Tag Archives: art

Nancy Farmer 2019 Swimming calendar

2019 calendars are here!

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Nancy Farmer 2019 Swimming calendar

Nancy Farmer 2019 Swimming calendar

“Getting into Cold Water”
a calendar for 2019 with illustrations by Nancy Farmer

I wanted to let you know that I have 2019 calendars for sale. In truth I’ve been waiting patiently for a while to tell you this, so you may have seen that I have snuck them up in my etsy shop some while ago… But I always think that people don’t want to be reminded that the year is ending too early. So I hope you’ve had a good year so far, and there is still plenty of it to go. The water is getting colder though, at least where I live, so you may appreciate a glimpse of the new, appropriately named calendar.
you can buy them here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/waterdrawnart
As usual it features 12 new drawings which I’ve done over the course of the past year, with appropriate captions of course. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed drawing the pictures!

2019 Calendar - a few pages

2019 Calendar – a few pages

Swim Serpentine, 22nd September 2018

Swim Serpentine, 22nd September, 2018

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…or, how to draw an elephant in the room without making a fuss.

It loomed: vastly, hugely, enormously: The 20 metre high,   monster sculpture of 7000+ barrels, painted bright pink, red and blue, (in case a 20 metre high floating sculpture wasn’t already sufficiently visible already in the middle of the Serpentine). The work of artist Christo was precisely what I had not come here to depict.

The Swim Serpentine event was a lovely bunch of swimmers – nearly as many as the barrels – swimming their way around the Serpentine in Hyde Park, London, supported by a very hard working group of organizers, volunteers, lifeguards… that is what I had come to draw. The swimmers are centre stage but if you peer behind them you can see the yellow T-shirted lifeguards on hand to assist wobbly swimmers getting out. They were much appreciated.

And I have to hand it to the sculpture, it marks this event as this location, in this year. It drizzled for the afternoon so I battled the sculpture with a big yellow imaginary umbrella. I think the umbrella won. Useful things, umbrellas, especially imaginary ones.

(prints available from my etsy shop: www.waterdrawnart.etsy.com)

Swim Serpentine, 22nd September 2018

Swim Serpentine, 22nd September 2018

Swim Serpentine, detail of lifeguards

Swim Serpentine, detail of lifeguards

Swim Serpentine - details of swimmers starting and finishing

Swim Serpentine – details of swimmers starting and finishing

Clevedon Marine Lake on a very high tide

First check your Tide Tables…

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Last week there was a high spring tide. We would have known, had we actually looked  in the tide tables that we both have, which might have been sensible especially with Lucy’s balance just nearly restored. But we hadn’t, and for a while we swam in a hypothetical Clevedon Marine lake, or rather, we swam a couple of feet above the lake, until normality was restored.

NEW: If you like my drawings, you might like to know I’ve just put next year’s calendars up in my Etsy shop – more on this in the next post….

Clevedon Marine Lake on a very high tide

Clevedon Marine Lake on a very high tide

Exhibition, films & talks at Clevedon, 4th – 14th October 2014

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“Swimming Under the Sky”, Curzon Cinema, Clevedon

14th October – an evening of talks and films hosted by Ella Foote
4th to 14th October – exhibition of paintings by Nancy Farmer

I’m delighted to tell you that I’m taking part in a mini swimming & arts event at the Curzon Cinema, Clevedon. The main event will be on Sunday 14th, but my swimming paintings will be in the cinema from 4th October and you can see them during the opening hours of the cinema.

To book tickets: https://www.curzon.org.uk/event/42459
(tickets only necessary for the event on the14th, they are not required to see the paintings.)

From the Curzon’s website:
“What is it about cold water swimming that attracts so many people? What draws folk to push their bodies beyond the extreme in pursuit of the elusive ‘ice mile’? How does one mentally and physically prepare for a feat as demanding as a solo English Channel swim?

“Celebrated local swimmers Steve Price and Alec Richardson tell tales of their epic swims alongside 4 breathtakingly beautiful films about cold water immersion. Johanna (dir. Ian Derry) tells the story of how cold water therapy for a sports injury lead Johanna Nordblad to free dive below layers of cold thick ice; the very charming Time and Tide (dirs. Isabelle Rose Povey & Josh Embury) depicts the drive that brings Clevedon’s hardy open water swimmers to plunge themselves into the cold, silty brine of the Severn Estuary – a daily activity which doesn’t let winter get in the way.”

Calendars & Clevedon Hats:

I’ll have a small table with things for sale during the actual event, including my new calendar for next year, and some newly re-printed Clevedon Pier hats (not currently available but they will be ready by then).

The Oxfordshire Winter Pod

The Oxfordshire Pod

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A commission that I completed a few weeks ago. It was for Beccy Mullett’s birthday – this is her and the rest of her winter swimming (and cycling) ‘Pod’, and her friends who are also in this picture commissioned me to draw it for her. Beccy is in the foreground, left of centre. Below are also some of the photos that I put this together from.

I shall be at the Swim Serpentine Event (Hyde Park, London) on September 22nd if anyone would like to ask me about having something similar done, always happy to talk if you have an idea you’d like made into an artwork.

This is  a digital drawing, and one of the useful things about that is  that I can make multiple prints if required – I only make prints of commissions for the people who commission them, but in this case I made up a large mounted print of this drawing for the birthday girl, and another 7 small ones for each of the other swimmers, who also gave her this as a present.

The Oxfordshire Winter Pod

The Oxfordshire Winter Pod

Some of the source photos

Some of the source photos

Wednesday Swimmers

The Wednesday Swimmers

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The finished painting.

The finished painting.

This is Sally, Wendy and Cecily (left to right), who often swim on a Wednesday morning at Vobster. I particularly like swimming with them when I get a chance: there is much mucking about, diving, somersaulting, comedy renditions of synchro swimming. Occasionally there is swimming too. It’s all very good material for art: Sally takes fabulous photos, I take snaps by the simple method of pointing the camera in the general direction of the subject while repeatedly pressing the shutter for as long as I can hold my breath, but they are exactly what I need for paintings afterwards.

This is watercolour with gold and palladium leaf, quite big: about 19 x 22 inches. I took photos of the work in progress and posted them as I did each stage on my facebook profile, a slightly unnerving experience as at the start I had a large number of comments that said ‘leave it as it is’ …no pressure not to mess it up then! Here is the full sequence.

I have prints of this painting in my Etsy shop: www.waterdrawnart.etsy.com, and at time of writing this painting is also for sale, though I’ve also earmarked it for an exhibition in Clevedon in October (more on that later…).

The photos

The photos

Sketches

Sketches

Pencil outlines and underpainting in Prussian blue

Pencil outlines and underpainting in Prussian blue

...Prussian Blue....

…Prussian Blue….

...more Prussian Blue...

…more Prussian Blue…

...you know what colour this is by now!

…you know what colour this is by now!

Lots of thin layers of very translucent yellow with a hint of red/magenta

Lots of thin layers of very translucent yellow with a hint of red/magenta

A little more colour, and the highlights put back in

A little more colour, and the highlights put back in by lifting off a little of the colour wash where light catches the skin and for the sunbeams through the water.

The finished painting.

The finished painting. This is a scan and a more faithful representation of the colours than the previous photos.

Detail of tiny fragments of gold leaf

Detail of tiny fragments of gold leaf

Close-up

Close-up

Details...

Details…

Finally, gold and palladium leaf fragments, lots of them.

The metal leaf fragments, catching the light.