CENSTA PARTY

Recoat Gallery Live Painting

Awards being handed out

Audience watching the beautiful film Chez Galip by Bobby Niven

Live Visuals by Florence To, with some revellers

Live Visuals by Florence To, with some revellers Detail

Live Visuals by Florence To, with some revellers, 2nd Image

CENSTA PARTY, SUBCLUB

These drawings are of the festive/birthday/book launch-ish party of the very exciting art(s) collective Central Station which is based in Glasgow and the rest of the world. It's online, it's a community. There's sh*tloads of exciting artists, film-makers, collectives, designers, galleries, initiatives, ideas...etc etc etc.

So me, I was commissioned to document this splendid happenng in my unique style with something alternative and new - my mobile phone.

Drawings were created live on my Nokia XpressMusic mobile phone. The actual drawing screen is c.7x4cm and I draw with the attached stylus (which is easy to lose. In a nightclub, perhaps I should paint it glow in the dark for easy retrieval).

Photos feature in the images entitles Florence To, the photos featuring samples of her visuals in the background. To put it mildly, she's a rather exciting art person/veejay/fashion designer/generally pretty cool chick. Keep an eye out for her.

Happy 15th Birthday Chemikal Underground!

The Phantom Band

Aidan Moffat with Bill Wells on Piano and Stevie Jones on Double Bass

Emma Pollock

The Unwinding Hours

Lord Cut Glass

Zoey Van Goey

Adrian Crowley

Warm Up, Lord Cut Glass

Warm Up, Adrian Crowley

Awesome, brilliant, great, fun. The Phantom Band were blistering. Stevie Jones was on fire with Bill Wells and Aidan Moffat. Emma Pollock was lovely, liking her new stuff. Zoey Van Goey were great and affable as expected. Lord Cut Glass kicked ass - the song Look After Your Wife with vocals by Kim Moore was exhilerating! Unwinding Hours were class, and looking forward to seeing them again at their first headline show - 5th of March, Stereo -Look it up. First up was Adrian Crowley who opened the show with a sweet set, but all in all 7 quality acts with only about 20-30 minutes each. So bear that in mind when you check out the pics.

Ten Years of ATP, Les Savy Fav and Drawing the Experience...

Is this a judgement or a joke? (Last picture)


Tim on 'keyboard'

Tim in 'repose'


The Drawing that Tim 'touched up'.

Tim in the crowd with the knocked yellow spotlight.

Drawing Les Savy Fav on my phone last night, got my phone hijacked by the main man Tim who proceeded to draw in his own 'savoury' details, then gave me a big bearded sweaty kiss - Took me ages to get his make up off!

After all that excitement decided to head through to Edinburgh for a top class party.

Natasha Khan and BFL

One of my favourite songs.

(I could draw Natasha for hours. She certainly provides a magical performance.)

Tonight had a lot going against it. It involved a scatty artist for a start, who had AMAZINGLY forgotten her pencils and had to improvise with what she had, though did manage to hastily purchase a bog-standard HB from the newsagents across the road. I also lost my bottle - my lucky one that holds the grit. But it was found again. (Seriously, I do have a lucky bottle of water!) I also spilt another bottle of water. Luckily, it wasn't the kind of gig where you could hear a pin drop. Lastly, the position of where I was, meant the sound was distorted. Luckily though, most songs sounded great, and for any that perturbed me at the odd sounds I was getting, I remembered the songs from what I'd listened to while working on some pictures earlier today. I'm going to attach an old picture I drew of BFL 2 years ago, and new pictures from tonight. A bad workman blames his tools. I hope I can always adapt to what I have at the time.

And now for the oldie picture. Note the big one has been somewhat 'accentuated'.

Performing 'Trophy' amidst others.

PodcArt's first big night!

Burning Codes

Well technically they did Oxjam, but this was PodcArt's first proper little music package. (Badges included.)

For those that don't know, PodcArt is a great little initiative and platform for musicans, photographers, and artists that hail from or are playing in this splendid country of ours. (That would be Scotland). A very passionate group of music and art oriented folks volunteer their time and efforts into this project and it's taking off like a human cannonball, so it is, and Hinterland are right behind them too. They have weekly podcasts, online blogs and a lovely looking little website where you can catch it all.

I'd known for a while it was going to be Robyn G Shiels, Yahweh and Burning Codes with special cameo appearance by Emma Curran (beautifully done!) However, me like a proper wally with no concept for time constraints, saw on the podcart website a groovey little piece of artwork naming a whole load of musicians, one who I'd drawn recently - podcArts musician of the week and rightly so, Panda Su! Thus I advertised on Facebook (that digital addiction) that a further four bands would be playing - 'Sure,' I thought, 'maybe they're just playing shorter sets?'

(Apologies to all and sundry who read and rightfully commented on my idiotic notion. %-) .)

Thankfully, they weren't all on last night and I had me some quality time to draw. Results below.

Robyn G Shiels

Robyn G Shiels, again.


Yahweh

DavidByrneHinterlandSkinnyMagTastic!

Upcoming Events:

Drawing David Byrne Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, 31st March

Hinterland Featured 'Documentary Drawer', Glasgow, 30th April-1st May

Solo Show 'Sketching the Scene'
Grand Multimedia Opening - Wednesday 29th April 6pm onwards
- Mono, 10 King St, Glasgow, G1 5QP. Tel: 0141 553 2400 myspace.com/monoglasgow

New News!!
April Skinny Magazine Featured Showcase - out next week!
Plus: http://thepopcop.blogspot.com/2009/03/picture-scene.html
And: http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/critique/Sketching-the-scene--Jenny.4415478.jp

Flashback - Cathures at the Kibble Monday 16 June

Cathures, at the Kibble Palace, Botanic Gardens

I had to choose between drawing Teenage Fanclub doing a more rocking set, or the gentle atmospheric experience of Cathures, singing choral works from Greig to traditional scottish psalms. My gut feeling went with the silvery setting of light and airy voices in a glass house during a slightly overcast sunset.

Hvad est du dog skjen (How lovely Thou art, yes lovely) from Fire Salmer (Four Psalms) Op. 74 featuring a male soloist was positively exuberant. If that's the right word. I wanted to say lovely, but obviously my vocab is lacking if that's all I can come up with. Exquisite springs to mind too. Katy the conductor has done a very nice job with her singers as the Kibble is a difficult venue to judge for the musicians themselves but back with the audience the accoustics are great.
It was poorly attended but those that did gave a hearty applaud (well as hearty as it can get in the hushed formal atmosphere of a classical choral concert!)

I very much appreciated my first experience of a concert in such a beautiful setting and hope to do more. Was even lucky enough to catch the last hour of the Teenage Fanclub's rocking set at the Oran Mor though couldn't draw. However one of the songs inspired me to draw something that I saw when I closed my eyes. Funnily enough the title of the song was apparently 'Every picture that I paint' from their first cd A Catholic Education. Intriguing.

More to develop on that I think...

Average White Band, ABC Glasgow

(Suffice to say it was a very funky night - Madaleine Pritchard really came into her own when she joined the AWB on stage to have a bit of a jam. For a 'wee wuman' she's got quite a set of lungs on her! She was very good with her support band before, but the group lacked the fluid comfort of familiarity and was not as 'together' as when she had her 'walk on' role later.

Poignant moments of the band themselves? They all played a blistering set, but I really enjoyed the voice of Klyde Jones - wow! That dude can sing. A lot of great classics. Incidently on my walk to the ABC there was a band playing 'Pick Up the Pieces' in Bloc, and they were great - I had to have a wee nip in to look incase it was the AWB doing a warm up sesh before their ABC gig!)

Of course, it's not the original line up which would be impossible. But I'm going along in hope to capture the essence of what they are today.

They play tonight at the ABC, doors open at 7pm. Support by Madaleine Pritchard.

Apparently Alan Gorrie (bass, lead vocals) and Onnie McIntyre (vocals,rythm guitar) are the only original members still playing with the group, the others being Klyde Jones (guitar, keyboard, lead vocals), Fred Vigdor (sax, keyboard, vocals) and Rocky Bryant on drums.
The other original members were Hamish Stuart, Malcolm 'Molly' Duncan, Roger Ball, Steve Ferrone, Elliot Lewis and Robbie MacIntosh (drummer) who tragically died of an overdose aged 24 at a celebrity party in Hollywood.

It's stated that the band formed in Glasgow, though a few of the members came from Dundee including Ball and Duncan who were studying at Duncan of Jordanstone. I wonder what they studied, and if it was as brilliant as some of the departments were when I was there. I shall try and find out tonight.

Their support Madaleine Pritchard is a Glasgow based soul singer. She's got a couple of nice tunes on Myspace.