging one to negotiate.

However in my ‘large mixed-media pieces‘ section I have added two more recent new pieces.

Quarantine may still be in effect in most countries and I suspect there will be a three steps forward two back for a long time to come yet, but here is my shop at Red Bubble. My work is available as prints, cards, canvas prints and more – and as masks.

Life Drawing and Small Works

Girl, reclining Girl, lyingThe life drawing group, organised by fellow artist Peter Fekete, is getting more lively, though new artists are always welcome to come: here are two new recent pieces of mine. The model was particularly pleased with the one I completed on the right.

Recently I attended an exhibition of EgyedEgyed László, at the Örkény Bookshop gallery on St István Körüt: his work is that of a real master. The exhibition venue was very well attended. Most of the pieces were drawn in subtle shades, though others were created using more pronounced outlines and others still were almost minimalist in places:

egyedworksEarlier on, the host of the life drawing class, Peter Fekete, put on a retrospective show for his late brother, Andrew Fekete, at a private venue, at the  Berekei Art Studio, 17 Andrassy Utca.  The work is described as being lyrically expressionist, borrowing from the themes of alchemy and Jung – the alchemy theme is certainly something that has interested me for the pőurposes of my own work. Here is a photo of Peter with the main organiser and the gallery owner behind him. The venue was beautifully lit and exceedingly fine wine was served fot the occasion. The work was rather mixed: the later works consisted of thick landscape daubs, whilst his earlier pieces, which I preferred, showed great intricacy in design. Peter talked about the work expressing the sense of alienation of growing up as an alien in London. Being a stranger in a strange land really can be fraying on delicate souls but there are plenty of ways in which it is easy enoughto end up feeling alienated to my mind.

Recently, for example, I encountered a small venue in the city that catered for Outsider Artists at the so-called Tárt kapu galéria – the art brut exhibition in this case, belonging to a group of individuals suffering from autism.  artbrutThis of course means that the artists cannot very well speak for themselves, with all the potential for such individuals being marginalised and therefore possibly patronised as a given – all the same, it was good to know the venue exists.

There is in any case still the chance that the life drawing group will be able to have a group exhibition at some point in the near future, depending on how well this can firt in with various commitments and timetables.

Finally here are some new pieces I have also put up here, belonging to my newer series of mixed-media works on paper:

Light and Gold Cave Light on sand and ocean surfaceMany of these have been completed at Gozsdu Court, as part of the Montmartre show, organised by the Ferdinand Gallery.

I am not sure how far that is running into the winter but for the time being, that does appear, still to be ongoing.

New Experiments in Pattern and Colour

Recently I have been returning to the very first media in which I worked – that of patternistic colour drawings in pen and ink. There drawings are created with Caran d’Ache colour pencils – occasionally with Derwent colour pencils too – covering a whole A4 surface of paper with contrasting and complementing shapes and patterns.

The imagery mainly comes pretty well automatically- but compositions such as the one featured here are experiments in colour too. Red Sickle ChaosThe earlier ones I have posted here, such as this more recent one, titled Red Scythes, was created against a warm beige background, so that the red scythes were given more emphasis.

In this newst one, however, I worked against a grey background and the red shapes here are subsequently far more subdued, whilst the blue and their opposite numbers on the spectrum, the primrose yellow patterns, stand out far more dramatically.

Purple Paisley on GreySoon I hope to have more compositions like these to post – in the meantime, there are more to see on my page here for colour drawings.