2011 RCA Secret Postcards Revealed

Now that this year's RCA Secret has come to an end I can reveal my entries. This year I entered three drawings under my given name, Wayne Chisnall, and three painted and drawn-over Swirly Skull prints under my nickname, Chig.

To see all six postcards just go to my Oodles of Doodles blog.


And to find out the names of the artists behind any of this year's artwork you can still view this year's cards online.

Secrets Revealed (Oli Bennett Cards)

Well the Oli Bennett Secret Cards sale has now been and gone (although, if any of the cards didn’t sell on the night then I believe that they will still be available online till the 24th) so I can finally reveal which were the post cards that I created for the charity event.

This is one of them but if you would like to see the lot then please feel free to check out my Oodles of Doodles blog where I have just posted all four entries.

Sketchbook Tour Hits Texas This Week

On Saturday 12th March the Art House Co-op’s Sketchbook Project starts its tour proper as it leaves its base, the Brooklyn Art Library, and heads off to the Austin Museum of Art, Texas. And the following day it will be stopping off at the 29th St Ballroom at Spider House.

So if you happen to be in Austin, Texas this weekend feel free to pop along to either venue and see if you can find my sketchbook (here’s one of the pages from my contribution to the project) amongst the 10,000 other books that make up the tour. The next leg of the tour will be at the Space Gallery in Portland, Maine but I’ll tell you about that one when it comes up at the end of the month.

And if you would like to see what I did for the project but can’t make it all the way to the US to visit the tour then by all means check out my Oodles of Doodles blog where I’ve been uploading pages from my sketchbook along with my other drawings, sketches, doodles and scribbles.

March 12, 2011 / 12:00-6:00pm
Austin Museum of Art
823 Congress Ave
Austin, TX

March 13th, 2011 / 12:00-6:00pm
29th St Ballroom at Spider House
2906 Fruth St
Austin, TX

V&A 'Friday Late View' - Free Art

If anyone’s at a loose end this Friday then why not come and join me at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, London for the ‘Friday Late View’ (Two’s a Pair).
And if you fancy walking away with a free piece of artwork then come along and put your name down to play the Two’s a Pair, Memory Game. But get there early as they plan to allocate tickets to who ever wants to play and it’s a first come, first served deal. In this game of memory, plays will have to turn over and try and match two identical cards from a selection of over a hundred giant cards – all designed by “leading international artists” (not my words, I promise). And if you manage to match up a pair then you get to take home one of the cards home with you - for free, gratis, nothing, nowt…
When I was asked to produce a pair of cards for the event I decided to reproduce my Gimp doodle from my late night quick-fire drawings project/bed time ritual.

Oodles of Doodles

I’ve just started a series of quick-fire drawings. The initial idea was just to try and draw as fast as I could (without thinking more than a split second ahead) and see what would happen. Most of the doodles are of heads because it just seems to require less concentration to draw a face (something everyone is familiar with) than anything else. And with each of these sketches I’d always start the same way – by drawing an eye as fast as I could, then just seeing where that led. I always find it hard to judge time very accurately when I’m drawing but at each sitting of probably not much more than 20 minutes I’d knock out 10 to 15 of these speed doodles. Although it can be easy to get side-tacked and accidentally start concentrating on what you’re doing – in which case, the drawing looses its fluidity and starts to become a conventional sketch again.
I don’t know if it properly qualifies as automatic drawing but it is fun to step away from the usual high concentration drawing approach for a short while and try something a bit fast and furious. With this method accuracy may go out of the window but you can end up with something quite free or surprising. Some of these pieces work and some of them obviously don't - but either way it is fun to break with the normal practice for a while and see if anything new emerges.