Letters

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MY ART STORY

My art story is possibly not very exciting, but it feels special to me therefore I wanted to share it with you.

I am a nurse by profession and an amateur artist. During the fi rst lockdown, encouraged by my friend, I started practicing yoga. I have not stopped since. My love for art and yoga have joined in my yoga_and_art series of inspirational watercolours and ink sketches. I later chose to do a series of oil paintings too.

I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that fi gurative realism could be something that I want to do or defi nitely keep exploring at this stage of my artistic journey. Agnes Graja, via email

A JOINT PLEASURE My wife and I both enjoyed the recent Channel 4 show Drawers Off hosted by Jenny Eclair. Having both dabbled in watercolour and pencil drawing in the past we became hooked. There were some good artists and some that didn’t seem to have a clue but enjoyed it all the same. This spurred us on to have a go again, which led us to your magazine. We have found this a joint pleasure in these uncertain times. Thanks. Paul Perry, Halesowen

WHAT NEXT? At the start of 2020, I decided that I needed to improve my drawing and set myself the challenge of doing one sketch a day, every day for a year. When lockdown happened, it helped me no end to have something to focus on. I joined people on Twitter to post a #2020dailydrawing every day.

I started on 1 January with little sketches in my sketchbook, varying from household items and ornaments to birds, fl owers, old

Letters

That’s very exciting news, Agnes, you shouldn’t feel otherwise. Everyone’s artistic journey is equally important, whether you’ve found your audience yet or not. Making those creative decisions and pursuing what you love is what this is all about.

houses, holidays... Whatever I could think of. Often the biggest challenge was deciding what to draw.

However, I did complete my fi nal daily drawing on 31 December. I now have about six or seven sketchbooks full of 366 sketches and paintings. The question now is what do I do with them? Hilary Needham, via email

We’ve been thinking about just this same quandary recently, Hilary. Hopefully Rob Dudley’s Painting from Memory feature on page 58 might encourage you to turn them into fi nal works. Sky Arts' Portrait Artist of the Year Curtis Holder also has great advice on developing sketches on page 62.

A BIT OF A SCREW UP Reading the article on Dame Laura Knight [Issue 428], I fi nd I can throw a different light on Katie McCabe’s interpretation of Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring. She says the painting “… shows the worker looking unbothered as the sparks from the grinding metal parts throw light onto her face. Dotted in the background… women… scrubbing, toiling, fi xing machinery…”

I think Ruby Loftus is cutting a screw thread on a lathe. The light comes from the lamp over the lathe. There will be no sparks; you can see the cutting fl uid splashing as it keeps the job cool and lubricated. The lathe would be on auto feed, to match the revs to the feed, for the thread pitch. This is why, for a very short time, her hands are still. The saddle would be set to stop feeding at the end of the thread.

As for the women in the background, they are clearly hand-fi nishing parts, presumably for Bofors AA guns. My mother would have been familiar with this type of work, as she spent part of the Second World War screw-cutting Typhoon rocket casings. Barbara Payne, via email

ENGAGING ORCHIDS Inspired by Simon Williams’ masterclass [Issue 428], I borrowed an orchid from a friend’s collection and got painting. I’ve been painting or drawing every day of February as part of my “lockdown challenge” and had intended to pack my materials away for a while, but Simon’s masterclass was something that I just had to engage with.

I enjoy Artists & Illustrators so much, there’s always something that gets my creative juices going. Carol Kelly, via email

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