Category: Drawing

Little Black Journal

black journalI’ve tried all three of my Lamy Safari pens – fine, extra fine and broad – on the 200 gsm acid free paper of my new sketchbook, a pocket-sized Derwent Black Journal, and the one that works best is the Lamy AL-star with the fine nib.black journal

 

chairWith a Bijou box of Winsor & Newton professional watercolours and a Kuretake water-brush, that’s all I need for my everyday drawing.

This is the sketchbook that I’ll use when I have the odd few minutes, such as before the Nat’s meeting starts or as we’re waiting for the train to set off.

Leeds station 13116I started off feeling that I should be bold in my sketches but the broad nibbed pen seems out of scale for the size of the page and the absorbent texture of the paper.

I can struggle even when I’m drawing the simplest chair. I started on a small scale as I drew the back of the chair then when I got down to the detail of the legs I found that I couldn’t fit them in. With a finer pen I could have incorporated the detail into the space available.

After the Flood

From the train near York

In mid-January we spent a day in York, which was still in the early stages of recovering from the Boxing Day floods. Crossing the flood plain between Church Fenton and York was like sailing across a lake. Mute swans and ducks had gathered on the downstream bay of the temporary lagoon to the south of the railway.

We walked half the circuit of the medieval walls but decided to leave the full tour until the weather and the paving stones dry up a bit.

gulls over the floodputtoIt’s the first time that we’ve had lunch at the Georgian Assembly Rooms, now an Ask Italian, where I briefly sketched the plaster bas relief of a harp-playing putto riding on a lion. It’s worth coming back in the evening to see the place candlelit, the waitress told us.

As we walked out of the double glass doors of the Fenwick’s department store, opposite the Merchant Venturer’s Hall, at the Coppergate Centre, we were able to help a woman shopper who was trying to persuade a dunnock to leave.
dunnockWhichever of the doors she held open, it flew to the closed one and fluttered against the glass, so with Barbara on one door and the woman on the other, I acted as beater and stalked around the stairs to guide it out onto York’s Piccadilly.

Poinsettia

poinsettiapepperpotI drew the banana and poinsettia on a visit to Barbara’s brother’s. I decided that on this paper the brown Noodler’s ink didn’t seem crisp enough, probably because the paper is that bit more absorbent than the cartridge that I’m used to in my regular Pink Pig sketchbooks.

bannana

labrador

canvas bagSo I’ve come around to using my Lamy AL-Star with the fine nib, loaded with black Noodler’s ink. Whenever I have time, I like to add some suggestion of colour. I did have doubts that I’d be able to mix the grey of Barbara’s bag because of the way the colour picks up reflected light indoors but, when I got the sketch back into a good light, I found that I wasn’t so far out with my colour matching.

In daylight the bag takes on a neutral grey cast.

charity box

Crayons

bent-wood chairiPadOn a walk through powdery snow at Langsett last week I didn’t bother taking my watercolours but, just in case, I put a credit card-sized wallet of children’s crayons in my pocket.

crayonsNot the ideal range of colours but better than nothing for giving a suggestion when I drew a bent-wood chair at the Bank View Cafe.

Link

Derwent pencils and sketchbooks

Lamy pens

Ask Italian, York

January Sketchbook

A second gallery of pages which didn’t make it into my daily posts, taken from my Dove Grey A5 landscape Pink Pig sketchbook.

  • New year's day: a morning walk at Nostel Priory.

The Curtains were Drawn

curtainsFor today’s scene for Horbury Pageant Players’ production Sleeping Beauty we’re painting twin curtains to frame a star-cloth background. It reminds me of Spike Milligan’s sketch that begins: ‘The curtains were drawn, but the rest of the room was real . . .’

I grumble to Ken, a member of the cast who is a retired painter and decorator, that after 49 years painting scenery for the society, I still can’t paint a straight line. It always looks ragged when I paint it.

I make a mistake when I’m painting the pillar and end up with the line leaning slightly outwards at the top. I blot out my beige line with the background magnolia and the two colours blend into each other. I decide to use the technique to my advantage by blending the lines into shadows as I’m painting the pillar and the panelling. That way the raggedness of my line helps with shading.

Sleeping Beauty Castle

chateau backdropI’ve visited Château d’Ussé in the Loire, the château that inspired Perrault to write The Sleeping Beauty, but for our pantomime version Wendy the producer wants something nearer to the Disney Castle. We haven’t got the headroom for anything so lofty so for my backdrop I’ve gone for an impressive entrance with a suggestion of a hexagonal shaped castle going back into the perspective.

We’ve got a great team with the girls from the chorus singing one of the numbers from the show as they rollered over last year’s village scene with magnolia emulsion. Once that had dried, I scaled up my rough onto the eight canvas-covered flats, using the cross pieces of the framework, just visible under the canvas, as my grid.

My team followed my outlines, paint by numbers fashion, and by the time I’d finished drawing out at the right hand side, I was able to go back to the now dried out tree silhouettes on the left to add a bit of comic strip style definition by painting black outlines and a few suggestions of foliage.

First Snow

snow sketchSnow settled yesterday evening, the first covering that we’ve had during a mild, wet winter. It brought more than the usual one or two siskins to the feeder this morning: six or more.

Snow is a strange thing to draw. In fact you hardly draw it at all, it’s mainly the white spaces that are left when you’ve drawn everything around it.

Soaring Around Town

peregrine, meadow and loosestrife.2 p.m.: Peregrine flying past the town hall, over Wood Street, Wakefield, heading in the direction of the cathedral.

4.30 p.m.: Two weeks or so after the shortest day, the light already seems to be lingering longer in the afternoons. It helps that today has been a lot brighter than the wet, overcast days that we’ve had so much of recently.

The purple loosestrife seed heads were drawn with a dip pen, using Winsor & Newton peat brown ink.

Passers By

hatmancava girlAs storm Eva lashes across Britain, shoppers are hurrying along. I try to memorise costume and colours, making mental notes in the tens of seconds that they’re visible.

The man in the woolly hat is suitably dressed to face the elements, the woman with sparkling wine isn’t as she hastens to get her shopping packed in the car.

Butterfly buns.
Butterfly buns.

Astropad

astopad testHere’s my first faltering attempt to use my iPad Pro as a graphics pad for my desktop iMac. This has the advantage that I can see what I’m drawing on the iPad rather than having to look up at the iMac’s screen, as I do when I’m using my regular Wacom Intuos graphics pad. I’m using an Apple Pencil as a stylus and a program called Astropad to hook up the iPad to the iMac.

I’ve still to work out how to make adjustments such as brush size without reaching for my mouse and heading for the main screen but at least I’ve got to grips with the rudiments of drawing at my first attempt. It should be possible to set it up so that I can manage the whole process of drawing in Photoshop or Manga Studio using the iPad. The iPad has a long cable but it’s also possible to draw using a wifi connection.

Link: Astropad

Shady Characters

party peopleThere were so many healthy choices at the buffet at Judy and Don’s silver wedding celebration yesterday. Needless to say, I was still tempted by the mini-quiches, pork pie and sausage rolls. Well it is Christmas.

group by the barMost people were sitting but it was the characters standing at the bar who I found most interesting to draw.

light and shadeEach individual had a different way of standing. Some added gesticulations to a story they were telling, others stood listening, holding a drink in one hand and, in the case of some of the women, a bag in the other hand. Little touches that help sketch a character, rather than the standardised party person that I might draw from memory.

conversationI drew in line only but it was the shapes that fascinated me as I drew, so today I added washes of neutral grey to emphasise the overall shapes rather than the outlines.