Category: Drawing

Sage Advice

 

sageI like to draw is on location, direct from nature so why have I brought this herb into my studio?

After reading up on botany this spring I feel the need to go in closer to my subject, something that I struggle to do when flowers are blowing about in the meadow.

pencil

I’ve resisted the urge to reach for my pen but I still want a sharp line so I use an abrasive pad to keep a point on my HB pencil. I need to do this four or five times during the course of the drawing.

Botanical Drawing

The Art of Botanical Drawing by Agathe Ravet-Haevermans has given me some gentle encouragement. There are meticulous examples of her work as a scientific illustrator at the Museum of Natural History in Paris but also a few sketches from her field trips in Madagascar and South Africa. Step by step drawings and swatches of the watercolours used in each example show how she depicts the flowers, fruits and foliage of familiar garden flowers and exotic blooms.

botanic drawing
Pink Pig 8 x 8 Amelele 270 gsm watercolour sketchbook, White Nights watercolours, Cotman reversible brushes.

My favourites amongst them are the different kinds of bark, the cherry tomatoes on a vine, the fungi and the bunch of carrots.

Encouragingly for the rest of us she concludes with a selection of her mistakes; ‘But is it such a disaster? It’s just time and a sheet of paper. The most important thing is to be able to learn from it.’

I’ll keep that in mind as I try to get into botanical mode.

Link; Agathe Haevermans, L’Institut de Systématique, Évolution, Biodiversité

One Small Sketch

coffee machine and cushion

I’ve been reading three inspiring books on urban sketching but I haven’t quite lurched into action again with my sketchbook habit. I sketched these cushions on a bank holiday visit to family this morning and you can see just how long it’s been since I last used this little Moleskine.

Simba

Simba SimbaSimba is a restless dog to draw but she did eventually settle. The trick is to draw her without letting her notice that you’re looking at her, otherwise she’ll start getting excited again and coming over to find out what is going on. Benji

In contrast little Benji is a Shitzu who likes to stay in the background.

While his owner browsed in the bookshop he kept her eyes on him and I had to move around to see him face-on. However as he’s such a small dog that, even kneeling on the floor, all I could see most of the time was her top-knot. Drawn in pen and watercolour crayon.

Bird Stop

squirrel and chaffinchesSince we came back from our short break in Germany we’ve been catching up with things but I did manage to put pen to paper when we stopped at the Riverside Cafe near Hathersage on our book delivery rounds.

wine table and cushions

We can’t always find a table within a few feet of an array of well-stocked bird feeders but after our tour by rail and ferry I’m back in the habit of drawing whatever comes my way.

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Categorized as Drawing

Spring in my Step

wheel-barrowIn my determination to draw a page a day, which I’ve kept up since before Christmas, I’ve had to resort to working a lot from photographs taken on walks to fill in the gaps for particular days. What a refreshing change to have the time to get into the back garden for an hour or so to draw from life.

I feel as if I’ve got so much more freedom working from the real thing; freedom to be less literal with colour and detail. Because I’ve got a better understanding of what’s in front of my eyes I can be more playful in the way I draw it.

Whenever I go to a movie if there’s a 3D version that’s the performance that I’ll go for and it’s the same with drawing. I can relax and let the drawing flow more freely because in real life – HD, HDR and 3D as it is – I’ve got a better understanding of how things are arranged in space – for instance woodland seen through a hedge. That kind of thing can give you cause to stop and ponder when you’re working from a photograph, which breaks the flow a bit.

I’m convinced that I’ll be getting out more often as we move into spring.

My drawing might not be as resolved as the subject deserves. Perhaps if I’d had two hours I’d have gone for something more ambitious but any drawing is better than none. I look forward to having the time to go over the top with a drawing.

Coca Cola

Coca Cola siteI’VE BEEN getting a new edition of Walks in the Rhubarb Triangle off to the printers today. I checked out all the routes and was delighted that there was hardly anything that needed changing and all those changes were for the better, for example some of the wobbly old stiles had been replaced by new metal kissing gates.

But I thought the new building – I think it’s the distribution centre – at the Coca Cola Enterprises site at Lawns village, Wakefield, should go in, so I redrew that corner of my picture map and managed to included a few facts about this ‘largest soft drinks plant by volume in Europe’.

Coca Cola plantFrom miles away it can look surprisingly conspicuous but strangely when you get nearer to on those leafy footpaths it often disappears altogether.

It sits pretty much in the centre of the Rhubarb Triangle, but as far as I know it doesn’t manufacture a rhubarb beverage. Dandelion & burdock perhaps but I can’t think of a rhubarb drink that they might try. Rabarbaro Zucca, an Italian aperitif, is alcoholic.

Link; Coca Cola, Wakefield

Finishing off

treeHAVING GOT to the end of one sketchbook with a short burst of drawing on reserves and in the farm park, I thought now would be a good time to set about bringing my other current sketchbooks to a close so that I can make a fresh start in the new year.

In compiling my Wild Yorkshire nature diary articles for the Dalesman magazine, I’ve realised how useful it is to have a straightforward chronological run of sketchbooks if you ever want to retrieve a particular drawing for later publication.

cushions

cushionsIf you’re doing what I’ve been doing for the last year, keeping five sketchbooks in assorted sizes going at once, six if you include the large format sketchbook that I keep for book illustration in the studio, it gets very difficult to search for a drawing made on a particular date.

Perhaps I’ll rationalise this a bit in the new year and concentrate on a particular size.

Square versus Landscape

orchidHigh StreetThe A5 landscape Pink Pig spiral bound sketchbook that I’ve just completed seems a good compromise between portability and page size, but the 8 inch square of A5 format that I used at the weekend proved good for wildlife as there’s more space on a deeper page to add quick notes.

M62 bankingI find that anything that I write on location – about colour, incident or atmosphere, for example – is more precise than my later memories. But I’m reluctant to write when I’m out there because I love to spend as much time as I can drawing.

Wainwright Sketchbook

Wainwright sketchbookAll these sketches are from an A5 sketchbook that fits neatly in the little grey bag that goes with me on everyday errands. The spiral binding on a regular A5 sketchbook won’t quite squeeze in.

Great binding, shame about the paper; fountain pen ink goes straight through it, watercolour soaks in instantly but blotchily.

I might try crayons until I finish the book but it’s a shame that it’s not more sympathetic for fountain pen drawing because when I’m grabbing the odd moment to draw it flows better than any fibre tip.

Donkey


donkey

 

donkeysTHE DONKEYS are coming to the rail to be petted and photographed, enjoying the fuss being made of them by the children at Charlotte’s ice cream parlour this morning.

Guinea fowl are foraging in the grassy pen next door.

 

 

 

High Street

succulent

High Street, HorburyDespite my recent efforts with photography and video, I’m still keen to pick up my pen and draw whenever I get the chance. I fit in a brief sketch of shop fronts while my mum waits for her appointment at the opticians.

Tilly

TillyTillyWhen I call for Barbara at the bookshop, I often get the chance to sketch Tilly the border collie. On Monday Rickaro bookshop is hosting not only a meet-the-author  but also a meet-the-cartoonist. Ian McMillan will be there, accompanied by Tony Husband to promote their latest book 101 Uses for a Flat Cap.

Tilly
Tilly always has her nose in a book (at least, whenever Richard is holding a dog treat there).

TillyWe can’t persuade Tilly to wear a flat cap to celebrate the event as she can be in turn either too self-conscious or over-excited. We don’t have a flat cap in her size anyway.

This gives me the perfect excuse to play about with Photoshop; resizing, skewing, cutting, erasing, pasting, brushing and layering.

Inner Eye

TillyvanI HAVEN’T USED my smallest sketchbook, the little Moleskin, for almost two months but as I tie up one loose end after another I’m getting into drawing mood again.

Tilly has also appeared in my notebook. She pops up all over the place.
Tilly has also appeared in my notebook. She pops up all over the place.

OCT Scan

gableI had my first OCT scan at the opticians this morning. The infra-red scan mapped out a small area at the back of my eye and rendered it in 3D, reminding me of the 3D modelling I’ve experimented with in programs like Bryce and Vue.

She's a restless sitter.
She’s a restless sitter.

A shallow crater is where the cone cells for daylight vision are concentrated. These are particularly sensitive to movement but they’re useless in the dark so as the iris opens to let in more light a wider spread of rod cells takes over, with the crater of cone cells becoming a bit of a blind spot.

This explains why when observing a faint object in the night sky, such at the Andromeda Galaxy you have to do that trick of looking slightly to one side of it. It’s too faint to register on your array of cone cells.

blind spot

My true blind spot, the spot where blood vessels and nerves enter the eye, looks less like a crater and more like a corrie surrounded by glaciated peaks.

 

Clearing the Desk

FinePix S6800
AFTER THREE WEEKENDS away and another catching up, I’m finally getting back to ordinary life. I’ve just sent my latest article off so it’s time to clear my desk and get started on the backlog of drawing and writing that I’ve got in mind to do. But first, to draw a line in the sand after all that frantic activity, I decide to draw my cluttered desktop.

I feel that random compositions are often the best so I don’t rearrange a thing before starting. As a change from fountain pen I decide to give myself the challenge of working with a dip pen and Indian ink, starting again from scratch as it were, and this nib certainly gives a scratchy effect compared with the rounded nib of my fountain pen.

desktopI’m amazed how badly I flounder on proportions and positioning with a captive subject like this. My struggles are most obvious on the one of the few diagonals in the drawing, the handle of the tripod, but books and magazines also get out of proportion, probably because I’m not allowing enough for the effects of perspective which are an important factor when you’re so close to a subject, about four feet from the nearest pile of papers in this case.

Also I’m happily listening to Radio 3 as I work so I might have been better giving my full attention to my drawing.

But at least I’ve made the attempt and I’m hoping that now we’ve settled down I’ll be able to take the odd hour off to draw again.