Author: Richard

Weed Knife

weed knife

I think that my previous small plastic weed knife might have ended up in a bucket destined for the compost heap, so I had the perfect excuse for upgrading to a Darlac Bamboo Weed Knife, which is a big improvement. I was drawing these while listening to today’s Adobe podcast and perhaps because of the distraction, I made a mistake with the proportion of the blade (it’s not quite that long).

The bent screwdriver has in the past been used for weeding crevices between paving and it’s also opened many cans of paint. I often took it to Pageant Players to open cans of emulsion that hadn’t been opened since the previous year’s production. This was my dad’s best ratchet screwdriver and I remember my horror when I bent it as he was liable to become explosively angry when tools went astray!

My favourite pair of secateurs were an unmissable bargain ten or so years ago but they cut better the others that we use. A satisfyingly crisp ‘snip’ as you cut through anything up to about half an inch thick.

Drawing this, I realised that my current favourite pen is the Lamy Vista with the Extra Fine nib, used in the lower two drawings. It’s a bit freer flowing than the TWSBI Ecot, which might be the one I’d favour if I was ever aiming for precision and detail.

Published
Categorized as Garden

The McGuffin

cartoon strip

With apologies to Alfred Hitchcock, this comic strip was inspired by the variety of fly masks that our local ponies are now wearing and a rather striking turnout rug that one pony was wearing a week or two ago, before the weather warmed up.

Ponies, sheep and a couple of donkeys graze in the pastures around our local camping store, Go Outdoors, which is currently in lockdown. They stock selection of pony blankets, stable rugs and rain sheets, so I might have to draw a cartoon of my two pony characters going in there and using the fitting rooms and full-length mirrors.

In the final frame in the original version of this comic strip, I had the McGuffin-clad pony extolling the virtues of his outfit with wide-eyed enthusiasm, but this made it look as if he was delivering the punch-line to a joke. I made some minor adjustments to the eyes and the corner of the mouth in an attempt to make him look as if he really thinks that his outfit gives him suave sophistication of a Roger Moore character.

Link

Go Outdoors: pony blankets available online only, so at the moment you can’t go in with your pony to try before you buy.

Alpha of the Plough

books
Drawing 3 inches, 8 cm, across

These books are rumpled, written on and one is even charred along its bottom edge: the result a narrow escape when it sat on a metal shelf above a spontaneously combusting homemade hifi system. Every book has a story to tell, or rather three stories: the one in the book itself, the story of the people who read it and perhaps had their lives changed by it and then the history of the artifact, the book itself.

When my mum died five years ago, a friend advised me, if you’re in doubt about whether to keep something or dispose of it, keep it: you can always send it to the charity shop later. I didn’t really need her encouragement because these books had fascinated me since childhood when I browsed through our book cupboard in the hall. The lofty book cupboard had previously been a linen or kitchen cupboard at the time when there were domestic servants in what had been a Victorian mill owner’s villa. It had tall sliding doors and I can still remember the sound as I opened them.

Each of these books which date from my parents’ school days, has it’s own individual story and I’m fascinated to see the hand written comments that they added. Someone, probably ‘E. Sparkes’, a previous owner of the book, has coloured the chapter headings and the portrait of ‘Alpha’ himself, the author of the essays collected in this August 1921 edition in the ‘King’s Treasuries of Literature’ series.

Published
Categorized as Books

Pen & Ink

pen and ink

Just half an hour with the Adobe podcast this lunchtime, so I stuck with pen and ink (Lamy Vista and Noodler’s) for my desktop drawing.

The Wolfskin Bag

Jack Wolfskin bag

I wanted to go inky for this 4 inch by 3 inch sketch of my Jack Wolfskin bag but then couldn’t resist adding colour because of the yellow Lamy Safari Pen and blue Buff that it contains.

It’s drawn with a Lamy Vista EF nib filled with De Atramentis Document Ink and for the Winsor & Newton watercolour I used a Daler Rowney Aquafine Sable Round 6. And I should add that it’s a Pink Pig sketchbook containing their 270 gsm Ameleie acid free paper.

Kingcups

3.55 p.m., 10 C, 50 F, breezy from north-east

kingcups

A female smooth newt appears briefly at the sunny, shallow edge of the pond. A bear-like cat saunters across our veg garden but makes a speedy return when Poppy, next door’s little dog spots him.

From our hawthorn hedge, the jingling song of a dunnock. There’s a sprinkling of pale petals of crab apple blossom across the pond, closely followed by the paper napkin that I’ve been using to blot my water-brush on. Luckily the cord of my sun hat gets caught in the zip of my fleece as it blows off my head, otherwise that would have ended up in the pond too.

No wonder the female smooth newt disappeared into the pondweeds: soon after I return indoors, I see that the female blackbird from the nest in the corner of the hedge has caught a male newt. She shakes it repeatedly and I get glimpses of the male newts bright orange belly, speckled with dark spots like a butterfly’s wing.

Two hours later, I saw her back again at the end of the pond. She went down to the water’s edge and with a quick stab caught another male newt.

Published
Categorized as Drawing

On the Nose

Stable Relationship

The second cartoon strip inspired by the ponies we pass on our regular morning walk. In the final frame, I’m getting pretty much the look that I had in mind. I decided not to go for shadows this time. I like the simplicity of flat colours.

Colour set, Clip Studio

Talking of flat colours, in one tutorial (see link below) I discovered that you could not only save swatches in a ‘Colour Set’, you can also name them.

Link

Making Comics for both Print and Webtoons Clip Studio Paint tutorial by SimonWL

SimonWL Comics

Cat Card

Cat Card

What we must expect now that the card shops have gone into lockdown: my lightning-sketch birthday cards are quicker and cheaper than going into town for the bought version . . . just not as slick and sparkly, but it’s the thought that counts.

This is Boris (thought he was called Basil, but, sorry Boris, I’d got that wrong), the cat that thinks that he owns our back garden.

A Stable Relationship

A Stable Relationship

I used the iPad version of Clip Studio Paint for this comic strip. In reality, the Shetland Pony has now dispensed with its pony blanket, although another pony in the field has taken to wearing a pink pony blanket and an insect shield hood over its face and ears. There’s probably another comic strip in that pink pony blanket.

Adobe Live: Radim Malinic

Radim

Today’s Adobe Live ‘From the Sofa’ session is with branding designer and former musician Radim Malinic. For my sketch, I decided to go back to pen – Lamy Safari – and ink – Noodler’s Black.

Radim

Someone asks where Radim gets his inspiration. Perhaps from galleries and museums? No, he answers, he doesn’t create art, that’s something different, so he observes how people behave in shops and cafes. How they buy things, how they carry bags. To me it sounds very similar to the way many artists gather material and inspiration, observing the everyday world rather than being preoccupied with reacting to art history and commenting on it, which you can’t get away from really, even if you do decide not to visit galleries.

Radim

He describes how he used the process of writing and designing his first book as a way of coming down to earth, becoming more mindful, after an intensive period of work. His three books, bursting with striking artwork, describe his personal design process.

Link

Radim Malinic’s Brand Nu website