Hot off the press! Or rather, the iPad…

Here’s the digital painting to mark the first month of this new year. It features fellow MFA peer Екатерина Бурякова, who has blonde hair in real life; but I couldn’t help myself and had to make the orange locks fantasy. I’m very grateful to have met this talented artist from Moscow, Russia. As you probably know, we collaborated on creating the performance video for my MFA interim show presentation. While getting to know this multifaceted creator, I am saddened to learn that she also at times struggles with body issues – like so many of us do. So I truly hope that this digital painting will be helpful in some small way, to enable her to see more of her own unapologetic beauty through my eyes.

And speaking of beauty, I know that most of you wonderful people who are a part of this community, have been very generous in contributing your own submissions for this nude digital painting project. And since I seem to have a submission lined up for March, and not the month of February – I am calling on all of you who are a part of this community and have still not made a submission, to please do so if you’d like to. Send me your nudes!

Hi pals!

It was my mommas birthday this month, so I custom painted two wooden boxes for her as a gift. These are scans of the lids, Lucky being the portrait on the bigger box and Tweety as a portrait for the smaller box. These boxes fit into each other, and I used a special primer to coat the surface, gouache paints, and PVA glue as the sealant (since gouache can be reactivated with water even once it dries). 

I’m glad to have this Patreon page as a platform to highlight all the miscellaneous art projects, which don’t necessarily fit into my broader current Fine Art practice. Hope you like! Would you want to see a video tutorial for this project? I have another pet portrait subject in mind…

🐕 🐤

Hi everyone!

Just as promised, you get to be the first few people to see my performance video ТРЭШ!!! made in collaboration with fellow MFA artist Екатерина Бурякова, for the annual MFA interim show… I mean I’ve been going on about this exhibition for almost the entire month now, so I’ll just let you check out the description box on YouTube for all the necessary information and links.

And, as a treat – you get to be one of the first few people to see this other video that I made for the show as well. It’s LegenDAIRY!

Let me know what you think…

Dear friends,

here’s an exclusive look at the trailer for a performance video created by myself and fellow MFA artist Екатерина Бурякова, which will be released publicly tomorrow. It features audio recording of chickens, ducks, and other song birds, who I encountered while traveling through County Westmeath at the end of December.

Our MFA interim show E-Quadrant is still underway of course, with my work being shown as part of next weeks second and final instalment of the exhibition. You can see this virtual show via Catalyst Arts and we are putting out a lot of content on to the official BSoA, UU MFA IG account as well. With livestreams of all the performances happening on Thursday 21st and Friday 22nd January – two of which will be my own, so please tune in! We also made a ZINE publication to accompany this exhibition, and there are studio interview videos representing the behind the scenes of each participants art practice.

I would also like to extend my gratitude to all of you who participated in my private tour of the first weeks instalment of the show. And I know that most of you will tune in to a tour again this coming week, on Thursday evening. For anyone who hasn’t made any plans yet though, just message me and I will put you on the list and forward you a link the day before.

See you soon!

Hi folks!

As you might know from the recent invitation, The Drawing Box exhibition went live today! You can check out the above video to see all the works, or peruse them at your own leisure via this link. There’s so many great drawings to see, and they’re all looking for new homes as well. So please share the love and show your friends and family all these beautiful works, from more than 60 international artists.

Did you find the pages with my Lucky drawings by the way?

Hi everyone!

I previously showed you the five special Lucky drawings I got to make as a contribution for The Drawing Box project, and well they’re on their way to the first stop of the worldwide tour. This exhibition will be completely digital, so check out the Galway Arts Center Facebook page where it will take place. I’d love to hear what you think of the show afterwards by the way!

Dear friends,

as part of the final year student body of Ulster University’s MFA program, we present to you a digital and online collaborative project with Catalyst Arts for the annual interim exhibition. The exhibition will take place over two weeks, with artists split into two groups; E-Quadrant 1 and E-Quadrant 2. The exhibition will be physically installed in the MFA studio in Belfast School of Art, Ulster University – with virtual tours available to book on the Thursday and Friday of each week.

These tours will be carried out by the student artists, where visitors can virtually experience the gallery space through a live stream, receiving a unique insight to the installed works and a first hand walkthrough developed by the artists themselves.

Tours can be booked through the E-Quadrant web page here with Eventbrite, where a private link will be made available to attendees before the tour begins.

I am also doing the MFA Instagram account takeover during this period, so you can see plenty of behind the scenes footage of us all being very professional artists aka goofballs. We are very excited for the show, and hope that you’re able to engage with it in some way or other, from the comfort of your home!

Happy New Year! 🐂

To initiate the next twelve months in the spirit of the majestic Ox, I present to you five special A5 sized drawings that I was recently asked to complete for The Drawing Box project:

As an international platform for the Arts, this project was reignited in March 2020 by artist Diane Henshaw whilst on furlough from her usual job as Arts Officer for Fermanagh & Omagh District Council. The Drawing Box social media Facebook group was originally established in Winter 2012 with founding members John Crabtree, Andrew Crane & Patil Rajendra by Diane Henshaw – the idea of the group was to link artists within a national and international context who had an interest in contemporary drawing and global networking; this went on to manifest itself in the form of a major small works unframed and unfunded touring exhibition & online network for members – eventually the original drawing box expo went to archive and was gifted post international tour to The National Irish Visual Arts Library in Dublin.

The idea of changing the ethos of the Drawing Box and creating a private online platform for its members re-kindled after 8 years of inactivity. Diane Henshaw decided to re-initiate the activities of the original and growing members group by inviting 51 selected and culturally diverse members to post pre-recorded studio video clips and stills of art work with some online engagement associated with their creative practice during lockdown. During lockdown the Arts Council of Northern Ireland awarded Diane some emergency C19 arts funding to administrate the studio visits for the group, curate our touring shows to both Mumbai in 2021 and this major tour of international arts. The programming over this year has helped to give artists hope and some unique and unusual opportunities to be profiled internationally through the networks created as well as through programming being developed – e.g. meet the artist online studio visits and exhibitions.

Creating art for arts sake, for sanity during these days of isolation and thus connecting artists – opens up new ways for creative engagement discussions, hosted through Zoom, art critique and other modes through which contextual practice can thrive. A key focus of the events and programming has been to visually nurture members and their interests by sharing information, by creating connections, and in general being there for each other. Thus, after an initial launch exhibition at Modeenagh Studio, Fermanagh in December 2020, these A5 scale drawings made during the pandemic (5 by each participating artist) will go on to be exhibited in the Galway Arts Centre for a weeks pop up in January 2021. You can catch this show live as it goes on its global tour during 2021-22 featuring 300 drawings in all media by artists from the collective made before and during the pandemic.

Tour post Galway continues to:

February – Cyprus

April – Athens, Greece

May – Germany

June – New Delhi, India

July – Lithuania

August – New Mexico

October –  Australia

November – Ghent, Belgium

December – Gronegan, Nètherlands

January 2022 – Argyl, Scotland

There are many negative impacts the pandemic visited upon the world, and the art world specifically. The generosity of spirit and the courage to reach across dictatorship of differences, the initiative of each of our host artists and the host venues in some way define our ways out of the paralysis the Covid 19 visited upon us. Drawing Box group feels privileged to connect with their take on values.

This text is an edited version of the press release by Diane Henshaw, and after attending the initial launch exhibition at her home studio in Fermanagh I knew that some awkward Lucky drawings would fit in best among the rest of the works. There can never be too many dogs, and if my memory serves me right – there were no dog drawings among all of the art displayed! Hence, I desperately needed to rectify this situation. Though, my original pieces are not as red toned as pictured, so I hope that you get to see these pieces in their true quality in real life perhaps. Let me know if it’ll be coming to anywhere near you in the world! 🐕

Happy New Years Eve friends! 🐀

As we’re about to say goodbye to the year of the metal/golden rat, please welcome the last Procreate piece for 2020! Which this time I’d actually call more of a digital drawing rather than a digital painting. And it marks our six month anniversary on this platform, so I think that it’s time to meet the parents… If you dare show them all this nudity and art, and reveal what you’re really up to “on the internet”.

Anyhow, the reason that this piece turned out to be more of a drawing is mostly due to the source photographs quality. However damn striking and beautiful and lush is its subject – my friend Ingrida – the image was very darkly lit, and featured a lot of fabric which, being a professional artist, I dare claim to be my arch nemesis. Not because of how difficult it is to portray – it is actually quite the contrary I believe. Drawing fabric is a very methodical skill and I have had enough experience with it during my art college days in the drawing room. I just find it quite boring to do, and the result does not garner the amount of time it usually takes. It’s so monotonous, and not worth it in my opinion! Plus, ya’ll should know I really detest straight lines and angles in art, they are far far far from my preference of things to portray. This is why you’ll rarely ever see me do cityscapes, any kind of architecture, interiors, man made objects, etc. I prefer organic subject matter – which mostly contains curved lines, natural angles, and sporadic surfaces. Thus, my interest in portraying the flesh of the human body for this series of exclusive Procreate pieces. The low amount of light in the source photograph for this piece also meant that it was difficult to really see a broad spectrum of flesh tones. So I decided to create a somewhat monochromatic piece, using only the HB Pencil Sketching tool in a blue colour. The fleshy peach background providing a nice contrast.

As no smudge or blend tool was once again used for this artwork, it took quite some time to do so even though I do have a roughly finished piece with the missing fabric pieces and an expanded background – I decided I really preferred this version. And my fellow art college survivors might agree, that it does make the piece look more Fine Art in the end. And less obvious, as executing it exactly in the same manner that the source photograph appears, would be rather predictable. So I hope that you enjoy this work, and perhaps I can round up a special post for our one year anniversary featuring all the alternate versions of the monthly Procreate pieces (there are usually a couple per digital artwork).

Thank you so very much to Ingrida for her modelling talent, and Daria for her persistant photographer skills. I really appreciate it girls! And I hope that you all have a lovely NYE. 🐁

Hi dear friends!

Following on from my GIANT DRAWING FOLDER tour, here is the third instalment of my smaller sketchbooks. These accompanied the main body of work created during my final third year of the drawing elective at CIT CCAD. Which really was just an excuse to draw Lucky dog all the time! 🐕