Planner in biro

Lace Veil.

A4 acrylic on paper.

2 hours.

Oil, 12×16″

Final.

I declare it finished. It only needs a layer of linseed oil over the areas showing slight sinking. However, I reserve the right to think of adjustments to add.

Stages.

A4; plaits

School grade 130gsm cartridge paper. HB to 3B Rexel Cumberland pencils. I think I need a 4B with this paper, it’s a bit soft and lacking the fine key required for the deepest blacks.

Biro, flipped drawing.

A5 sketchbook, bic biro.

Invertible pen drawing.

A4 sketch-book, acrylic paint

Soap & Skin

From Gas To Solid.

Biro version

A5 sketchbook.

Drawn during DofE trip to Cannock Chase. See the recent acrylic painting version in another post. Started while manning a checkpoint and finished before breakfast one morning on Cannock Chase.

Evo reviewed

This was quite a lump sum for me to pay out to be frank. But here’s why I did it: I had a demo against a Dali Oberon 5 and a similar Mordant-Short floorstander. Both are fabulous because I got the fizzy feeling from favourite records. These choices are, ultimately, a gut instinctive selection. One record played was a Laurie Anderson album that I have known since the late 80s, and I heard something I’ve never noticed before. There’s no going back, I knew I was going to spend some money that evening.
The guys at Preston were very attentive in the demo and gave me all the time I needed. Soon, the conversation turned to practicalities like delivery slots and cables.
Setup at home was easy. The boxes were huge but we’ll thought out. Unboxing was fun, especially when I found the curator’s cotton gloves to handle the speakers with. Unboxing is a special ritual that you never get with secondhand gear and Wharfedale played along with that. The speakers themselves were in a cloth bag tied with a bow. It just gets better.

Curator’s gloves.

Anyway, I’m working through my record collection and discovering details that I’ve never known before. In one, you can tell that studio reverb was done with a metal sheet rather than a digital effects box. Another, there are footprints across the room. It’s uncanny. More importantly, I’m enjoying the rhythms and dynamics in ways I’d not imagined possible.

(Can you tell I like my new speakers?)

Bombardment

Acrylic paint, feet for scale

Found a new, unused sketch-book in a box recently. From now, it’s my new paintings book; the paper us much better, being thicker at 170gsm rather than 140. Even though the old book still has a dozen blank pages, I’m going to move over to this one from now.