Our plans for the weekend are put on hold as we head for the hospital to visit a relative (he’s doing much better now). I’ve spent many hours waiting in hospitals but, as usual, I’ve brought my sketchbook and pen with me and this time a tiny pack of crayons. They’re a very limited range, just seven colours, but working out how to represent the range of colours reflected and refracted in the bottle of Harrogate Spa water takes my mind off a worrying situation.
Category: Drawing
Art Bags
It so good to be back in my studio and working again. I’ve just e-mailed my latest Wild Yorkshire nature diary off to the Dalesman, so it’s high time that I caught up with this online diary, which provides most of the raw material for my Dalesman articles.
It’s a month since my studio floor was taken up but there’s been a lot of work for me varnishing the new tongued and grooved timber floor and putting back my plan chest, art materials and book stock just as I’d like them (and there’s been even more work setting up our new kitchen in the room below, which is looking great).
The ‘Goldilocks’ Sketchbook
Improvements in my studio include these four Ikea Blecka hooks (above) for my small, medium and large art bags, which are hanging there ready for me to grab when I set off on a small, medium or large adventure, each complete with a selection of art materials and an A6, A5 or a square of the narrow side of A4 (that’s 8 x 8 inches) Pink Pig sketchbook. Like Goldilocks, I tend to feel that the middle sized bag is ‘just right’.
Tough Decision
On the fourth hook my new digital SLR is hanging, plus a camera bag holding my new macro and telephoto lens. It’s an Olympus OM-D E-M10II which has great possibilities for nature photography. I sold my trusty pocket-sized Olympus Tough muji on e-Bay and I’m missing it already but I’m holding off buying the latest Tough to replace it as I want to get thoroughly familiar with my digital SLR.
The drawing is in bamboo pen using Winsor & Newton black Indian ink. I wouldn’t pack this combination in my art bags as the ink, where it has formed a blotty pool, takes days to dry.
TypeTool
Inspired by Tony Seddon’s book, Draw Your Own Fonts, I’ve just succeeded in drawing, scanning and digitising – using Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and a program called TypeTool – five sample characters which I’ve added to my computer as a TrueType font.
It will be useful to have my own hand-lettered font when I draw a comic strip or a picture map for a walks booklet but I’m going to try something a bit more ambitious too. Seddon encourages you to have fun in the process and to see a font as a series of illustrations with a theme running through them.
The illustrators and designers who provided the fonts for the book took as their starting points subjects like knitting, earthworms, buildings, spaghetti and origami. Their spontaneous approach soon got me thinking up ideas of my own, for instance, the capitals above are based on a character from a story, a disturbed visionary character . . . but – for the character that I have in mind – I need to make the typeface look more willowy and windblown.
First Hand
Here’s my first effort at a complete hand-drawn font, put together from some hastily drawn letters, but at least creating those 26 capitals and 26 lower case letters has enabled me to get thoroughly familiar with the basic process.
Strangely enough it was the full stop that I had most difficulty digitising!
Links
Draw Your Own Fonts by Tony Seddon
TypeTool by FontLab, a fairly simple program for digitising fonts.
Carnosaur!
Dilophosaurus
When drawing dinosaurs, I get all the reference that I can find together and reconstruct the animal by drawing a rudimentary skeleton and working up a particular pose but wouldn’t it be great if I could set out with my sketchbook and draw the living breathing animal? That would probably be unwise when it comes to the carnosaurs but I had the chance to do the next best thing back in October 1997 when the Carnosaur! exhibition of animatronic dinosaurs was showing at the Yorkshire Museum.
Link: The Yorkshire Museum
The Harrogate Train
Usually, as soon as I start drawing a commuter, he or she will change position or get on to a train but I thought that I had a chance with this man, sitting nursing his luggage and thoroughly absorbed with his phone. After five minutes our train started moving away but I’d made a mental note of the colours and I quickly added them. I like plain inky drawings but usually I feel that sketches like this come to life when I add a bit of colour; there’s so much more information in a drawing which includes colour.
‘You are now entering a great crested newt site’ a notice on the trackside near Hornbeam Park informs us.
Drab, Dry and Dusty
The countryside has a late summer look to it. Oaks near Horsforth now look drab, dry and dusty. The flowers of creeping thistle have largely turned to downy seed heads. There’s a decadent feeling that the party is almost over, frothy creamy white flowers of Russian vine and trumpets of greater bindweed are festooned over fences. The waste ground flowers that I associate with the end of the summer holidays have appeared: Himalayan balsam, rosebay willowherb, common ragwort, goldenrod and, looking rather dull and mildewed even at its freshest, mugwort.
It’s the first time that we’ve visited Harrogate for years but we’ll certainly return. We walk up through the Valley Gardens then through the pinewood on Harlow Hill. We don’t get chance to walk around the Royal Horticultural Society gardens at Harlow Carr because we spend so long queuing for a leisurely lunch at the deservedly popular Betty’s Tearooms.
Waiting Room Sketches
We’ve got an appointment at the doctors’ this morning. As a change from drawing my hand, I start drawing the clasps and fastenings on my art bag and the back of my watch, which is the type that recharges its battery kinetically.
We’re back again in the afternoon. This time I revert to drawing my hand. I prefer drawing something organic to something mechanical.
Another Hand Sketch
Another spell in the waiting room, another hand sketch.
In the Auditorium
How do you get that great feeling of being part of a winning team; of striving against the odds and getting to the top of your game?
According to the commercials screened as we waited to see the new Star Trek movie, all you need to do is subscribe to a particular broadband service or choose the right brand of fizzy drink. I couldn’t quite follow the logic but then I was drawing my hand . . . and foot. Colour added later in Bella Italia.
Sorting Sketchbooks
Looking back over sketchbooks from the last ten or twenty years, I liked some of my bolder, simpler drawings, so I took a break and, using my Lamy Safari with the bold nib, drew the pile of A6 sketchbooks that I was going through.
Hiking Boots
These Trezeta hiking boots have stood up to a lot of wear, mainly in Yorkshire but they’ve been as far afield as Switzerland and Corfu.
I’ve drawn this in my A4 sketchbook to make it easier to include the details. The full size of the drawing is 8 x 5½ inches.
Link: Trezeta