Sasa's Sketchbook 3

Doodling while watching football... Black sketch pad is not really for the nightless nights of midsummer but couldn't resist it when I found it from my art storage. Need to start using it more.

Last weekend I was sketching in Mile End with a group of friends. We started at Tower Hamlets Cemetery, drawing a mausoleum, sitting on a foot path, harassed by ants. Tower Hamlets Cemetery Next we wanted to find a shadier place with a park bench. We found one but the view was a bit less spectacular. Tower Hamlets Cemetery Then we bought some food from supermarket and had a lunch in Mile End Park.  Mile End Park After lunch we walked to Victoria Park via beautiful canal path. I didn't do any sketches there but I think I will go back with my sketchpad some time soon. Nice day.

...or the sky's the limit... Roberto invited me to join the Drawing Challenge he hosted. I absolutely loved his theme 'No Limits' but found it really difficult, possibly because of my limited set of art supplies :-)  I am traveling with only a couple of pens and a small black sketchbook, which by the way I have managed to fill in during this trip, this is the last spread...

Makeup (we love colour!) My submission for Illustration Friday, the theme was 'vanity'. I wanted to play with colors and do something 'half-abstract'. This looks better in real life, the gold and silver paint I used does not really show in the scanned version.   For some reason I really like drawing makeup. Not that I do it often, the above was my third try. Last time I tried was in 2011 when I did an ink brush work that is maybe more 'my style'.   Makeup (2011) Before that I sketched make up in 2008, a quickie by the bathroom sink :-)

    I use these stones as paperweights when I paint. Most remarkable thing about them is that they are totally unremarkable, just ordinary stones I picked from Beijing streets when I lived there. Oh, there is also one toy car I picked from my home street in London.

I have been taking an online course in Coursera lately called Live!: A History of Art for Artists, Animators and Gamers . It has been really inspiring, I have got a lot new ideas on how to approach making images. It has also re-awakened my interest in art history and art theories (which I often find a bit pretentious and boring). The assignment this week was to make a work that takes its inspiration from Velasquez's Las Meninas . In my version I maintained the composition and the relationships of the original painting but replaced the human (and canine) characters by flowers (what else 8-P). Las Meninas is one of my favorite paintings (it has been my laptop screen background for years) so I loved this exercise. I am definitely going to make other versions too, use bit more ink to create dark background and same values than in the original.  (Unfortunately I didn't have too much time to experiment this weekend, busy arranging my boyfriend's birthday party.)

I went to see the Richard Hamilton exhibition in Tate Modern yesterday.  As a 'flower painter' I was inspired to find about his 'scatological period' in the 70s. There was a whole room (called Shit & Flowers ) filled with work from this period: paintings of flowers, toilet paper, turds. I made my own version (desperately trying to expand or find other topics than flowers? :-D) Hmm, after all, flowers and excrement have an intimate connection. If I continue making these, the future versions should include bees and butterflies too - and the sun.