Life Drawing is scheduled to begin again at the Margate Adult Education Centre in January. Please click on this link to the Kent Adult Education website to book a place:
https://www.kentadulteducation.co.uk/search-results/?search=roy+eastland
(You can also see more on my youtube channel, ‘Roy Eastland – Drawing’.)
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Here’s a short video about a silverpoint drawing that I’ve killed. It’s a drawing I’ve been working on, off and on, for years. It’s been exhibited a few times, in its earlier incarnations, but it’s never become a settled drawing for me. I’ve re-worked it every time I’ve had it back from an exhibition. Its most recent outing was at the C24 Gallery in New York (where it stayed for longer than planned due to the coronavirus pandemic). Before that, it was in The Discerning Eye exhibition, at The Mall Galleries (chosen by Kwame Kwei-Arnah). It’s a drawing based on a small photograph taken in Margate in the 1930s at, what I suspect, was an Empire Day event. You can find more about this work in earlier posts.
There’s a part of me that wants to carry on working in this but I think it needs to go into the chest of drawers where all the dead drawings go. Maybe The Gods of Drawing are drawing me towards better things! I do hope so.
I’ve made a Youtube video about my work in Anima-Mundi Gallery’s online exhibtion: “Beyond Ourselves”. Please click on the link to see it and subscribe to my Youtube channel if you find these short videos interesting.
And here is a link to the Anima-Mundi Gallery exhibition site: https://www.animamundigallery.com/exhibition-beyond-ourselves
Please click on the link below to go to the exhibition.
https://www.animamundigallery.com/exhibition-beyond-ourselves
I’m very pleased to have work in Anima-Mundi Gallery’s online exhibition ‘Beyond Ourselves’. I’m very happy to have my work in such good company. If you watch the video you’ll see my drawings at about 3:04 minutes in. But there is lots of interesting work in this virtual show and so have a proper look.
Please click on the link below to go to the exhibition.
https://www.animamundigallery.com/exhibition-beyond-ourselves
I’ve been teaching Life Drawing again!
Life Drawing can only really be done in the physical presence of the person being drawn and so the coronavirus lockdown had put a temporary end to Life Drawing. However, I am now teaching Life Drawing again at Rochester UCA and at the Margate Adult Education Centre. Some things have had to change, to allow for ‘social distancing’, but it works and I’m very happy to be teaching Drawing again.
Here are some of the demonstration drawings that I’ve done during my recent sessions at the Margate Adult Education Centre.
If you’d like to come to the classes at Margate, you can book your place via the website (link below).
Here is a link to the Kent Adult Education website: https://www.kentadulteducation.co.uk/search-results/?search=roy+eastland
I’ve made some short videos about Drawing for my Youtube channel. Here is a link to it: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDyuki2a9YvGyyIyWXi4gtA
Thirty-three days’ work over three months and still no closer to an end of it. This is the sixteenth of my series of ‘Displaced Portraits’. As with the other silverpoint drawings in this series, this piece is based on a photograph found in a local second-hand shop. The writing on the back of the photograph dates this individual to 1942 and places her in Brünn (now called Brno) in what is now The Czech Republic. The handwriting on the back of the photograph is written in German. The German population of the town were expelled after the war. Drawing carries on…
This piece makes an appearance in my latest YouTube video which you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDyuki2a9YvGyyIyWXi4gtA
Life Drawing is coming back to the Life Room at the Margate Adult Education Centre, Hawley Square, after a break due to the COVID-19 lockdown. The essential characteristic of Life Drawing is that it is the act of drawing a physically present person, and so the coronavirus lockdown made Life Drawing an impossibility everywhere. Now, the Margate Adult Education Centre is reopening and Life Drawing can begin again in the wonderful Life Room at the Margate Adult Education Centre.
I like to think of this room as having good ghosts – the ghosts of all the moments of concentration and the moments of carefully noticing the presence of someone being still. The space has been used for Life Drawing classes, more or less continuously, since the building opened in the 1930s and it would have been a crying shame if COVID-19 had put an end to that story of Life Drawing taking place there.
The new Life Classes will be smaller than before, and I shall have to adapt my way of teaching to allow for safe distancing, but I’m looking forward to drawing and teaching there again. The courses will run on Wednesday mornings from 10:00am until 12:30pm. The two and a half hours is a good amount of time and the natural daylight in the room creates a lovely atmosphere in which to see and to draw.
My classes typically include a mix of short drawing exercises and demonstrations as well as longer drawings. The mix of students is very broad and includes practicing artists as well as people who have done very little drawing.
If you want to see what the room is like, you can find a couple of videos on my youtube channel and also you can find still images on this blog if you scroll back or click on the ‘Life Drawing’ category on this site. Please book your place as soon as you can if you’d like to come to these sessions. Hopefully see you at the Life Drawing!
Here is a link to the Kent Adult Education website: https://www.kentadulteducation.co.uk/search-results/?search=roy+eastland
Click here to see a video tour of the Life Room at Margate Adult Education Centre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SngCo3BKBn0
My silverpoint drawing, ‘Empire Day’, is on show again at the C24 Gallery in Chelsea, New York. It’s one of a number of drawings based on a 1930s photograph, taken in Margate, of a group of mostly young people in fancy dress. The occasion is probably an ‘Empire Day’ event. In it we see men dressed as women, white people ‘blacked-up’, people dressed as ‘funny foreigners’, ‘working class types’, clowns, a ‘gypsy’ fortune teller, and even a member of the Klu Klux Klan!
The drawing was selected for the ING Discerning Eye exhibition by Kwarme Kwei-Armah and then included in ‘The Seventh View’ exhibition at the C24 Gallery in New York. The exhibition continues until 24th September.
“Displaced Portrait No12 (mother and baby, Adolf-Hitler Str., Duren)”, has been selected for the Wells Art Contemporary 2020. This is one of an ongoing series of silverpoint drawings of people seen in photographs, taken in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, and which have found their way into my hands via a second-hand shop in Cliftonville, Margate (UK).
The photographs were found separately on numerous trips to this particular junk shop over the course of years. There is no way of knowing if any of these people ever knew each other or how their images made their way to Margate. The photograph on which this drawing is based has an address in Adolf-Hitler Str., Duren printed on the back.
I have previously shown this drawing as part of my ‘Margate Now’ art festival exhibition, “Displaced Portraits”, at Gordon House, Margate.
I’ve written more about this body of work on previous post and so please scroll down to find them. I’ve also made some short videos about these drawings which you can find on my Youtube channel: ‘Roy Eastland – Drawing’.
