Sunday 30 November 2008

Close, home safe and sound.







Just the other day my moley made the last leg of it's journey from New York to Northern Ireland.
What a lovely surprise!
Here is Brian's contribution, three stunning close studies in pastel. Brian, you really amaze me how you can get such wonderful textures with pastel! I'm afraid I didn't do your work justice here.
This little sketch book is such a joy, I can't stop looking at it, I keep finding new things to enjoy. Thank you all so much for sharing your creativity with me. I will post a slideshow of it as soon as I've worked out how to do this. In the meantime I had better get cracking on Gesa's and Davids moleys.
The dates for the exhibition in Belfast have now been confirmed, 23rd February 2009 to 23rd March 2009. I'l have more details for you all closer to the time.

4 comments:

daviddrawsandpaints said...

These are a delight, Brian, especially the last one with the white flower. They really do bear close scrutiny when you click on each image to see them in detail. Do you grow these plants on a sunny New York window cill?

vivien said...

these are lovely :>) can't wait to see the whole book

that's great about the exhibition confirmation :>) Lorraine

Lucky you to see them all together - my nieces live in Northern Ireland, I'll have to let them know

Brian McGurgan said...

Thanks Lorraine, David, and Vivien!

Regarding the texture that Lorraine commented on, it's helped greatly here by the rough surface of the paper I used. I glued small swatches of the paper onto the pages of the sketchbook to give myself something with more tooth to work with. The paper is called Vergata and is handmade by the Magnani mill in Italy. You can see the deckle on some of the edges in the photos Lorraine took. Despite the coarse texture, it is a soft and supple, and not abrasive in the way that gritty sanded papers are.

David, the plant is a much fussed-over dwarf orange tree that sits near my easel in front of an open window where it gets plenty of sunlight. I tell Kyoko that when I retire I'll spend my time drawing and puttering around caring for my dwarf orange trees. She's not in a great hurry to see this happen. The blossoms smell wonderful and the oranges look nice but are horribly bitter.

Lindsay said...

This is just beautiful. Really lovely use of subject and media on this paper.