Kayleigh Wallace: skeleton works

....drawn, printed and embroidered works on paper doilies, utilising collage, and the human skeleton as subject matter

spine and spine

Freehand cover design

My drawing book Freehand seems to have different covers on different continents. Which one's best I wonder. 

UK edition

US edition

Freehand and Just Add Watercolour - Helen Birch

UPDATED 10 Feb 2017

Here are some different language video reviews of my drawing book 'Freehand'....

and of my painting book - Just add Watercolour

at 1.26 through to 2.36

and both at once...

Jorge Pineda: an exhibition (Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno)

The modern art gallery in Valencia (Spain) - Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno has recently exhibited the work of Jorge Pineda (translation), an artist from the Dominican Republic.

The exhibition: After all, tomorrow is another day is presented in various formats, including drawing, painting, sculpture, and installation. Drawing seemed to pervade, to assert its presence in and among these other formats, to such an extent that I saw it as primarily a drawing based show.

The artist  invited the audience to be part of the artwork. Here a table is laid out with a golden coated chalk skeleton. We are invited to draw on the walls with the bones, thus disturbing them, displacing them, creating something new: life from death?

photo: HB

corrugated cardboard structure

Jorge Pineda's work features in the contemporary Caribbean art blog Uprising news too.

biro drawing

A video of the show (it's better with the sound turned off!)

Outsider Art

The English high school system requires its 14/15yr old pupils to experience a 'work placement' for one week. 

It's difficult to place some individuals - there just aren't enough 'jobs' out there for them to do - or, their challenging behaviour / lack of maturity means that schools don't want to risk placing them outside of a school's domain.

Some schools seem to have developed a way around the problem - to use open days or taster sessions in art colleges to place these students. By doing so they meet their set of criteria.

My colleague and I had no idea that the sessions we were going to provide for the day were for individuals who had absolutely no interest in applying for art college, and pretty much dismissed much of what we tried to win them around with.

A really, really tough art school day was had!

A fortnight later, and with a little time to reflect, I've decided to upload some of their drawings.

What strikes me about them is how naive, or outsider art like they seem. 

They reminded me of an exhibition at the Whitworth Art Gallery in 2010: 'Intuition' - works from the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection.

All of these portraits were drawn as if observed directly in front of our model Frank - not so; the work placement students were working on easels in a semi-circle around the subject - some could only see the model in profile - however the drawings define how a portrait 'must' look. 

In another exercise we added our 2nd model Lesley. 

For a short time, the group's concentrated attempts captured this much more complex scenario.
  

Excellent further reading: Raw Creation - Outsider Art and Beyond by John Maizels.

FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology): Liverpool

Liverpool was today's destination - for various exhibition visits, including  FACT's 'The Art of Pop Video' 

FACT has its own young people's programme called Freehand that runs creative art, digital media and film projects for 13 to 19 year olds.

How delighted was I to see the group sharing the same title as my new book 'Freehand'? Very.

Available on Amazon

The members of Freehand have curated and produced the art space, in the foyer of the FACT building. It supports the main exhibition there. Included were many drawing based ideas: 

pixel based font sticker + wall collage

white on black wall names, phrases, ideas

table surface drawing / collage

turntable drawings