So tempting to add the colour but I’m working on my line at the moment.
Tomatoes
Category: Drawing
Bottles
Some unfortunate bottles lurk for years, if not decades, in the bottom lefthand corner of our Welsh dresser.
TWSBI Eco-T
I’ve rarely used my favourite pen for natural history subjects – a TWSBI ECO-T with an extra fine nib – over the past year so it’s not surprising that the filler piston has got stuck.
I’m ashamed to say that I’ve never applied the silicone lubricant that was supplied with it for the piston the pen since I bought it in March 2018.
That’s over seven years ago. Oh dear.
I’ve also always used it with waterproof inks: first Noodler’s and in recent years De Atrementis. Perhaps a good soak will free it.
Farringdon Road Bookstall, 1982
I drew the bookstalls on Farringdon Road in August 1982 for a proposed book on London street markets, which sadly never got published. While drawing this I spotted Colin West, from my year in illustration at the RCA, in his natural habitat, browsing for a bargain.
Cowslip’s Warren
I drew the backgrounds for the Cowslip’s Warren sequence for Martin Rosen’s 1978 animated version of Watership Down. At that time I often drew with a dip pen with a fine Gillot 1950 nib using Pelikan Special Brown Indian ink and, as we wanted the feel of an oppressively sinister Victorian vicarage for this scene, we decided that would be an appropriate medium.
Because of the scale I worked at, my original drawing was photographed to be enlarged to production size and printed on matt finish photographic paper which was sepia tinted. The colour was added by another background artist (the one who wore headphones as he worked, but I’m afraid that I don’t remember his name, as he started work on the production after I left to complete my Sketchbook of the Natural History of the Country Round Wakefield . . . using my dip pen with the 1950 nib).
I’ve published some of my work on the film before but I don’t think that I included this drawing, which I’ve just come across in a box file of artwork from a 1980s folio which I was looking through in the attic.
Hand Exercises
I’ve been doing a few exercises to strengthen my right thumb over the past year but after a session with the physiotherapist I’m now adding exercises to improve flexibility in the thumb joints.
It surprises me how relaxed the joints feel after a few repetitions of these simple stretches.
I’d always that strength was the thing I needed to improve but flexibility, resilience and movement are equally important.
Triceratops, Albertosaurus and Satie
Erik Satie, who died 100 years ago last Saturday.
A young Triceratops was the star of the opening film in Walking with Dinosaurs #2.
I like the way the series links new discoveries and speculation about the lives of dinosaurs with the fossils themselves, filmed at digs in America, North Africa and Portugal.
Brought up on Ray Harryhausen dinosaurs, I would never have assumed that Albertosaurus might be lilac with a ginger crew cut but at that time we thought of dinosaurs as giant lizards. Now that we’re aware how closely they were related to birds the colouring makes sense: it reminds me of the prehistoric-looking cassowary.
Turner’s Watercolour Box
At the current Harewood House exhibition Austen and Turner: A Country House Encounter I got a close look at this watercolour box that belonged to Turner, dating from around 1842, so possibly a set he used on one of his visits to Harewood.
As in so many watercolour boxes, it’s the darker earth colours that have been neglected and he’s gone for the reds, blues and yellows.
Watercolour cakes were something new but I’m wondering what the three white trays – two of them all but empty – are made of. In a modern box they’d be plastic but these don’t look to me like ceramics or enamel.
Maris Peer
My sketch of Maris Peer first early potatoes is anthropomorphically compromised because almost every potato has inadvertently ended up with an expression on its face: cheeky, vacant, dim, confused . . .
But they were delicious and in texture – I’d say – exactly at the halfway point on the scale from waxy to floury. We preferred them to some Jerseys we treated ourself to a month or two ago.
When I set up to draw the orange, lime and the two Pink Ladies, I’d been planning on leaving the background blank but, as has happened before, the random debris in the background proved to be more interesting than my artfully arranged still life.
I’m convincing myself that it is never possible to draw an ankle accurately. Toes are a bit easier: they have definite edges.
Our non-plastic washing up and veg brushes.
Staying Afloat
Explorer Thor Heyerdahl wrote that he used to worry about the deep ocean until he realised that the ocean wasn’t there for him to sink into: it was there to keep him afloat.
Like him, my natural tendency is to default to panic mode and to tense up, assuming that the worst is going to happen, which is a self-fulfilling worry if I’m writing or drawing as I’m not going to do my best work if I’m tense. Like Heyerdahl, I’ve just got to develop a relaxed but unshakeable conviction that I’m going to stay afloat.