A few more pages from my current pocket sketchbook
Pocket Sketchbook
Category: Art
Birds by the River
Addingford, 10.30 am: A male reed bunting flits into a hawthorn bush by a pond between the canal and the river, flashing its white tail bars.
Wintering duck have now moved on but a single drake goosander makes its way down the river, diving occasionally as it goes. Later we see a female heading up river.
Swans often nest on the quieter side of the canal but this year a pair have built an island nest on a tennis court-sized pond by the Strands. They’ve built up the nest platform from the dried stems of reedmace, which is now bursting into fluffy masses of downy seed. Slender willows along the banks are dotted with pale catkins.
A pair of grey wagtails bob about on a flooded corner of the The Strands.
Setting the Scene
I could go on adding details (or start again and try to get nearer the actual proportions!) but there’s enough to evoke John Carr’s spire in my recycled materials model for the Redbox Gallery show.
Think of this as being more stage set – well a stage set for a stop action animation perhaps – rather than architectural model.
I’ve given my cut-out version of the Beechey portrait of Carr a bit of a Pop-Art makeover in Adobe Illustrator.
Pillars
Continuing on the theme of using found materials, I’ve cut up a garden cane and a piece of left-over dowel that I’d used for stirring paint to make the pillars supporting the spire for my model of St Peter’s Church tower.
A6 Art Bag
My new a6-size sketchbook bag, an ‘Expand’ bag from a stall on Leeds Market. Pens were beginning to escape through holes in my previous ‘Trespass’ bag, which had become a bit overloaded. There’s a bit more breathing space in this one.
Hands
Drawn with the ‘Real G-Pen’ in Clip Studio Paint.
Model Making
My model of St Peter’s Church spire is taking shape, glue gunned and masking taped together from strips cut from cardboard cartons.
My theory is that making a model will help me understand John Carr’s architecture. I need the model to have a handmade look, so I’m doing the whole thing by eye, working from a line drawing that I made of the church thirty years ago.
These were drawn on my iPad Pro in Clip Studio Paint using the ‘Real G-Pen’, as was the drawing of the sofa below.
The model making was coloured using the lasso fill tool, the sofa and mug using the Rough Wash Watercolour brush.
Drawing with Florence
“Do you like your drawings?” asked Florence, aged 6, as she looked through my sketchbook. Difficult question. Obviously I like them enough to keep trying but there’s usually something that I think I could have done better, however looking through the pocket sketchbook that I’ve been keeping while we’ve been visiting Barbara’s brother John over the last three months, I’m pleased that I have taken the opportunity to draw whenever it was possible.
I drew the tower then asked her: “What do you think should be on top of the tower?”
“What about the sculpture you drew on the library?” she suggested.
She drew the finial that she’d seen when looking through my sketchbook earlier and you can see that she’d taken in the whole shape, with its concave base and drawn it pretty accurately.
She also soon got the hang of using a Pentel waterbrush. Not sure that I would have gone for the pillar-box red for the colour of the building but she certainly knows how to mix greens.
I should have asked Florence whether she likes her own drawings. Children are often confident when they first start drawing then as they start to become more visually aware of the world around them, they can get frustrated and sometimes give up. But I’m convinced that Florence has the focus and determination to work through any blocks she encounters.
The Moth
I’ve just read How to Tell a Story, written by advisers from the New York, now worldwide, storytelling group The Moth. There’s a lot of useful advice on how to tell a compelling story but one tale stuck with me for the wrong reasons.
A teacher is helping a young child progress her observational skills through drawing a self-portrait. Instead of praising the drawing uncritically she looks out some more accurately coloured crayons. I would so have appreciated some input from teachers as I struggled with flesh tones. I could see that Caucasian skin wasn’t pink, or yellow or any other colour amongst my set of crayons. I remember my excitement when I came across a ‘flesh-coloured’ crayon in the local art shop and I bought it to help me with the comic strips that I drew (I’ve since learnt that you could easily use all the colours in a watercolour box to come up with a complete range of ‘flesh tones’).
The girl telling the story was horrified when her teacher offered her used crayons from an old tin. The trauma lasted into her adult life. What she wanted was a shiny brand new beautiful crayon.
I’m so glad that Florence immediately realised the possibilities of the much-battered pocket watercolour box that has traveled with me through America and Europe and more recently through hospital and hospice. Old, battered and occasionally a bit grubby can be good.
Glue Gun
The latest weapon in my armoury, a small glue gun. For my cardboard architectural models PVA adhesive proved a bit awkward to use, using a scrap of card as a spatula.
When I’m using the glue gun I find it difficult avoid the hot glue if I’m holding on to a tiny strip of card so I’m applying the glue to the main model then adding the strip of card to the tacky glue. It works well for me.
Basketball Bottle Bank
Happy birthday to Leo. Another recent card. Our family does like to bunch a lot birthdays together.