This evening we went first to Joanna Hardy’s book launch ‘Collect: Contemporary Jewellery’. Then to the opening of the Gavin Turk show. Good fun. It was too late to go to Yayoi Kusama at Victoria Miro – we’ll keep that by as a treat in store. We ate chicken Teriyaki bento boxes ravenously and then drove home through a blizzard of illuminated snowflakes. I just did this iPhone painting, on the subject of speech and silence.
Speak!
I can hear my husband making pancakes for breakfast downstairs. Thump goes the maple syrup on the kitchen table. Me? I’m lying in bed drawing on my iPhone, Lemon the cat gently snoring beside me. I’m hungry… Here’s the drawing: a lady in a maternity dress.
Maternity Dress
This turned out like a face in a comic book – superhero style. With nice zingy neon colours. Sketched in charcoal, photographed, and coloured on my iPhone.
heroic neon
I’m coming up to the end of term at my Atelier school. At that point I will have graduated from my self-designed art school and, though I will always be learning, I will consider myself a fully fledged artist. I’m marking the moment by getting a bunch of pictures framed for the first time, to see what they really look like.
I made this small iPhone painting during a long and fairly arduous journey this week on South West Trains. The image is a bit European, as I am, and acted like a comforter – a kindly aunt or presiding angel for my slightly grim journey.
lady on a train
I’m missing painting on my iPhone. I love the translucency of it, and how every mark can be done and redone at super-speed, and how you can add layer over layer…of happy (or unhappy) accidents. It’s so relaxed. This is somebody wearing a chiffon veil, with that very particular vintage colour of salmon pink lipstick. Maybe they’re just about to put on their driving gloves and go for a spin in the charabanc – who knows. They seem to be very stylish and of indeterminate sex. Painted on my iPhone of course.
A chiffon veil over the face
I’ve been sick. iPhone painting is perfect when propped on cushions in bed. No paint, no mess, very speedy. Here is a quick sketch done on the Brushes app of a man in a sort of ‘funnel neck’ jacket.
digital pencil sketch
Last night we saw Corinne Bailey Rae at the Royal Festival Hall. What a great gig! I came back and drew this on the Text Draw app on my iPhone. It’s entirely made of text in different fonts and font sizes and colours and opacity, and the text reads Turn It Up.
Turn It Up
My husband was cooking vegetable curry, from a recipe by Madhur Jaffrey. We both worked with her in India a while back.
I sat at the kitchen table and as he was cooking I made this doodle on my iPhone.
(First using the Text Draw App, painting with the words Rocks and Lichens – and then the Brushes App).
The curry turned out really wonderful – and I’m happy with the sketch too.
Face of a Boy
This time of year in London is amazing – it’s the festival of everything – fashion, design, art, life!
I came back from a gallery opening last night and painted this on my iPhone.
Party
This is like a companion piece to the last strange face I painted on my iPhone (Man with a Scarf).
I’m using hazy brushes, which you can use a bit like oil paint; painting over a mistake with more paint rather than using ‘edit undo.’
This one is called Hunter but I’m not sure if it’s a human or what kind of creature it is. There’s definitely a back-woods look to the eyes and the hair has gone native, it’s grassy. I think of it as both hunter and prey, a creature who has strayed way to far into the wild side.
Hunter
When you’re overexcited and cannot sleep – what do you do? Paint an exotic face framed with a hat made of foliage, naturally. At least, that’s what I do. I painted it on my iPhone. It made me think of someone in the carnival at Rio, hence the name. It could possibly be a transvestite.
Carnaval
At last, after almost a week, I’ve had time to paint again. Back to my iPhone where I mostly paint what comes from my imagination, rather than from life. It’s restorative, who knows why, to paint like this.
Lime flower tea cleans furry arteries. It’s an amazingly friendly thing to do. Visually, an avenue of Limes somehow makes one think the world is going to be alright. Everything in order, but gently so.
And symbolically, I think of S. T. Coleridge. ‘This Lime Tree Bower My Prison” which he wrote to Charles Lamb.
Avenue of Limes - everything in order
Can’t stop painting flowering trees.
In homage to the ornamental blossom trees around London – and to the great British gardeners and plantsmen and plant hunters over the centuries, who brought them back from far flung corners of the earth.
Exotic blossom trees of London
There are days when I become focused on certain aspects of faces – the pale thin line at the top of the lip, or the way hairlines recede. Most recently it’s the curve of the forehead that fascinates me.
Here is a very rounded forehead which seems so feminine; a 60′s look with hair pulled back wearing a high turban. As a child I remember my mother wearing turbans like this, particularly on a holiday with Lee Radziwill and her family (and Truman Capote, amazingly) in Portugal. I think all the ladies wore them. I think they still used that lovely cake mascara that came in a pale blue case. The text says ‘Up Up and Away’.
Turban
The terms used on Bloomberg Commodities and Futures pages are fascinating, even if you don’t really understand what they mean.
Lean Hog and Lumber, Cotton No.2, and Coffee ‘C’ – it sounds like surreal poetry to me.
This painting is about how we trade the natural world. Painted on my iPhone Brushes app.
Futures: Lean Hogs & Lumber
