Some possibilities for using the library logo in a letterhead. Hopefully the secretary won’t be misquoting Cicero’s Latin as in the placeholder text of my mocked-up example.
Library Letterhead
Category: Drawing
The Crown
As a complete change from the graphic symmetry of the library logo on our day off in Harrogate today I’ve gone for a freeform drawing exercise, suggested by Ian Burke of the Staithes Gallery on a recent episode of Robson Green’s Weekend Escapes.
In contrast to all the planning that went into constructing the library facade for the logo, the aim here is to keep your pen on the paper and just keep drawing.
I know what you’re thinking, even for a freeform drawing isn’t that too wobbly? But I was drawing through the windows of the Palm Court Cafe above Farrar’s so I was looking through the rippled glass leaded lights of the cafe’s windows.
Links
The Crown Hotel, Harrogate
Palm Court Cafe, Harrogate
Library Logo
There are two vital skills that you need if you’re going to design a logo based on an architectural facade: organisation and analytical thinking. Despite my shortcomings in those departments, I have managed what I think will be a usable logo for the friends of the local library.
After struggling with Procreate I’ve constructed this, layer by layer, in the program that I’m most familiar with, Adobe Photoshop, with a bit of help from Adobe Illustrator for those carved panels and, my favourite detail, the curly ironwork on the newly restored weather vane.
Alternative Lighting
The next step on my Procreate animal illustration course is to take one of my thumbnail sketches and try it with three different lighting set-ups. I’ve gone for the light coming from the left, the right and from below (as if the goose had been caught in the beam from car headlights).
The one I like best is the light from above left and slightly behind, with a glint of reflected light from the bottom right.
Then it’s on to a rough drawing, not too detailed, but indicating the different areas of plumage.
Miniature Sketches
I’m picking up again on Román García Mora’s Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate course and here we’re asked to work towards our final illustration by trying out miniature sketches of different poses of our animal or bird.
From the nine I’ve now got to choose three for my final spread. I’m intending to go for a flying goose top left, a main illustration bottom right facing into the page and somewhere in between, a small sketch illustrating some kind of behaviour.
I showed this to John – who is still surviving in the hospice – and he liked the aggressive goose in the centre and the one shown feeding in the water.
Library Windows
I’m designing a logo for the Friends of our local library, and Arts and Crafts style Carnegie Free Library and I’m struggling to get the precision I need for a simple graphic that can be reproduced at various sizes, including on a letterhead.
I’ve been learning all I can about Procreate and it should be simple to design it in the program but, as so often, my shaky hands are letting me down. For some projects I would welcome the wobble as it gives can make an intimidating facade look more friendly – and this is for a ‘Friends’ group after all -but I’ve decided to go for a program that enables even me to easily produce precise geometric shapes and I’ve gone to Adobe Illustrator.
But I might come back to Procreate for the finishing touches.
Colour Harmonies
This looks like an Andy Warhol-style famous-for-fifteen-minutes portrait of John Carr but the idea is to come up with a colour harmony that will suit the Carr Tricentenary exhibit in the Redbox Gallery in Horbury.
Procreate includes a Colour Harmony Wheel so starting off with the colour of Yorkshire stone – the coal measures sandstone of St Peter’s Church – I’ve experimented with the various options available. Complementary does give me enough colours, Tetradic gives too many fighting against each other, so it’s the Split Complementary, Analogous and Triadic that are most likely to give me a workable colour scheme.
Procreate Butterfly
Saving half the work while drawing a butterfly; my latest Procreate drawing tutorial using symmetry in drawing assist. I’ve faded out the photograph of the peacock butterfly that I’m basing my drawing on so I’ve put in a reference image, floating in the top left hand corner, so that I can see the colours.
While I wouldn’t use symmetry drawing assist if I was out drawing with the iPad I am going to use it for a logo I’m designing which has to be strictly symmetric.
Procreate also includes ‘Animation Assist’, which turns layers into frames and gives you a timeline and onion skinning (showing a faint impression of your previous frames).
Not sure what happened to the unfortunate butterfly’s dislocated left wing, but you get the idea.
A Portrait of John Carr
We’ve got a tricentenary coming up: John Carr, at various times through his life a stone mason, bridge surveyor, architect and Mayor of York, was born in Horbury, in a cottage that still stands at the lower end of Cluntergate, in 1723.
I’m designing an exhibit for the town’s Redbox Gallery, in the repurposed telephone box on Queen Street. Perhaps a three dimensional version of my cartoon, drawn for a birthday card a year or two ago, would be an eye-catching solution and an excuse to bake a three-tier cake for the launch party.
We want to get away from the portrait of him at the height of his success, looking like a rather stuffy Georgian gentleman.
The St Valentine’s Day Fire
Royal College of Art, Valentine’s Day, Wednesday 14 February 1972: Today at 11 o’clock a dreadful fire. The College shop on the Ground Floor was in flames. Painting my mural in the college greenhouse, I at first thought the alarm was a distant circular saw but I was puzzled by why so many people were hurrying through.
The smoke was funnelled up the stair well and got into the greenhouse. From the courtyard I could see it billowing out of the windows. At least 7 birds are dead. Of course small birds are very susceptible to fumes.
I sketched four of the dead birds on the following Friday.
(adapted from my student diary and sketchbook)
Photography Course
The following week, I had a break from the painting when I took the college’s three-week photography course, which I’ve written about previously in this Wild Yorkshire blog.
On the following Thursday, after a morning of photography at the Chelsea Physic Garden, I met up with my tutor John Norris Wood. Judging from my conversation with him he’d spotted the flaws in my workflow and I haven’t changed much fifty years later!
The Demise of the College Greenhouse
In 1985 this appeal for help in the college greenhouse appeared in student newsletter. My thanks to Sarah Mercer, Digitisation Officer (Special Collections), at the college library for spotting this and to Henrietta Goodden for passing it on to me.
The greenhouse would soon be repurposed as a drawing studio. The Rector, Jocelyn Stevens offered to rehouse the birds in his own greenhouse.
Tchaikovsky Concert
And just one more piece of ephemera: ‘The highlight of today,’ I recorded in my diary for 11th February, ‘was the Tchaikovsky concert; Nutcracker, Piano Concerto No. 1, Capriccio Italien, Swan Lake and, with cannons and the Coldstream Guards, the 1812 overture.’