Why I hate Tate Modern

Calder's wire sculpture of Medusa was considerably more elegant than I have drawn here

Be warned: I feel a rant coming on. Last Saturday we decided to go on an outing to see the Alexander Calder exhibition. I enjoy an art exhibition as much as the next person but I had to grit my teeth because it is on show at Tate Modern and I do not like this monstrous building. This was my second visit within a few weeks to this vast complex that had been the former Bankside Power Station.

We approached this thing that dominates the skyline by way of the Millennium Bridge, which I very much enjoy walking over, with St Paul's Cathedral behind us. To my dismay I could see an equally hideous extension rearing it's ugly head behind the main museum building that is going to be open to the public from June 2016. I always feel lost as soon as I penetrate the Turbine Hall and can't imagine why anyone thought installing escalators that miss out the first floor was a great idea. It's a bit like inhabiting an Escher painting, once you have arrived at the second floor you have to search for the stairs to traipse back down one floor and inevitably you end up walking past a gift shop. Tate Modern is not so much an art museum but merely a shopping mall with endless corridors, gift shops, cafés, restaurants (and some galleries) all devoted to flogging art in one way, shape or form.

So I was thoroughly grumpy by the time we arrived at floor three and finally entered the exhibition: Alexander Calder, performing sculpture. It occupies 11 rooms in total and my mood improved almost immediately once we were looking at the work we had gone there to see. While photography is banned (the room guards are serious about enforcing this rule) sketching is allowed and I and several other artists were happily engaged making visual notes of different pieces of work and here are some of mine.

It was difficult to draw this accurately because the piece kept changing position in the air current

The background on this piece had a number of holes in it that didn't seem to serve any purpose

Calder (1898-1976) used wire to make his sculptures at a time when it was more normal to carve from stone, bronze or wood. He had the advantage of having being raised in a family of artists with his father and grandfather both being sculptors and his mother a painter. He initially trained as a mechanical engineer and only began his art training in 1923 when he began to study at the Art Students League in New York.

His wire figures were like line drawings and his subjects included mythical figures and portraits of his friends including the tennis player Helen Wills, the cabaret star, Josephine Baker and his friends the artist Joan Miró and the composer Edgard Varèse. In 1926 Calder began to build his own miniature circus performers using wire and fabric and then he used these figures to stage live shows in front of small invited audiences who came to see the Cirque Calder.

Calder experimented with controlling the movements of his sculptures by using a small motor. These motors are too fragile to be used now so we have to admire these works as static pieces but there are a few films dotted around the exhibition of some of the works in motion. Since the motors were always at risk of breaking down Calder stopped using them and let his sculptures move on their own as they responded to air currents.

Marchel Duchamp coined the term 'mobiles' in 1931 to describe Calder's moving sculptures and it is a term we still use today to describe the toys that hang from babies' cots. I found the experience of watching these moving sculptures fascinating as they constantly changed position and perhaps that is a subtle legacy that Calder has left our babies while they stare upwards from their cots.

Alexander Calder: Performing Sculpture - on until 3 April 2016

Weeks two and three of linoprinting

Design based on a photo I took on a visit to Freightliners farm

We learned during Week 1 how to cut a design into a piece of lino and print it using an Albion press. During the next two weeks we were given the time to work on a bigger print which we designed and cut at home.

I had taken some photos of the animals on a sketching outing to Freightliners farm last year with the idea that I would develop them into something later on. I discarded the photos of the ducks, fun though they were. I also considered and rejected the cattle, hens and sheep. I settled on the goats. I love goats and I've tried to draw them in the past but they won't stop still and they're either butting each other or sticking their noses in my bag to see what's in there for them.

I chose to concentrate on just one goat and hoped there would be enough to keep the eye interested with the grass in the foreground and the fence posts in the background. I made the print above using a blend of two colours (blue and yellow making green) and I hadn't realised that such an easy technique could be so effective.

So, for Week 3 I was all fired up to develop this design further by printing it in two colours. We'd all been encouraged to cut a second piece of lino (the same size as the first one) and print a ghost print of the design on it as a guide for cutting. I happily cut away at the second piece of lino at home and assumed that I had cut enough away only to find that I needed to remove more lino when I got back to the class.

I wanted to print this in green and black but I felt that I had chosen a green that was too dark so it is difficult to see where it ends and the black begins. However, some people looked at it and liked the fact that it was dark. My teacher also pointed out that I had rolled too much ink onto my lino and you can see the indentations from the lino on the paper. Note to self: use less ink.

You can see there is too much black ink on this print

I think the final print is quite lively and has some kind of atmosphere but I think I've got a way to go before I can consider myself competent. Fortunately you can make lino prints at home without a press so I can practice my technique in the comfort of my own home while I build up my confidence.

I have two books on printmaking that I can recommend. They are: Colour Linocut Printing by Laura Boswell and Relief Printmaking: a manual of techniques by Colin Walklin.

Lino printing for beginners

The Albion Press we used to print our work

I have finally fulfilled one of my ambitions and that is to sign up for a printmaking course this year. I did just enough printing on my foundation course and at art college to whet my appetite but never pursued it when I left college so am now left with no printing skills to speak of.

I've joined a beginners lino printing course at East London Printmakers which is an artists run cooperative near London Fields and,even better, is walking distance from home. Our teacher had us printing our first colour, a yellow block, very quickly having introduced us to the mysteries of registering one colour over another with the use of masking tape.

Yellow printed, now to start cutting the lino

I used for my starting point a wee sketch that I did very quickly while walking on Hadrian's Wall last year. It's one of a series of quick sketches that I made on that walk that I keep revisiting. Our teacher did point out that you can never predict exactly how your print will finally look and how right he was. My original drawing was made in the remote Northumbrian countryside and my final print looked as though it was set in a fair ground! I thought this quite amusing.

Eight of us students managed to produce seven, three colour prints in the course of our first day which we were all quite impressed with. Next Wednesday we'll be working on a single colour design that we will have designed and cut at home during the week.

Trying to register the second colour over the first was not easy

The finished print drying on the rack

Ice skating at Canary Wharf

Here's my warm-up drawing

I belong to an informal sketching group called Art in the Park and we visited the ice rink at Canary Wharf for our first outing of 2016. This is a temporary structure and we sheltered in the pop-up pub on site called the Tasting Room.

It always takes me a while to settle into drawing so I began with a pencil view of the bar. Then I turned my attention to the outside and the skaters circling the rink. I admired their collective courage - their expertise ranged from terrified novice to fearlessly competent. I quite envied them and briefly considered joining in but decided I was just avoiding trying to sketch the skaters.

First attempt at skaters

Second attempt - thought it was getting a bit repetitive

My fellow artists

Then I thought it might be fun to try drawing without looking at the paper so I tried this with my fellow artists and liked the result. I found it difficult to only look at the subject so compromised by looking at the paper as little as possible. I really liked the way this was going so did one last drawing of a table and chairs using the same approach.

I was happy with the way this drawing turned out and if felt good to take a chance and risk losing control of the final product so while I may not have ventured onto the ice I did step out of my usual drawing 'comfort zone' and reaped some rewards in the process.

Life drawing at The Wallace Collection

Last week I was lucky enough to be invited to attend a life drawing workshop at The Wallace Collection. This museum is described on its website 'as a national museum in a historic London town house'. It is actually much more like a stately home that happens to be in a London square and dominates the surrounding town houses.

This workshop was jointly organised by SMart Network, which was established in 2000 to empower socially marginalised people through creative activities, and The Wallace Collection. The workshop lasted for five hours which sounds like a long time but disappeared in a flash partly because of the way the workshop was organised.

Silla, the Roman
dictator

Our tutor briefly explained how art students were traditionally trained during the 18th and 19th centuries. Then he proceeded to give us, the participants, a brief experience of what that may have been like. Initially he had us making sketches from printed handouts to enhance our hand-eye co-ordination and we concentrated on hands, feet and heads. Then we tackled a drawing of a bust of Silla the Roman dictator.

Perseus and Andromeda
by François Lemoyne

This was followed by an all too brief visit to the galleries upstairs where we continued with the hands, feet and heads theme and chose a detail from one of the paintings to try and copy. I chose Perseus and Andromeda by François Lemoyne and you can see a reproduction of it here.

I tend to avoid life drawing because I find it so difficult and the last time I went on a course was nearly three years ago (you can see those efforts here). After lunch our life model arrived and further avoidance was useless. We packed in several two minute poses followed by some five minute poses finishing up with two 25 minute poses. You'll be glad to know the model was given regular breaks during the afternoon which we all took advantage of too.

This was my first visit to The Wallace Collection and I can't imagine how I've managed to live in London for 36 years and never paid this fascinating museum a visit. I will certainly be returning soon so I can take my time to roam around the galleries and enjoy the many exhibits.

Two minute poses

Five minute poses

First 25 minute pose

Final 25 minute pose

Dalston Eastern Curve Garden

Sheltering from the rain under the Pavillion

We've been back home from Canada for a month now and since then I have largely taken a break from sketching.

Tuesday was my birthday in addition to it being the Battle of Britain Day. Usually I really enjoy my birthday but this year I didn't. I found the whole day to be emotional gruelling and a bit of a slog. This is because the next day, 16 September, was my mum's birthday and she died just over a year ago so I spent the day mourning her absence.

I decided not to spend the day moping around at home and went by bus to visit the Dalston Eastern Curve garden which I have visited before but not for a long time even though it was a rainy old day. This is a thriving community garden that has been formed from on the old Eastern Curve railway line and is a delightful spot to spend a few hours even when it's cold and wet.

I sheltered underneath the Pavillion which was designed and built by a French architectural collective called EXY2T in spring 2010 while I drank tea and ate cake. I took my usual collection of sketchbooks, water soluble pencils and ink pens with me and I chose to concentrate on the view above and I thought I was mostly concentrating on the foliage.

I realised while I was drawing the table that I had got the perspective wrong and this meant I couldn't include all of the table that I could actually see. What I didn't realise until I got home was that the table was dominating the entire composition. I would have preferred to have an equal balance of table and plants but I couldn't see that until I got away from the view. I feel quite critical of this sketch but am glad that I have restarted sketching and hope that my results are more successful when I visit Freightliner's farm in Islington with the Islington Art Society next week.

Postcards from Canada: 20 (the grand finale)

Today is our last full day in Canada so we chose to stay close to where we are staying on the University of British Columbia campus and walked over to the Museum of Anthropology. This is one of BC's most popular museums and houses many thousand artefacts from the First Nations and is built on ancestral land belonging to the First Nations.

The size of some of the totems that were on display were staggering and the weaving of the baskets and fabric were very intricate. In the grounds outside some examples of family houses have been built and they are also very impressive. It would have been nice to be able to go inside them but they were locked but you could get some sense of the interiors if you could find a knot in the wood and then squint through it.

We left when the museum was getting very busy and began walking back to our apartment. Then we saw a signpost to Wreck Beach and took off down the path to find it. We enjoyed a stunning walk through the forest and then came across the beach which is clothing-optional. We opted to keep our clothes on because it was quite chilly and there were very few people on the beach. If we'd visited yesterday when the temperature was a lot higher it might have been a different story.