Category: Art

Coffee Stop

treeBlacker Hall FarmThe social whirl is fine but it will be good to settle down to work again and have more joined up time for drawing!

Today it was coffee at Blacker Hall Farm Shop, in a lofty beamed barn with a rural view (left) which in fact includes the embankment of the Barnsley to Wakefield Kirkgate railway.

beamThe tree was a quick lunchtime sketch sitting outside at the Cafe Capri, Horbury High Street but that’s just a break before the real business of the day which is to print some of my walks booklets for a stall at this weekend’s Festival in a Day event in Ossett.

Better get printing then . . .

Little Sketches

crematorium It was nice to get together with the family today but that didn’t mean that I had entirely go without sketching. I kept my mini-Moleskine notebook in my shirt pocket and my wallet of chunky crayons in my jeans pocket.

cruetteI try my best not to resort to drawing the cruet as we wait for our meal but I don’t want to intrude on the gathering by drawing family.

I really would like to draw people but I’d much rather do it at some public event or in a public place like a market.

leaf

The leaves are falling and I’m looking forward to focussing on natural history again before too long.

Enough of cruets!

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Categorized as Drawing

The Pheasants are Revolting

A couple of years ago, I drew a rough of this for one of the exercises in Drawing Words and Writing Pictures and, as I’m using it in an article, I’ve enjoyed working on a final version.

pheasant comic strip

 I traced my rough (below) in pencil onto layout paper, then scanned and added the colour in Photoshop.

I’m reading Teamwork Means that You Can’t Pick the Side That’s Right, one of Scott Adams’ Dilbert books and decided that I’d try graded backgrounds like he does, fading gradually from dark  to light.

Hope that I’ll get the chance to try some more comic strips but I’ve got a lot lined up for the autumn.
pheasant cartoonThe squirrel went from being demented in the rough to looking evil in the final version, which is a shame because that might suggest that he deliberately dropped the coconut shell. I was aiming at making him manically determined rather than evil.

Link; ‘The Pheasants are Revolting’ rough version, October 2012.

Pen and Crayon

goldfishfish headIt’s a shame that I broke a tooth but at least it gives me chance to take a close look at the goldfish in the tank in the dentist’s waiting room. I notice that each goldfish has a small, stiffish looking flap in front of each of its eyes, perhaps adding some protection or alternatively helping to stabilise the head as it moves through the water.

gablescupvinegarSince I discovered a pen that doesn’t bleed straight through the paper in my urban sketchbook I’ve been more tempted to draw in the odd vacant moment.

An ArtPen tin filled with a dozen Derwent Watercolour crayons replaces the watercolour box that I’d prefer to use, if the paper was up to it.

handThe colours were those included in a plastic pod (which didn’t stand up to being squeezed into my bag) so they’re not exactly the ones that I would have selected for the kind of subjects that I draw – there’s no grey for instance – but I feel that any attempt to indicate colour, however wide of the mark, records information that I couldn’t otherwise include and adds a bit of warmth to the starkness of pen and ink. 

How to be an Illustrator

How to be an IllustratorHere’s the book that I wish I could have read forty years ago but which is equally welcome now as a way of reassessing the way I work.

Darrel Rees, an illustrator turned agent, looks at the nuts and bolts of the business with plenty of solid advice on invoices, contracts and agents but he brings his story to life with glimpses of his own ups and downs and through a series of short interviews with illustrators and art directors.

I recognise so much of myself in it; the contrast between college and career; the mistakes you’re likely to make when you put together your first portfolio and the pros and cons of working from home. At several points Rees urges illustrators to try and see their work from the other person’s point of view.

I’m making it sound as if the book is a series of warnings, and you probably also get that impression from the sober cover featuring Brett Ryder’s illustration of sininster pencil-head men in white coats, but, with examples of work from a mixed bunch of illustrators, it’s also a celebration of a way of life that is, in the words of one of them, Michael Gillette, ‘terrifying at times, extremely liberating at others’ and, for Jeffery Decoster a ‘constantly surprising’ spur to ‘the creative process and personal growth’.

How to be an Illustrator second editionLinks; Laurence King, publishers of How to be an Illustrator (2008), which is now available in a second edition . . . with a less scary cover.

Darrel Rees’ Heart Agency

Purple Loosestrife

purple loosestrifeThe purple loosestrife is now at its best at the RSPB Old Moor reserve.

Two photographers in search of dragonflies apologise for trawling across my field of view, requesting that I don’t include them in the picture.

A shame, they would have added some scale. The loosestrife is shoulder high.

jointed rushJointed Rush

I think of rushes as being like the hard rush and soft rush; spiky and cylindrical, like a clump of green porcupine quills, but this is a rush too; jointed rush, Juncus articulatus, gets its name because the hollow stem is divided by internal ‘joints’.

It has clusters of star-shaped brown flowers which develop into egg-shaped fruits.

 

seedheadYellow Rattle

This dry seedhead was growing on a grassy path edge. It reminds me of bluebell but we’re not in woodland – or old hedgerows – here and when I check it out in the book I’m able to confirm that it’s yellow rattle, Rhinanthus minor, which is semi-parasitic on the roots of grasses.

It is a  member of the figwort family, Scrophulariaceae.

Each rounded capsule has a short beak at its tip. As it rattles in a breeze it distributes its winged seeds.

Bands of Blue and Green

pondI felt that I was getting a bit fussy as I painted the loosestrife so I went for a simpler approach with this nearby pond. With the quickest of pencil outlines I went straight on to the rapidly changing sky and its matching reflection, followed by bands of the lightest greens in each area to indicate distant trees, meadow, reedbed and reedbed reflections, plus the nearest willows.

With every bit of paper assigned a tone I could them add mid-tones of foliage and finally the darkest patches, adding a few of the brown branches of the willows.

Five Minute Sketch

sketchDuring the working week, my friend Helen Thomas has been busily painting forty small paintings during a strict forty hour period for her 8 x 5 project so I thought that before I settled down to catching up on my website this morning I’d start with a strictly five minute sketch.

The wood and meadow really do look as blurry as this through my sloping studio window as the depression labelled ex-Bertha progresses north-eastwards across the British Isles. We had to cancel a Wakefield Naturalists’ field meeting at Adel Dam when we heard that the Met Office had issued a yellow alert for today.

Colours used; yellow ochre and Winsor lemon in an initial all-over wash, then also French ultramarine, permanent rose, permanent sap green and neutral tint. No drawing in pencil first – there wasn’t time for that!

Link; Five by Eight, Helen Thomas’s Facebook gallery page.

Ten Minute Goose

Canada gooseThe Thornes Park Canada geese are used to passing dogs but still a bit wary of them, timing their morning traipse from the duck pond to the adjacent football field until there’s a break between dog-walkers.

‘Come away!’ says one dog-walker, ‘not everybody likes dogs!’

Well, you’d have to be very anti-dog not to like this quiet, wide-eyed, little white terrier – looking freshly shampooed and as if it’s going to a fancy dress party as one of Bo-Peep’s little lambs. It doesn’t want to walk past without pausing to check what I’m up to. Not to fuss me, or to yap but just to take in what I’m up to as I sit on the park bench.

I assure Ms Bo-Peep that it depends on the dog and, to be honest, I would have done a quick sketch of it if I’d had time but it does illustrate why I find that I can be more productive heading for Old Moor bird reserve for the day. I can sit amongst the herbage and get absorbed in my work.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like breaking off to chat to passers-by but there are only so many hours in a day for drawing.

I was ten minutes early for an appointment and driving past the park and thought why not have a ten minute break at the duck pond rather than arriving early. So, I’ve only spent a single minute of my precious time chatting but scale that out across a day and I could happily while way 10 percent of the time available!

Storyboard

storyboardhandHere are a few recent sketches from my urban sketchbook (the Wainwright one that I’m keen to get to the end of).

Two men were sitting with A3 sketchbooks in Café Costa, not drawing the passing scene but in an animated discussion of a storyboard for a film. I’d have loved to have eavesdropped on the process but I could see that the guy in the baseball hat was going through a shooting script while his colleague, after listening intently, would start sketching out ideas.

When you’re watching a movie the storytelling – when it works – just flows along but a huge amount of planning and choreography goes into it.

Rhea Window

view from Charlotte's, Whitleyrhea rheaWe invariably head to Charlotte’s ice cream parlour after my mum’s weekly eye appointment. She doesn’t usually get out during the rest of the week but the short excursion to Whitley is about as much as she can manage these days.

The view taking in Holme Moss and a great meander of the Calder Valley is unbeatable and the activities of peacocks, goats, donkeys and hens add to the interest.

The rhea inevitably reminds me of birdlike dinosaurs. A pair of them make a tour of their enclosure. Curiously expressionless eyes almost seem to look through us, as if we were a dull and harmless part of the environment. It’s the kind of gaze that I can imagine looking out on the world during the Cretaceous era and ears like that (the round spot behind its eye) must have heard the occasional Tyrannosaurus approaching.

The Chair and Eye
chair

optchairA haircut and my mum’s regular eye appointment give me a couple of chances to draw chairs. I can always use more practice because I find that as I move down the page I run into problems with the proportions, for instance making the legs too long. I keep switching to observing the negative spaces to double-check that I’m on the right lines, for instance the wedge-shapes between the starfish-like feet of the hairdresser’s chair.

Occasionally I find myself in a chairless environment, such as while waiting for Barbara outside the fitting rooms at M&S. Rows of clothes on hangers didn’t strike me as interesting subjects so I drew the handbag. I can see that the designer has made several decisions in the look of the handle alone to introduce some character; dependably chunky and in it’s unashamedly utilitarian details perhaps harking back to a simpler era, such as the 1950s.

bag in M&S.In Debenhams there wasn’t even a bag rack nearby for me to focus on so it was back to drawing my hand.

hand

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Categorized as Drawing

Saturday Morning at Salts

bus190714Even on a fifteen minute journey on the 232, if I’ve got the enthusiasm, I’ve got the time to make a sketch and even add the colour. I’ve been reading a few books on urban sketching recently which are encourage you to try sketching even in the least promising situations, such as here on the bus, which is lurching forward and swaying from side to side.

Bookshops now have a section devoted to sketchbooks, writer’s notebooks and inspirational adult activity books encouraging you to draw, doodle, scavenger hunt or even to ‘destroy this journal’ so I think that you’re much more likely to see someone on a bus scribbling away these days.

Gutter Shadow

Platform 2, LeedsI’m using my least favourite sketchbook today, the A5 hardback decorated with Wainwright drawings. Although they’re supposed to encourage to put pen to paper, the fact that when you do the ink soaks through two pages at a time is rather off-putting!

gutter
Without ‘gutter correction’.

I’ve been using my current scanner for years but I’ve only just spotted that the software has a ‘gutter shadow reduction’ option. It no doubt works better on pages of text where it can tell where the gutter is supposed to be. It doesn’t seem to have made any difference to the strip where my drawing straddles the gutter.

Saltaire

SaltaireAt least as I’m so keen to get to the end of this sketchbook I don’t mind starting a page as we wait for our coffee in Masserella’s.

The lower floor of Salts Mill houses an art materials and art bookshop the size of a couple of tennis courts. I try out a Moleskine sketchbook for size in my bag. Can’t wait to get started on it.

There are inspirational  books galore including Drawing Your Life by Michael Nobbs, who I used to be in touch with in his Beanie sketchbook journal days. I’ve got more subjects clamouring for me to ‘draw me, draw me!’ than I can manage, so I don’t need Michael’s attractive and encouraging book to spur me on.

I can only indulge myself in one inspirational  art book this morning so I go for Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist, as I enjoyed his Show Your Work (and, who knows, one day I might put some of his suggestions into practice!).

hazel

Links; Drawing Your Life by Michael Nobbs
Austin Kleon