Our first assignment on Mattias Adolfsson’s the online illustration course The Art of Sketching: Transform Your Doodles into Art (see link below) that I’ve just started is to get our pens together. These are a small selection . . .
Next is to produce a sheet of observational drawings of some of those pens, trying out different techniques as we go. I’m still only halfway down my A3 page but the good news is that, with all those pots of pens, I won’t run out of subject matter.
I’ve already made a start on the next stage of the assignment, which is to take things one stage further and draw a sheet of fantasy pens. It doesn’t matter how silly the idea is.
I’ve started a new sketchbook for an online illustration course (more of that later). We’re asked to sign our name on the first page and write the date . . .
The difficult ones first! I knew it was the 2nd.
I had an idea of how I’d like to draw the unfurling croziers of the male fern, growing by the pond. It didn’t work out the way I’d hoped, probably because I wasn’t close enough to take in the detail I’d intended to add.
But that’s an advantage of a sketchbook, as opposed to a commission, I can relax and move on to the next drawing. Really enjoyed drawing these.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My ‘pen & ink, bamboo pen, watercolour, a bit of gouache and a gull dropping’ drawing of Mad Bay, Skokholm Island, Pembrokeshire, dates from a week’s visit (extended by a day or two because of bad weather) in April 1980, but my first Skokholm adventure, ten years earlier, started, rather like a Sherlock Holmes story, with an urgent telegram:
I think that even today it would be difficult to arrive at Haverfordwest Railway Station at 6.15 a.m. and it proved impossible then. As it happened, the weekly boat to the island didn’t sail that day because of the weather.
Here’s my sketchbook from that stay on the island. I picked up the rope on the shore and attached it to the spiral binding so that as I walked around the island stalking seals and puffins, I could scramble over the rocks with both hands free but be ready to take out my pen and bottle of ink to start work.
While I was up in the attic looking for this sketchbook, I came across my diary for 1970, which I probably haven’t dipped into since then. I’ve forgotten why I was writing my diary in a Spicer’s triplicate book. I remember my time on the island vividly, but it’s interesting to put it in the context of my everyday life as a student.
On a boat trip to the neighbouring island of Skomer six years earlier, we’d called in at Skokholm on the return trip to pick up a small party of birdwatchers.
That day trip to Skomer gave me some of the material for my entry in the Daily Mail I-Spy Birds competition, which coincided with the launch of the RSPB’s Young Ornithologists’ Club. I was a joint first prize winner and received not only a welcome postal order but also a red feather and a personal letter from Big Chief I-Spy himself.
During the corona virus lockdown, I’m missing out on drawing in coffee shops – which sometimes seems to be the main theme in my sketchbooks, so I tried drawing the hosts today’s Adobe Live session with Katy Cowan of creativeboom.com
I’ve enjoyed trying out the ‘Rough Wash’ brush in Clip Studio Paint’s ‘Realistic Watercolour’ section but, as Barbara commented, this is looking like something that you might see on a birthday card so, good-looking as these two guys are, this frame doesn’t express a gesture. There’s nothing to prompt readers to think ‘What happens next?’
Much as I like the ponies we see on our regular walks, I need to develop their characters to tell a story. I don’t need the full cast, and, in order for them to interact, characters that are, in reality, in fields quarter of mile away from each other are going to have to be together. So sorry pinto pony, you’re going to be cut: it’s going to be the elegant chestnut and the dark brown Shetland in the grubby mac.
Another approach to recording our morning walk around our local patch: I took a photograph of this old roadside quarry with my iPhone and, back in the studio this afternoon, I’ve drawn it in dip pen and De Atramentis Document Ink from my iPad.
Just the watercolour to add now. I’m so unfamiliar with using this larger Winsor & Newton Professional Watercolours box that I’ve got out my swatches as a reminder. As I was getting out my watercolours I was interrupted by a beeping: Barbara’s brother John, currently, like most of the rest of us, sitting things out at home, was giving us a video call on the iPad, something he’d never tried until last weekend. I get a lot of use from that iPad.
Another doodle, drawn to help me get familiar with the basics of creating a comic in Clip Studio Paint. This is from page one of an eight-page comic, but this is as far as it’s going, as I’ve already managed all the basics by adding characters, background, speech bubbles, call-outs and even a 3D object.
Basil is a neighbours’ Persian cat with Siamese markings who wanders ponderously through our garden and occasionally makes a run at the birds at the feeder. He flounces across the lawn towards them like a frantic feather duster, so the birds spot him long before he gets in pouncing distance. I like him as a potential comic character, but he’s a bit too close to Garfield at the moment.
