INDIA: Travels and Drawings

art, Drawing in Public, exhibiton, Illustration, location drawing, location painting, Painting, reportage, Sketchnotes

Jagriti = Awareness

Yatra = Journey

jagritiyatrabanner copy

This charity runs a yearly train journey around India. It is inspired by the journey Gandhi took after returning from South Africa 100 years ago. It takes over 400 young Indian social entrepreneurs to meet role models and experience the diversity of their own country from the biggest cities to its most rural outposts. They examine the strengths, weaknesses and challenges their country faces, and explore and discuss avenues for positive social change through entrepreneurship. Working in partnership with Temujen Gunawardena I lived on the train will the Yatri’s and created a 10 metre long illustration capturing the content and experience of the journey. We plan to exhibit the piece in London in 2016 before returning it to the Jagriti Yatra team in Mumbai.

Working on the JY train…..

More images will follow but below is one detail of the 10 metre long drawing that Tem and I made to document the journey, life on the train and the sights we saw, the experiences we shared and the talks and ideas discussed along the way.

During the travels I naturally kept my own sketchbook journal. The first book I have bound from scratch and the orange cover of which is now scratched, scuffed, stained and filthy, the binding knocked out of all shape. And it is full of colour on the inside too. Here are some experiences from the book…….. It is so long I may have to put it up in instalments.

India Sketchbook: Episode 1:

The book begins:

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A book I newly bound.

Now a worn and frayed old friend.

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A portrait of myself by the lost and found artist Sharath Koona.

The start of a new journey.

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The opening ceremony for the Jagriti Yatra – Gauri Sharma Tripathi teaches us all how to do the Jagriti Yatra dance that we will perform almost every one of the next 15 days, often multiple times! I see an explosion of colour and fabrics. Over the travels, glancing out of train windows, I see the people of India pass as we whirl 8000km around the country from Mumbai to the South, to the East, North and then back down to Mumbai. I capture the impressions and moments of the people, I would say passers by, but being on the train, I was the passer by. They are waiting on platforms, heaving luggage and walking alongside the track.

In the city, Mumbai, on arrival one of my first thoughts, rushing through the city in a taxi, seeing the shops, the cards, bikes, buildings and millions of wares for sale:

Everything is leaning… there are no ‘right’ angles here.

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My traveling companion and partner in line and colour – Tem – experiencing jet-lag in the restaurant we ate our first dinner in. Oh delicious dosa with coconut yum. You are the best.

The Yatra begins. It involves talking, listening, learning, dancing, good food, exploration and glances out of train windows at fleeting figures on train platforms… This old lady’s dress was a magnetic magenta shade above the yellow dust and blue shadow.

More to come in…

Sketchbook-Journey-Part-II

India travels 2015-16.

More artwork from this and other projects on Instagram and Twitter @blancheellisart

Next sketchbook is under construction.

ArtRabbit – Frontpage

art, drawing, Exhibition, Illustration, Painting, press, Prints

Happily a friend just found my artwork featured on the front page of ArtRabbit,

My self portrait etching is front-centre below.

Nice to see my artwork getting around. I do always feel like it’s got a life of it’s own, especially when I release the image into the world, material or virtual.

Find out about the exhibition this Friday 18th December through the ArtRabbit article,

or the FB Event,

and come down – it’s going to be lovely

Miscelanea Art Club – Exhibition

art, Design, drawing, exhibiton, Illustration, Painting, philosophy, poetry, portrait, Prints, Quotes, sketchbook

Really looking forward to being part of this exhibition in Vauxhall at VGCC on September 19th – it’s going to be a real mix of artists and mediums and raising money to keep the community centre open.

My contribution will be a little cast of characters that have been emerging from my desk of late, combining the strange bodies of my imagination with equally strange advice that has jigsawed into place from cut-up text, books, newspapers and other once innocently printed and now mis-used words.

more info here :

https://www.facebook.com/events/1675668462652087/

‘Frail’ – Beginnings

art, drawing, Illustration, Painting, portrait

A Frail Series

The characters in this emerging series are perhaps the less abstract cousins of the ‘Mistakable Bodies’ series.

Mostly created in the same manner, with no prior vision, the pen reaching around on the page looking for shapes and finding familiar faces and shapes.

The words and the images sitting together to make a moment – a short story of an image.

Click to view larger images

So Not So Sure

Returned from Istanbul

art, drawing, Drawing in Public, Illustration, location drawing, location painting, metamorphosis, reportage

I am just returned for the 2nd time in 8 months from Istanbul. When I visited last year, feeling an amazing fondness and love for this city I didn’t expect to be back so soon but my illustration work found me out there just last week!

Of course I stayed on a few more days and had a wonderful time running round and drawing the sights (and buying crazy things like lemon salt!)

Here are some of the places and moments from the trip….

Babel Cafe

This restaurant we had an amazing dinner, playing backgammon and snap, drinking red wine, eating phenomenal food and dancing round and sharing music with the lovely owner as we left. My friend Tem and I returned on our last morning for the most delicious breakfast dish ‘menemen’.

Late for our flight I didn’t have time to visit the beautiful junk shop pictured on the corner but this view is a familiar one I will return to easily as every road we took in Istanbul seemed to lead us back to the crossroads of the incongruous Pizza Vegas and The Babel Restaurant.

After the aforementioned evening Tem and I found a hidden away restaurant with a hidden away garden and tortoises wandering around… feeling wobbly we did portraits of each other (mostly without looking at the page) that came out just as wobbly as we were. Sitting on the swing seat and taking up two tables in this rather up-market restaurant, we recovered the will to go out and find the city.

Sultanahmet

Last time I kept trying to visit the blue mosque, or Sultanahmet, during prayer times and didn’t see it. On this trip timing was better and I got to see inside. I had imagined it being bright turquoise and almost brashly vibrant, but actually the space has a very pale, etherial quality, accented by the blue and turquoise tiles and paint, but also by reds in the windows of the domes.

In contrast to the vast airy chamber surrounding them the crowd milled on a red carpet, every woman in a headscarf of course, even the westerners, and many men wearing the long cloth skirts they hand out as you enter to cover anyone in shorts. The hustle and bustle of the jostling people in their many colours was for me, an integral part of the view. I always find myself watching the watchers.

Elections and Princes Islands

On the eve of the Turkish election, the most important in 30 years which had everyone holding their breath as the Kurds waited to see if they could get enough percentage for representation, we took a trip to one of the Princes Islands. This is the view, leaving Istanbul on the ferry.

We walked to the top of the island and saw a wild horse, and sat, and sang, and looked at the sea. We returned to feast on meze at the house of our turkish friend and to celebrate the outcome of the election.

When we got on the boat to return ‘home’ to Istanbul and our hostel it was full of people dancing and celebrating and playing music. The atmosphere was incredible. The celebrations lasted the whole time we were there….. huge crowds in the street.

Istanbul – i’ll miss you and your colours, crowds and junk shops, steep streets and fine food, and fine people – I’ll be back again. Soon I hope.

Returned – Renewed

One last memory for which I haven’t a picture – Waseem in the Juice shop – thank you for your sanctuary and sharing in our music in a moment that was needed. And for the token, hanging in my window.

Group Exhibition at Primrose Hill Community Centre – Faces On The Hill

art, drawing, Exhibition, Illustration, portrait, press

The exhibition at Primrose Hill Community centre is coming up on Sunday 31st of May.

There will be lots of drawings by locals of locals and an auction of the works for which donations will go to keeping the local library open.

Do come down and have a look – it’s been a great experience meeting all sorts of local people and getting to know them while drawing them. Running over to people’s houses and workplaces in my lunch hour to make sketches and sitting over tea and pencil shavings in pubs and cafes.

Here’s a few of the drawings that will be in the auction in Sunday……

Sadly I can’t make the exhibition but i’m looking forward to the book which may be published of all the drawings in many artists different styles…..

Mistakable Bodies – Type

art, drawing, metamorphosis, sketchbook

Bodies are constantly emerging into the ‘Mistakable Bodies‘ series…

Here are two that grew into my sketchbook yesterday.

My sketchbook does feel like a living thing. It’s as though the life of the characters that get drawn into it, from my travels and my mind, seeps through the pages and emerges again, further on, in twists and blooms of colour that have a life of their own.

These are all sketchbook versions but I have just begun making large drawings of new bodies so, more Mistakeable Bodies to come…

Portraits for ‘Faces on The Hill’

art, Camden, drawing, Exhibition, Illustration, Painting, portrait, press

I’ve just become part of a lovely little project in Primrose Hill where people in the community are drawing and photographing each other. There will be an exhibition at the community centre and a book of images and interviews published and called…

‘Faces on The Hill’.

It’s such a lovely idea and I’ve just finished my first portrait which is of the lovely Rachel Poulton who took my photograph.

The exhibition is on May 31st I have on my list to draw, a local lawyer, an art curator and a retired ballet dancer amongst others so I think this is going to be a really fun project !

more to come……

2015 Sketchbook – Drawing In Public – Drawing Public Writing

art, drawing, Drawing in Public, Drawing in Public, Illustration, location drawing, London Underground, metamorphosis, reportage, sketchbook, Sketchnotes, Underground Portraits

well – it’s been a short while but i’ve made enough sketches that i thought i’d set them out them by theme for a change…

The largest collection is of Travel Portraits, mostly from the London Underground and Overground. So I’ll start with just a few of those. Trying a new – non-gallery format – let me know if you like it better !

Overground - Watch Your Children - BlancheEllis.wordpress.com

I think this is my favourite TFL sketch so far.

It captures hundreds of identical moments I see watching people every day – the commuter all bundled up for winter and tucked into a sensationalist free paper whose headline blares absurdly from the crinkled front page.

The two guys from this page look like they’re from totally different centuries.

Imagined journey –

Lady on the late train back to Brockley from London Bridge, fellow on a train from Hove to London.

Underground Portrait - New Look - BlancheEllis.wordpress.com

Newspaper headlines, brands and names of supermarkets on shopping bags are written all over public space, part of the markings of our world.

Sometimes they seem to make a visual point, I can’t always work out what it is, and don’t want to pin it down, but I like to include these things where they strike me as interesting or often, as amusing or absurd in some way.

A friend also sent me this excellent cartoon about drawing in public – it’s from New York.

Some other posts coming up will be on exhibitions I’ve been to (Shiele/Turner)…

drawings of live music….

and a new series that has been emerging in this sketchbook…

‘mistakable bodies’

Animation Portrait

art, Painting, portrait

I have just discovered how to do these mini animations. I am fascinated with the process of painting and the plasticity of the paint, I love to flick back and forth from my progress photos watching the figure approach and melt away.

This is a self portrait that I left unfinished, you can see I wiped the eyes away in the morning. They didn’t feel right. But I became quite fond of the unfinished piece. If I leave a piece for too long it grows on me like a person and I find it hard to touch them as they have their own presence. People, I never meant to create, sit in my room and I don’t quite feel I have the right to change them anymore.

Blanche Ellis

Multidisciplinary Artist

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