MY ART

Welcome

This website is created to showcase some of my artwork. It is based mainly on my recent re-uptake of life-drawing. As a child I had the gift of being able to draw images with some degree of natural skill - I had what people said was ‘a talent for it’ - it was my superpower. I attended art college as a young adult but like many who attend such establishments, once finishing art school I more or less let go of drawing and art stuff generaly and got on with making a living, having a family etc. Now being retired from all of that I find myself being re-captivated with the activity of drawing and art, etc. Additionally, as we now live in a digital era I have begun exploring the possibilities of combining my drawings with digital-art-graphic-technology; my graphite pencil drawings get a second life, so to speak. Most of the images presented here are from recent life-drawing classes but with the inclusion of a handful of much older art-works/drawings (some going back over 40 years), including images of figurative sculptural piece’s. More images may be added in time - it’s all a work in progress… I produce new drawings on a weekly basis. I hope you enjoy and find the images in these galleries interesting. Thank you for your visit.

“Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad” Salvador Dali

“Let whoever may have attained to so much as to have the power of drawing know that he holds great treasure”

Michelangelo

Mike Morris

“An individual’s ability to draw is… the ability to shift to a different-from-ordinary way of processing visual information -to shift from verbal, analytic processing to spacial, global processing.”

Betty Edwards

mike.art@mysketchbook.co.uk

MY ART

Gallery One

In the top left hand corner of each image there is a tiny picture frame. To enlarge each image click/tap on the small frame and the picture will expand. Once expanded there is another expansion area within - click/tap upon this to expand even further. The first expansion gives the more aesthetic image - the second expansion allows for a closer look at the marks made to create the image.

Mike Morris

“It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, that one day you discover, to your surprise, that you have rendered something in it’s true character.”

Camille Pissarro

mike.art@mysketchbook.co.uk

MY ART

mike.art@mysketchbook.co.uk

Gallery Two

Again, in the top left hand corner of each image there is a tiny picture frame. To enlarge each image click/tap on the small frame and the picture will expand. Where there are two frames within the image there is a monochrome version in one frame and a colourised version in the other; once more, these can be expanded further.

“The first things to study are forms and values. For me, these are the things that are the basics of what is serious art.”

Jean Baptist Corot

mike.art@mysketchbook.co.uk

Mike Morris

MY ART

mike.art@mysketchbook.co.uk

Gallery Three

The life drawing models pose from between five or ten minutes to two hours. In this gallery all of the standing poses are in the short pose range (with the exception of the top left), while the reclining or seated poses are in the two hour range. At the top left picture a reference photograph was used and the cumulative drawing work took over thirty hours.

“Drawing is not what one sees but what one can make others see.”

Edgar Degas

mike.art@mysketchbook.co.uk

Mike Morris

MY ART

mike.art@mysketchbook.co.uk

Gallery Four

For me, and whilst extremly imortant, life-drawing isn’t simply about presenting anatomical accuracy; although with drawing you notice innacuracies instantly! It’s about the final image - how the picture displays to the viewer - picture impact… does it ‘catch attention.’ This is something I constantly explore as my drawings unfold. It is the ‘Art’…

“Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is meditation.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson

mike.art@mysketchbook.co.uk

Mike Morris

MY ART

Gallery Five

Working with the graphite pencil drawings utilising digital processing software is interesting to me. It gives the drawings a new visual dimension. The basic process is to photograph the drawing, which already gives the drawing a digital copy, and then play around using the digital pallete to create a new version of the original.

“Drawing is rather like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make. ”

David Hockney

mike.art@mysketchbook.co.uk

Mike Morris

MY ART

Gallery Six

Most of the pictures in this gallery were done many years ago. As an example: the drawing of the young girl in the top right of the first image showing various head drawings is of my daughter, Jenny. She was doing what a lot of young children do which is to draw and watch tv at the same time; multi-tasking you might say. She was then aged around eight years old - she is now in her 40s. Time flies…

“What is drawing to me? I really don’t know. The activity absorbs me. I forget everything else in a way that I don’t think happens with any other activity.”

John Berger

mike.art@mysketchbook.co.uk

Mike Morris

MY ART

Gallery Seven

Again in this gallery all but one of the images were done many years ago. However here, in adition to drawings, there are also images of figurative sculptural work I did in the past… ‘bar one.’ That ‘one’ is the sculpted head in clay (second left-side down) which I did last year; I utilised extra digital processing to create the final image-effect seen in the picture.

mike.art@mysketchbook.co.uk

“In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt.”

Pablo Picasso

Mike Morris