ILX Art Gallery: Tregaskin Memorial Wing (do not read if you hate me)

"Taking the Darwinian naturalist's approach, in order to understand a creature's plumage, one must observe the natural habitat where it evolved..."

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7055/6908910249_08ea3719b3_o.jpg

I mean, really.

I think I'm feeling that spikey right now. Like, feeling utterly incapable of communicating with other human beings without it turning into a total disaster, which makes my hedgehog spikes go all defensive. When what I really want is the intellectual equivalent of a hug, and to be told that it's all alright. Portraits of other people are always depictions of mine own mental states. I'm going for a walk in the Great North Wood until I feel better.

I didn't think there was any left? Or are you wandering the streets of Norwood? Can't seeing it being quite as soothing for yr inner hedgehog tbh.

No there totally is! There's bits of it still scattered in Biggin Wood and bits of Sydenham Forest. A Giant Brought Down By Weeds was drawn here! I'm sitting on a log in a patch of woods with Julianna Barwick in one ear and birdsong in the other and my inner hedgehog is rolling in a pile of dead oak leaves to diffuse spikeyness.

Sounds a lot better than sitting in a cubicle in Dartford, and all the blinds are closed so you can't even see *sky*, oh well. Glad you found birdsong and oak leaves.

Still on a Dreaming Spire tip, this is the stuff I did from the architectural walking tour that Cis was so lovely to host last month! Finally!

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7179/6777880164_1e67922772_o.jpg

I wanted it to look proper fierce. ROWR. Keepin' all the knowledges in.

haha that is definitely the impression i get - fortresses. also my immediate thought was a political one, libraries and universities defending themselves against the current coalition attacks on them

I thought more fortresses to keep the Camerons and Cleggs of the world in, and the rest of us hoi polloi out. That they're not defending against cuts, they're retrenching for the old guard.

Could go either way, though! Ambiguity!

More Oxford!

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7061/6925340499_97d569896a_o.jpg

I am so rubbish at tourism type drawing, I haven't drawn one recognisable quad or cloister or college, but then I get all excited about "ooh, look at this amazing lamp post!"

I got very very lost in that particular passage once, if it's the one I think it is. The right-left, right-left angles turned into a labyrinth of back and forth. I should add that I was off my head perhaps.

The lamp posts are excellent tho, especially on foggy nights. For that reason and others, hard to define, but equally today with an MR James sort of vibe, I think that is one of my favourite locations in Oxford.

I wish I could tell you where it was! It was towards the end of the day and we were... on our way to the train station?

It's terrible. Although Oxford is, outside London, the city I've spent the most of amount of time in (because of family, relationships, gigs, whatever) in England, it's also the city I have the *least* amount of intuitive understanding of how it's all laid out.

Because of touring so much, you could drop me in the city centre of Cambridge or Manchester or Exeter and I could probably find my way to (whatever venue we played) fairly easily. But the only way I know how to navigate Oxford is basically, find a local and demand "please can you take me to X?"

This does not bode well tomorrow, but Grandpoint Genie has promised to meet us at the station and escort us to the right bus. Wittenham Lumps drawings will follow soon! I'm so unreasonably excited about the Wittenham Lumps, I know, but, you know... Paul Nash and all that.

I hate going to Paddington and getting on a train that is not going to Cornwall, it's so hard not to make a run for the Penzance train. But I can't afford to go to Cornwall without a job. ::cries::

I did not know about Paul Nash. They're excellent - oh wait, I saw the Ypres Salient at the British War museum, very memorable.

It may not be Cornwall, but it looks a fine place to go, particularly if you get those tattered scudding clouds we're getting and sudden moments of sunshine at the moment, should make it all look great.

Oh god I've just drawn something SO RONG I'm actually afraid to post it to ILX. I'm sure you can find it if you really want to look for it.

Melissa W, I think you'll be *very* interested in this one.

I'm going to go die of shame now.

Now I'm going to go and wash my mind out with soap and go and draw the Wittenham Lumps.

http://i.imgur.com/toswr.jpg - contribution to the hairline debate. Same as it ever was, even pulled back tight!

Show me the other side - the bald patch is on the other side. He is the most asymmetrical man in the world, he's always had enough to make a convincing fringe on the left hand side, it's that chasm on the right that has been generating my licking impulses.

OH GOD SHUT UP WCC.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7204/6939622119_62fe68de8e_o.jpg

Mr Tregaskin, and trees. A winning combination!

(Mr Treegaskin?)

And this is me realising that I haven't drawn the Wittenham Lumps yet because I've spent yet another week sat in my bedroom staring at a computer screen. This is getting ridiculous.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7189/6944736055_04d75c8a06_o.jpg

So I've drawn no recognisable buildings, or landmarks or anything after that Wittenham Lumps walk, but ooh, lookit these lovely thistle things:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7208/6957237655_5658e9360d_o.jpg

Laptop in bed: story of my life. The thistles is the one i'd put on the wall, though.

It looks a bit like a Liberty print. I would totally wear it on a shirt from made from fabric like that.

Oh! I think I forgot one!

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7045/6950261747_9c9ecf6c4f_o.jpg

This is my favourite patch of woods at the moment, eating some suburban Sarf London houses. Om nom nom nom.

I'm gonna link this one instead of post it, because, erm, it's just getting embarrassing how much I'm drawing this man

http://www.flickr.com/photos/masonicboomk8/6959886739/

I seriously need to get off my arse and look for a job, this is getting ridiculous. (It's too bad that no one will pay me £££££ for drawing hott boys. Sigh.)

haha i love the way that in the laptop photo, the duvet reminds me of the sea and the furniture of cliffs - have got used to seeing those patterns in your seaside drawings.

suburban homes is awesome too - whereabouts was that?

Ha ha, I was trying to go for "Londonhole is grey, Oxfordshire is beautiful and technicolour green" but now you point out the sea/cliffs resemblance of my room I guess Cornwall just creeps into everything I do.

Suburban Homes is Biggin Woods, this little forest sandwiched between Streatham, Norbury and Norwood.

ha, it's kind of like when you haven't left your bedroom in a bit too long, and it begins to seem like the whole world, in both the stir-crazy need-to-get-out-of-this-disgusting-grey-hole way, but also in the way you begin to imagine surrealities amid all the quotidianness...

Totally heart the thistle painting (especially the green/brown/blue palette)

I have so much trouble working with brown/green/blue as a colour palette, which is terrible considering how many forest paintings I've done lately. I think it might just be the Mac interface (though, that said, I had the same trouble on an old laptop, so it might just be photoshop.) Like, in all other colour ranges, I can completely see the difference between very small shifts of like 3 or 4 notches, but where green flows into brown I have to nudge it, like, 20 to 30 ticks before I can see any change. Hate photoshop for that. That's why I tend to use blues/purples so much more - they're so less tricky in photoshop.

I don't know why I keep drawing woods, considering I have such trouble establishing where green ends and brown begins, but I do.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7180/6970770963_d6e2288398_o.jpg

This is not Great North Woods remnant, but a reforested area of Streatham! Where there used to be a dairy, but animals don't graze the trees back any more.

More Biggin Woods, now that the wild cherry is out. (Keep typing "wild cheery" by accident which is kinda appropriate, too.)

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7189/6977144765_4f71ee549d_o.jpg

ARTSS

Been one of these recently.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7044/6980121525_bd33f19849_o.jpg

Made me think of Kay Neilsen's Gloomy Thick Wood painting. The girl in that looks like she could really use a duvet.

These make me think of Emily Carr, Canadian painter.

http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/canadian/images/EmilyCarr-Indian-Church-1929.jpg

I had not knowingly seen those Kay Nielson pics before, but they are awesome.

http://www.artsycraftsy.com/nielsen_prints.html

They have the kind of fairy tale quality I really love.

And I like the monumental slabs of evergreen foliage in the Carr painting. Like concrete sheets of foliage.

I had a hard-backed print of the gloomy wood up in the bathroom in Manchester, my ex husband kept it, I do not know if he still has it up since he moved in with his new ladyfrend. My mother was a huge stan for Kay Nielsen, also Dulac.

Man, I would like to start a fund for "replacing beautiful things that we lost in the divorce" so that you could have your gloomy woods print, and I could have the dirty Egon Schiele at the bottom of the bed.

Dulac, I know well! I had fairy tale books with those prints when I was a child. See also Arthur Rackham, my mum had a book that she cut all the pictures out and framed them and hung them up all over the house where they could scare the shit out of me, but also, I secretly loved them, even though they were scary.

I think Lex will remember the origin of this critter...

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7197/6836750106_f39d1ae6bc_o.jpg

I don't even know what this plant is, but I kinda love it.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7238/7047563975_414dc80b23_o.jpg

Looks like a castor (bean) plant.

(Pic may be too big)

http://dtirp.dtra.mil/images/RicinusCommunis.jpg

From which the poison Ricin is derived (as well as castor bean oil).

No, that is completely the wrong colour, and the things on top are berries, not flowers.

I will never know what it is.

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3205/2707518620_6ebc0d2180_o.jpg

Just got reminded of St Hildegarde and this rlly old drawing fits in with the forest theme of late, Penderecki Oak and all... (except this is so clearly the Salty Forest in Northamptonshire...)

!!!!

yo your stuff is legit fantastic, nice nice work

Thankee, thankee...

Yeah, I wish I could remember the exact passage that inspired that drawing because it was o_0 amazing but like St Hildegarde is out there, and something about divine breath / inspiration (that is the etymology of the word) that really caught my imagination, and Grimes brought up St Hildegarde in an interview that was posted on that thread, and I just thought "yeah, my homegirl." Or, erm, something.

Now I really have to stop mucking about and get back to my animation project. I've become a woman obsessed. I wish I had a better tool than just Pencil (because it just will not synch to music, and won't export with music, which makes it very hard to get the drawings and the music... *together* in the way I want it to.) But I also kind of like working in very basic low-tech, it forces you to be creative to get around the limitations.

I am in SENNEN.

It is so beautiful I am surprised mine EYES have not popped out of my skull from all the looking.

This is what I see from my windows. It is HEAVEN.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8012/6955259630_08b1620dd6_o.jpg

Awesome.

Even when it rains. Especially when it rains.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7248/7108901253_95a4588cf5_o.jpg

I could paint this every day, the way the colours keep changing.

i love the window effect on that - that's exactly what i love about storms, when you're indoors and simultaneously feel in total awe at nature's power but also so warm and cosy.

also i only just saw the hayward gallery one upthread! lol, fantastic.

Indoors, with a good strong double-glazed window (window seat optional, but I has one) and a roaring fire (I has one of those two but I can't be arsed to make it go) is just about the best thing in the entire world.

Hmmm. This fire looks like a gas powered one but I can't find the off switch. If I have to go and fetch wood and kindling... LOL rustics.