Month: November 2022

Green Planet

It grows on you. This double album, from the original television soundtrack composed by Benjamin Merrison and Will Slater, is my favourite when I want to settle down to a session of drawing plants (or any other subject else for that matter) as it flows so organically, like the impressive time-lapse sequences in the Green Planet television series.

But it stands on its own too; I like the lightness of touch; it’s not too ponderous but it does evoke the sense of wonder that you get from being in green spaces and observing nature. It’s good on plants behaving badly too – strangler vines*, I’m thinking of you! – described with humour and sometimes a sense of impending menace in the music.

I’m looking forward to revisiting the series to see how the now-familiar music fits with the sequences.

* Looking at the tracks list, I’m not sure that the notorious strangler fig actually makes an appearance but the tracks on cholla buds and ancestral grasses have a similar thrusting dynamic about them.

Published
Categorized as Drawing

In a Galaxy far, far away

Happy birthday to James and, as Mars is in opposition next week, hope his big present is an image stabilised starscope.

Ink Bottles

ink bottles

A random selection of inks – and Tipp-Ex – from the plan chest drawer but the kind that I’m re-ordering today is my regular De Atramentis Document Ink – one Black and one Sepia Brown, which is what I’ve used in this drawing. The advantage is that I can add watercolour to the drawing after just a few minutes without the ink running.

Watercolour doesn’t give me the flat colours that I like when I finish off the drawing on the iPad, but I like the messiness, subtlety and luminosity that I can get with the watercolour. Plus it’s quicker than the scanning and setting up involved in the iPad approach.

Blotty Gulls

pen and wash gull sketches

I like the quick pen and wash effect that you can get by blotting non-waterproof ink with a dab of water, which is what I did this morning with my Lamy Safari with a Lamy ink cartridge. The table on the balcony at the Boathouse Cafe at Newmillerdam was dappled with dew after a cool (and probably frosty) night, so I dipped my finger in a drop and used that, but the disadvantage of water soluble ink for me is the danger of accidentally blotting a drawing, as I did this morning as I opened my sketchbook, causing a slight blot on yesterday’s treacle tins drawing.

When my order arrives from The Writing Desk I’ll be filling up my various pens with brown and black and going back to waterproof De Atramentis.

Pen Pots

pen pots

A bit of practice before I go out drawing figures on location next week. I want the speed of drawing I can get by drawing in fountain pen rather than with an Apple Pencil on the iPad.

Lamy Safari fountain pen

I’m using a Lamy Safari filled with a Lamy Black cartridge, which I find flows slightly more freely than the waterproof De Atramentis. But the Lamy Black doesn’t dry waterproof, so I’m adding colour to the scanned drawing in Clip Studio Paint on my iPad.

Flat colour isn’t as subtle as watercolour but in this case that’s not what I’m after; it’s supposed to be a simpler graphic element – along the lines of a lino cut – to contrast with the busy-ness of the pen line.

Those scribbled initials are my colour notes, which I’m leaving in place to give a bit of animation to the drawing.

Scrivener Novel Format

Scrivener chapters

Just 530 words so far but although I haven’t made much progress on the challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in November it has given me the opportunity to dip into the novel writing format of Scrivener, a program that I’ve used for writing articles for years.

Chapters

The Novel Format includes folders for two blank chapters, which you can easily adapt and add to.

Each chapter can be divided into scenes. As an illustrator I tend to think in scenes rather than in chunks of dialogue, so I like the visual approach of the corkboard view where I can see the files and, if necessary, rearrange their order. Each scene can have an image attached to it.

Characters

Scrivener characters

There are folders too for characters, locations and research plus, one of my favourite Scrivener writing tools, the Name Generator. My characters Clark Rafferty and Vanda Redman were the first names to pop up on the suggestions for male and female names. For Len Platter – the disaster prone TV chef, star of the ill-fated Platter’s Oven-Ready Deal, I had to scroll down the list a bit. But Len Platter sounds about right for a character who’s attempting to follow in the footsteps of ‘backstreet mechanic’ Fred Dibnah and ‘gastronaut’ Keith Floyd.

character notes

Each character gets a character sketch sheet.

Writing Mode

writing in Scrivener

When you’re writing you’ve got the choice of keeping an eye on the overall structure of your novel or going for a clutter-free Composition Mode.

If you finish your novel, which I won’t, Scrivener can:

generate a document in the standard manuscript format for novels. Settings are also provided to make it easy to compile to a paperback-style PDF for self-publishing or an EPUB or Kindle ebook.

Scrivener, notes on Novel Format

If I do get around to writing another book it’s likely to be non-fiction rather than a blockbuster novel but there’s also an option for a standard non-fiction template . . . plus templates for theses, screenplays, poems and stage plays.

Link

Scrivener – Literature and Latte

Hepworth

casting bronze
Barbara Hepworth
Dame Barbara drawn in pen and wash in a real sketchbook.

An exhibit at the Hepworth Wakefield shows the method Barbara Hepworth used to cast a small bronze sculpture.

I could draw vice, mallet and hammer at home but I’m taking the opportunity to practice using my iPad Pro on location so the well-worn tools in the display here are suitably familiar subjects to get me started.

I’m sticking with Clip Studio Paint, drawing with the ‘Textured Pen’ for an occasionally blotchy varied line. The colouring is all from the ‘Lasso Fill’ tool. The possibilities for different pens, brushes and textures in Clip Studio are endless but I want to keep things simple to get into the process of drawing on location.

vice
Parkinson’s Patent Perfect Vise (that’s the US spelling)

This is the first time that I’ve used the Sketchboard Pro iPad drawing board on location and I find that it works well. Usefully, the gallery has a supply of comfortable folding stools and the spaces are so light and airy that you can set up without getting in anyone’s way. Well except the people who particularly wanted a close-up view of stage 4 of Barbara Hepworth’s bronze casting process.

hammer and mallet

The hammer was my first drawing and you can see that I got off to a shaky start pre-coffee break (I can highly recommend the Hepworth blackberry and apple flapjack and sitting at a table by the window looking out at a foaming weir and autumnal willows on a mid-river island makes a suitably relaxing break from drawing). But the great thing about iPad drawing is that you can correct mistakes without scratching away at the paper or touching them out with white gouache.

When I was drawing the bronze casting process I discovered that I’d run out of room on the right-hand side of my virtual canvas. I simply selected the whole drawing and moved it slightly to the left.

building in Horbury
Building behind the library in Horbury.

Burnt Books

sketches

It might be 50 years ago since Bill’s homemade stereo spontaneously combusted, singeing my books and diaries on the shelf above but, as he’s my brother I’ve never let him forget it!

I still remember the thrill of first hearing familiar records in stereo for the first time. The track I particularly remember was ‘The Shirt Event from Olympia’ by the Bonzo Dog Band. Going from mono to stereo was the equivalent of switching from 2D to 3D. The surprise was that we could tap into this sophisticated technology with Bill’s concoction of bits of old amps from a record player and radio wired together and held in place with tacks hammered into an offcut of plywood. Initially the speakers weren’t even in boxes, they were just lying there on the floor next to makeshift amplifier.

We now know that attaching a transformer to a piece of wood isn’t a good idea.

charred book

Here’s just one of the casualties amongst our treasured records, books and diaries on the metal shelf unit above. I got our local printer Mr Chappell to trim off the worst of the charred edges from my copy of Coyler & Hammond’s Flies of the British Isles. Still readable but hardly a pleasure to use, so naturally when I spotted a pristine copy amongst the secondhand books in the cafe at the National Trust’s Wentworth Castle I went for it.

Nor could I resist Guide to Microlife by Rainis and Russell, Animals under logs and stones by Wheater and Read and Small Freshwater Creatures by Olsen, Sunesen and Pedersen.

Pumpkins

pumpkin

Pumpkins drawn on my iPad Pro in Clip Studio Paint, using the ‘Real G-Pen’ and the lasso fill tool for the colour, and Adobe Fresco using the ‘Natural Inker’. The difference between the blotty line of the bottle and watch and the softer line of the pumpkin drawings is just because of the pressure applied when using the Apple Pencil.

pumpkin
Clip Studio Paint drawing using the ‘Real G-Pen’
Fresco drawings
Adobe Fresco drawings using the ‘Natural Inker’.
Published
Categorized as Drawing

Grebe, Gull and Heron

grebe and gulls

After recent heavy rain Newmillerdam is cloudy and khaki. A great-crested grebe pops up just yards from my table at the water’s edge at the Boathouse Cafe with a small silvery fish in its bill.

heron

Down by the outlet a heron is watching, waiting and stalking its prey, so intent on fishing that it allows me to rest my iPhone on the railings just 10 yards away from it to take this photograph.

heron
The M&S cafe this afternoon in Wakefield.