Orkney

Visit my website http://hannahsimpson.com/Orkney to see the spoils of my latest travels - a journey to Orkney. Big thanks to my mum for being the sort of person who drives 1,500 miles to look out to sea.

6am gym session

This morning I left before the larks to draw chessboxer Sean Mooney's daily weights session. A most interesting start to the day!

Over the next week I am documenting several fighters as they prepare for a big fight night at the Royal Albert Hall.

Chessboxing

New work is on my website now! 

http://hannahsimpson.com/filter/Reportage/Chessboxing

Chessboxing is a hybrid sport in which opponents play a round of chess, then a round of boxing, until knockout, checkmate, or timeout.

Drawings made at PrizeFightKnight - The Heavyweights at The Scala, London. September 29th. Featuring Ruthie 'Pink Machine' Wright and Ben 'The Veggie' Reid.

Out of Africa

Yesterday I went to the National Gallery to study the paintings. I was taken by these three men from a Velazquez painting. And there they were outside, by the South African Embassy, another time and place but maybe the same men. These ones weren't silent. Their protest centred on the killings of 61 miners from a London listed mining company by South African police.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/aug/21/south-africa-warns-lonmin-strike

City of London

The tower is a man in pinstripe suit and bowler hat. An Irish man in hi-vis says that this view will be gone soon, and I feel guilty about the cupola I smudged, short changing the window panes, cutting corners and cornices. 

A building wrapped in a white shroud clinging to its ribs then billowing out, bristling with scaffold poles and fabric folds. 

Come round the corner and look straight into the belly of the beast. The child that will eclipse its stony mother stands stocky and still, steaming in its yellow cradle. 

Down by the dandelions I take the floor.

Evensong

My church drawing has been on hiatus for a while but I am returning to it with paint and a open mind to walk through doors that are usually closed. 

Foundry

Drawings from Hand&Eye letterpress and foundry. I'm making a book of reportage about Hand&Eye.

Emerging

Kitchen studio. Reportage. Litho.

Sung mass at St. Luke's

The morning after the evangelists, I went to sung mass at St Luke's, a red brick church round the corner from my house. Quite an experience. I am planning to return and do colour paintings - these inky line ones are my starting point.

Reportage evangelism

I have started a reportage project on church going. What does it mean to go to church in this day and age? I hope to explore the different ways in which one faith is expressed. The hidden traditions and rituals that occur so close to us, yet outsiders rarely see. These drawings are from my first trip to a concert held by a local branch of the evangelist Potter's House church.