Trapani – La Grotta Mangiapani 20.6.17
In May this year I organised two painting trips to Trapani in Sicily for my students. I live in Malta, so it was just a very short – and...
Forgotten Landscapes
This collective exhibition has taken its creator, Mark Magro, months of planning and hard work, as he collaborated with the four of us artists (Caroline Said Lawrence, Marika Borg,...
Drawing Deeper
By Jeni Caruana. By drawing ‘deeper’ I mean using as many of the five senses as can be interpreted at once. You use your eyes, but do not close...
Art for Divination?
I wonder if you have ever noticed shapes and figures, monsters and animals hidden in the swirls and patterns of cracked tiles or peeling paint? My green marble bathroom...
Drawing to a Close
When is a picture finished? This is a common question from students, but it doesn’t have a simple answer. My flippant reply is ‘about ten minutes...
Jeni On Drawing Drawing on Past Experience
More years ago than I care to count, when I was doing an art foundation course at Hull Art College, I fell in love with life drawing. I had...
A Sicilian Adventure!
After a scouting trip to Sicily in early April to research the locations for our painting tour I came back full of ideas and a new found love for...
Art as Divination?
Have you ever noticed shapes and figures, monsters and animals hidden in the swirls and patterns of marble or peeling paint? My green marble bathroom tiles are seething with...
The business of being creative
Creative people often find themselves relying on others to actually market and sell their work. Creativity is a sensitive place to view the world from, allowing ourselves to be...
Drawing on Your Own
There’s only one you, only one me. You can’t really copy me, and I can’t copy you – together we can move forward by inspiring and supporting each other,...
Italy, Sicily – where next?
I must have wished on the right lucky star, as all of a sudden I seem to be travelling all over the place, mainly to Italy and mainly art-related....
Drawing With Colour
I thought that I would write about something different this week – I’d like to describe how many of my paintings are created. As many of you already know,...
Drawing Conclusions….
. I wonder, can you help me? People quite often tell me how much they enjoy my posts, so I know that they are being read, even though I...
The Practice of Drawing
The impulse to make marks is as natural to humans as the impulse to talk. As babies,we spend our first year or so making strange sounds, imitating what we hear....
Drawing up the Ladder
I think that most adults really wish that they could still draw and paint. Almost all of us liked making pictures when we were children – it’s a natural...
Art Worlds
For the last 20 years I have worked as an artist in Malta. I have exhibited my work regularly, and taught drawing and watercolour in Malta for around 20...
Drawing ….. on different levels
Perhaps because drawing, or rather mark-making, is something that all children do, we tend to associate it with a form of play. We see someone working at their easel,...
Drawing from a Different Place
I wonder if perhaps because mark-making is such a primal human urge we expect drawing to be ‘easy’ somehow; that it should not demand practice or hard work....
Drawing Movement
Looking through my old sketchbooks the other day I found pages and pages of tiny moving figures, and I remembered doing them over 40 years ago. I was working...
Drawing Movement
Looking through my old sketchbooks the other day I found pages and pages of tiny moving figures, and I remembered doing them over 40 years ago. I was working...
Drawing on Reality
No matter what training they may have had, all artists are ‘self taught’ to a certain extent. Progress is only made through constant study and practice. There are arguments...
Chuck n Splatter Painting
This week I thought that you might be interested in the stages of watercolour painting. Of course, there are many different ways of using watercolours, and building them...
Drawing Nothing!
I really love teaching drawing, as it involves helping people to see and connect to the world around them in a completely new and experiential, almost magical, way. I can...
Drawing from a New Perspective
I think it was Edgar Degas who said that he could draw perfectly well with boot polish and his fingers….. which is true; we can make marks with so...
Drawing After
Creativity is best learned by inspiration. By copying drawings we admire, working in the style of someone else, we learn how it feels to move our hands and make...
Between the Lines
My last three or four blogs were actually written some time ago when I was ‘on a roll’ writing about drawing. I was very glad that I had them...
Jeni On Drawing 12- Drawing Flat Out
I am a Flat-Earther when it comes to drawing. We have to draw on two dimensional surfaces so how can anything really be three dimensional in our drawings? Drawing...
Jeni On Drawing 11- Drawing on Imagination
A question that I am often asked is “how do you get ideas for your paintings? You must have a really good imagination!”. The answer is that yes, I...
Jeni on Drawing 10 – Drawing Forward
Before I settled in Malta I had spent a good six years of my life at art colleges, but really hadn’t much clue about how to make a living...
Jeni on Drawing 9 – Drawing is…. Mindless!
After all the left and right brain theory about the opposing effects of logic and creativity (see my last blog post) has gone over your head :), here is...
Jeni on Drawing 7 – Drawing with your Right Brain. Part 1
A very important theory which became popular in the 70’s was that the brain worked in two quite separate ways – the left side dealt with logics and learning,...
Jeni on Drawing 8 – Drawing with your Right Brain. Part 2
As I said last week, the idea of there being ‘right’ and ‘left’ sides of the brain first became popular in the 70’s and was used to explain the...
Jeni on Drawing 6 – Drawing on Outside Influences
Art is a creative rather than a logical activity. Children learn to draw and paint by imitation, in much the same way as they learn language, or skills such...
Jeni on Drawing 5 – Drawing and Sketching
The differences between ‘drawing’ and ‘painting’ are not always easy to define. Drawings are generally personal, intimate things, often made quickly to capture a fleeting moment in time. Paintings...
Jeni on Drawing 4 – Drawing Around
When you think about it, drawing lines around things is really trying to capture an illusion. There are no lines around anything we see, only edges where one ‘thing’...
Jeni on Drawing 3 Drawing on Past Experience
More years ago than I care to count, when I was doing an art foundation course at Hull Art College, I fell in love with life drawing....
Jeni On Drawing – 2. More on Drawing
All of us are born with an urge to make marks, to sing, dance and generally express ourselves individually. If you ask any small child if they can draw...
Learning to Draw
If all children are born able to draw, sing and dance, to express themselves and their emotions, what happens to stunt all that? Why do we lose confidence in...
More About Drawing
One of the things that makes humans unique is our self awareness. We are all born with an urge to express ourselves by singing, dancing and showing our emotions....
How to Draw Figures from Life
When you are learning to draw figures it’s common to be given measurements such as ‘the average human body is head-lengths tall’. It’s funny that even that measurement...