The only Zen you'll find on mountain tops is the Zen you bring up there with you - Alan Watts

(mountain print available from Society6 here)

Portrait Commission - Pepsi

portrait commission - Cassia

Sketchbook pages

After Henri Fantin-Latour's Portrait of Sonia (1890)

ducks and pigeons in Victoria Park, Stafford

my brother, Lewis

Left: drawing made in British Museum         Right: drawing made in National Gallery

Pigeons, ducks, gulls and geese in St James's Park

One must keep right on drawing; draw with your eyes when you cannot draw with a pencil - Ingres

I found David Hockney's book Hidden Knowledge in the library last week and I've been pouring over it ever since. My understanding of art history tends to be quite patchy but I find it endlessly fascinating to learn about. Hockney's examination of the Old Master's and their (possible) use of optics is a good way in, and whether or not you agree with his conclusions it is an opportunity to examine the work by these artists more closely - as well as chronologically, side by side with their peers, which gives a little more context and room for comparison.

(Incidentally, I've also been captivated by the BBC series Bright Lights, Brilliant Minds: A Tale of Three Cities)

Some recent drawings from my sketchbook:

Drawn from Ingres' portrait of Mrs Charles Badham (1816) 

Ingres focused most of his energy into drawing his subject's faces - they are drawn so tightly that you can barely see the individual pencil marks, the modelling of the face is often light and sensitive - while the clothes are drawn with more looseness of expression - harder strokes, stronger lines - still maintaining a strong focus on line and contour. This effect draws your eye to the face - it appears more in focus than the rest of the drawing - while the looseness keeps your eye engaged in the drawing as a whole.

drawn from Rembrandt's portrait of Baartjen Martens

(self-portrait with hair in towel)

Ideas flow through like these beautiful little fish, and you catch them - David Lynch

Some ideas arrive the moment you stop looking for them.

In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm - Goethe

I'll be posting new comics here: http://www.patreon.com/emmaridgway

More of the comic I've been working on...

A tea ceremony of sorts

I only realised after drawing this that the abstract shapes might resemble the different ages of a person through their life, from cells to an elderly figure.

Stowaway

I started drawing a comic tonight, curious to see where it will take me.

Portrait on a Postcard - Amelia Earhart

 My Dad is an engineer and for a good part of my childhood and teenage years he built model aeroplanes. Gliders, spitfires, an Utterly Butterly biplane...we spent many days out at Cosford and Duxford at air shows, and while my Dad and brothers could recognise and name each plane on sight, I felt a lack of connection towards all mechanical flying things. I can appreciate now how beautifully aeroplanes are designed, and the skill that goes into making them aerodynamic, and the role they played in history, but back then I used to say "I hate aeroplanes!"

Anyway...I'm a different person now. I really enjoyed drawing Amelia Earhart's Lockheed model 10-E Electra.

I was reading about how when she was a child she kept a scrapbook of clippings about successful women working in male-dominated professions. Not only did she go on to become an aviation pioneer - the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic - but she also did so much to help other women, as president of the Ninety-nines (organisation for female pilots) as a careers advisor to women at Purdue University, as a member of the National Women's Party, and an early supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment.

"I have always preferred the reflection of life to life itself." - Truffaut

(I know its sort of terrible that I'm using watercolours on printer paper, sorry if anyone feels offended by this...but when it comes to experimenting and playing, I don't feel so precious if I use cheap materials. Drawing tools should always be good quality though - gilot mapping pens are delicious, but leaky biros and blunt pencils are going to make you feel like you can't draw)