Category: Art

Timepiece

This weekend my old brass alarm clock appears in Harrison’s Garden at Nostell Priory, an installation by artist Luke Jerram to celebrate the 300th anniversary of one of John Harrison’s early longcase clocks, created in 1717 (see link below).

My alarm clock, made by Peter of Germany, dates from the late 1970s, when I needed something more robust to get me out of bed in the morning than the little travel alarm that my Uncle Fred bought me for my 21st birthday.

In a drawing from 1977 (or 1978?), I included the alarm clock hanging from a metal shelf unit in a cluttered corner of my room.

Whatever I bought for my room, I tried to select something that I might use as reference for an illustration, so I went for a brass alarm clock that seemed to me to be the essence of what an alarm clock should look like.

Brushwork

Still life studies that I painted as a sample for my folio.

When I chose a brush to sweep the ashes from the hearth, I went for a traditional design: one that I’d be able to draw if I ever needed a brush as a prop in a children’s story. I chose well with that because, earlier this week, I used the same red brush, now with its bristles much worn down, to sweep up in the greenhouse.

These still life studies were mainly pencil and watercolour but I sometimes finished off with just a spot or two of gouache: the highlights on the handle of the brush are stipples of white gouache and the light tips of the bristles are streaks of yellow ochre. I remember being particularly pleased with how those bristles turned out.

The Mantlepiece

One of my favourite paintings at the time – and it’s still one of my favourites – was Vuillard’s La Cheminee in the National Gallery in London, so I guess that was the inspiration for this sketch of my own mantlepiece. I’ve still got a couple of those golden syrup tins on the end of the bookshelves right next to me as I type this. Today they’re mainly filled with pens and pencils.

I’ve still got the blue Thermos flask too; it’s on a shelf at the back of the garage, rusted through at the base but still usable. We’ve got better flasks now, but I can’t bring myself to throw it out, as it’s been on so many adventures with me. It once rolled part way down a cliff top slope on Skokholm Island, West Wales, and it appears in my Richard Bell’s Britain sketchbook, published in 1981 by Collins.

Self Portrait

Self portrait, August 1978.

As a natural history illustrator, I found that when I visited a publisher and showed them my portfolio and some of my sketchbooks of animals, plants and landscapes, the editor would ask me, ‘Do you ever draw people?’, so at that time, in the late 1970s, I made a special effort to improve my figure drawing: sketching at local markets, enrolling in a life class and reading up on anatomy.

I drew a series of self portraits in pencil, looking for features such as my:

  • depressor anguli oris (a muscle used in frowning)
  • levator anguli oris (a muscle used in smiling)
  • zygomatic arch (the bony arch of my cheek)

I set up two mirrors so that I could draw myself the right way round, as others would see me. Curiously since I drew this thirty-nine years ago, I’ve hardly changed, apart from looking thirty-nine years older.

Link

Harrison’s Garden

Vuillard’s La Cheminee

Published
Categorized as Drawing

Coffee Time

My current pocket sketchbook isn’t designed to take watercolour but it makes a change to use crayons.

I always feel that using a ‘flesh-coloured’ crayon is cheating but, having started with that as the basic colour, I can add various browns and a touch of crimson red to represent the actual colours of my skin.

The Forest Scene

This morning we finished the village scene for this year’s pantomime, Cinderella, and this afternoon we’ve blocked in the forest, on the reverse side of the backdrop. I had no fewer than seven helpers – members of the cast and their mums – filling in the outlines for me.

The flat, rounded shapes remind me of Clarice Cliff designs, but we’ll add a bit of shading and outline tomorrow morning.

Dress rehearsal is tomorrow at two, but I’m sure we’ll be finished by then.

Roadside Buzzard

 

On the lane between Notton and Woolley, a kestrel sits, hunched and huddled, in a roadside tree.

At Woolley Edge, there’s a flash of colour as a jay gets up from a roadside verge. Oak trees grow along the sandstone ridge here, so perhaps it was burying, or retrieving, an acorn.

As we reach the open higher ground at Bretton roundabout, we pass a buzzard sitting on a fence-post at the edge of the road.

As we get nearer to Flockton, we see a second kestrel, hovering over the field by the road.

Notton in the 1800s

Notton from the original Ordnance Survey map, 3D view created in Memory Map.

Looking at our route on the original Ordnance Survey map from the 1800s, I’m surprised to see what a busy landscape this was, with its sandstone quarries, gravel pits and a brick kiln where George Lane meets the Wakefield to Barnsley road.

Just north of the gravel pit there are kennels and, more exotically, three-quarters of a mile to the northeast, there’s a Menagerie, which was part of the Chevet Hall estate.

An osier bed, near the top right corner of my map, would have produced the flexible whips of willow needed for basketmaking.

Living Room

The armchair, at Barbara’s brother John’s, makes a laid-back still life subject with its generous proportions and its rumpled cushions.

His Sony stereo, with its antenna, eye-like twin knobs and gaping mouth, looks like the head of a robot from an animated movie.

Peace Lily

John’s living room even gives me a chance to sketch some botanical details; there’s a Peace Lily, Spathiphyllum, on the table by the window.

The cluster of small conical flowers, arranged spirally around the spadix appear to be all female.

The Peace Lily, also known as the Sail Plant, is a member of the Araceae family, the Arums, members of which are mainly tropical. There are only two British species: Cuckoo-pint and Sweet-flag.

 

Hardship Hall

This morning is a big anniversary for me as fifty years ago this summer, as soon as I’d completed my O-levels, I went along to Horbury Pageant Players and asked if I could help with painting the scenery. Even so, as I walked into the hall this morning, I really didn’t expect a big band playing a fanfare.

“You shouldn’t have!” I told Wendie, the producer. She hadn’t: she explained that there’d been a double-booking for the hall this morning.

Band rehearsal over, we set about converting the backdrop of last year’s Sleeping Beauty chateau into Hardship Hall (above, on the extreme left) and the surrounding village, for this year’s production of Cinderella.

Last year’s backdrop.

As you can see from my sketch, I’ve kept the trees and the castle door from the old backdrop, but I realise that the door, which is now supposed to represent a shuttered window, is too central and imposing for a village scene, so tomorrow, I’ll  paint that out too and replace it with a more domestic-looking window.

Watercolour Woodland

4 p.m.: This afternoon, the light is much the same as yesterday, so I get a chance to finish my watercolour. Working with a finer brush, a number 6 sable round, I start with the branches in the upper left-hand corner and work my way downwards.

I’m painting in a Pink Pig sketchbook on 270 gsm Ameleie watercolour paper which is smoother than the 300 gsm variety that I was using at the weekend but, as you can see from the close up, it still gives a hint of texture in the washes. It’s smooth enough to take a pen line.

It takes me about 45 minutes to an hour to finish the watercolour.

Link: Pink Pig sketchbooks

First Wash

This afternoon, instead of starting with a pen drawing, I quickly sketched the outlines in pencil then, working from the sky downwards, I added a wash of the lightest background colour in each area.

It’s the same technique as the ‘half-hour’ demonstrations that I followed at the weekend but I find that working from life gives me a lot more freedom as I’m not trying to follow a series of step-by-step instructions. The dark masses of the bare ashes and willows are varied so as I work I keep adding touches of sap green, French ultramarine or sepia to my background colour, blending them wet-in-wet.

With only twenty minutes available, I don’t get the chance to move onto the next stage which would have been adding details such as twisting branches, patches of ivy and darker patches.

Getting it in Proportion

Sitting in the dentist’s waiting room, looking up Queen Street, I’m attempting to draw the spire of St Peter and St Leonard’s Church, Horbury.

The proportions are so subtle; the tower’s structure reminds me of a four-stage Saturn rocket, about to soar skywards but it might so easily, with the addition of an extra foot or so of girth, start to appear crushingly earthbound or, conversely, if too slender, become too spindly and emaciated to inspire confidence.

It’s the same with the individual pillars: there’s such a slim ‘Goldilocks zone’ between undernourished and elephantine. I think that he got it just right.

The architect, John Carr, (1723-1807), started his career working the stone in local quarries. As far as I know, he never had any formal training in architecture, nor did he ever make the Grand Tour, to absorb the classical influence of Italy but as bridge surveyor to the West Riding of Yorkshire, he had an eye for structure.

I walked past the church every day when I attended St Peter’s Junior School, which in those days stood close to where the dentist’s stands today. As I looked up at that wedding cake of a spire, so unlike anything else in Horbury, I’d imagine the kind of character that might be living in there, in the pilastered penthouse apartment above the rusticated clock section. Shutters and a the mini-balcony made me think of Spain or Mexico, so a mantillared señorita or a caballero.

The rotunda of columns could be a home for a minor Greek deity.

Painting Waves

“This demonstration is about brush control and technique,” writes Paul Talbot-Greaves in 30 minute Landscapes in Watercolour, “both are essential for describing the waves crashing over rocks.”

The technique of scumbling involves pulling a not-too-wet brush across the paper but this didn’t work out quite as I intended for the sky. This might have been because the colour that I used, Cerulean Blue, tends to dry to a granular texture. I didn’t have the recommended colour, Phthalo Blue, in my watercolour box.

Like the snow scene that I tried yesterday, this watercolour is an example of deciding what to leave out, as the spray is represented by the white of the watercolour paper.

A theme through the four half-hour step-by-steps that I’ve tried this weekend has been keeping the colours that you use in a watercolour to a minimum. There are five colours in this painting and only four were needed for the snow scene. For example, the pale wash on the surf is the same colour mix as the darker patches of the sea – Cerulean Blue and Lemon Yellow – just very much diluted.

My thanks again to Paul Talbot-Greaves for devising these watercolour demonstrations and explaining the process so clearly.