Month: July 2021

Step by Step

drawing board

I hadn’t realised how abstract and scribbly my artwork was in close-up until I scaled this drawing of Addingford Steps. I drew a grid over my A4 print, but the original is just six inches tall.

scaling up
I drew with my Lamy Nexx fountain pen with a 1.1mm italic nib using DeAtramentis Archive Ink, which dries quickly on this smooth paper surface and becomes waterproof.

It was like doing a jigsaw: the individual squares sometimes didn’t look like anything at all, also, because I’m working on A1 foamboard in portrait format, I turned the artwork on its side, so that it was easier to reach, and painted it in two halves, so some things, such as the perspective of the foreground handrail, didn’t make any sense to me until I saw it right way up.

Just the watercolour to add now, which is a a quick job compared with reconstructing my drawing.

Wentworth Castle

Meadow vetchling, heath bedstraw and cocksfoot grass in the Deer Park at Wentworth Castle, artichoke, a grass-head, a multi-stemmed cypress trunk and a dead hedge in the gardens around the house.

Taken using the macro lens on my Olympus OM10-D E-10 MarkII DSLR except for the cypress, taken on my iPhone 11, as I couldn’t get the angle that I was after with the macro.

Glastonbury 2021

For today’s homemade card for my brother-in-law Dave, I was torn between a Bob Dylan 80th birthday tribute or The Wurzels at Glastonbury.

Ooh Arr, difficult choice.

Astrantia

small tortoiseshell

At first glance you might not suspect that Astrantia was a member of the cow parsley family, Apiaceae, but the little umbel of the flowerheads and the rosette of bracts are a clue. It’s popular with pollinators – such as this small tortoiseshell at Wentworth Castle this morning – and long-lasting, so we think that we could find a space for it in our flower border.

Squaring Up

grid

For my Redbox Gallery show, I’m enlarging a map from my Walks around Horbury from A4 to A1, so I’ve drawn a grid to scale it up.

I was looking for a bigger and bolder equivalent for the fountain pen of the original with but I found that my Pentel Brushpen took too long to dry on the resistant surface of the foamboard, so I’ve gone for a fine point Sharpie.

I’ve experimented with colour and it looks as if coloured ink will be my best option.