Category: People

Poacher Punch-up

punch upI’ve been using my new light pad a lot transferring roughs to the final artwork and, in this case, from initial rough to a cleaned up version. As you can see, I started this in pencil then defined it in ink.

strangleholdHaving gone to so much care with the second rough, there didn’t seem any point in tracing it in pencil onto the watercolour paper so I traced it in ink, trying to be free and relaxed in my line. That saves not only the stage of tracing in pencil onto the watercolour paper, but also a lot of rubbing out once the pen line has dried.

As a drawing, I prefer the rough, which is animated because of the pencil construction lines however I hope the final pen drawing will come to life when I add inked shadows and finally watercolour.

The Fight with Poachers

fight with poachersI’m acting as fight arranger this morning. As I pencil and then start inking the fight with poachers page I’m ironing out some of the inconsistencies in my roughs, always with clarity in telling the story as my main consideration.

handfightFor instance in my first version of the frame in which Waterton forces the poacher to drop the knife, I realised that the knife was falling the wrong way, as if the poacher had been holding it upside down.

Manga Now!

Manga Now! by Keith Sparrow and The Big Painting Challenge by Rosa Roberts.
Manga Now! by Keith Sparrow and The Big Painting Challenge by Rosa Roberts. Wish that I had time to go through the tutorials in both these books but at least they can give me a few tips for aspects of my comic strip.

I’ve always been sceptical of those ‘how to draw super-heroes’ books but in drawing this fight scene I can see the need for some kind of a system for getting dynamic figures convincingly onto paper. It’s more like choreography than life drawing. I’ve drawn my hand hundreds of times but always in a relaxed position.

I like this scribbly attempt to draw my hand in the right position as a drawing but it's not much use as reference for my comic strip.
I like this scribbly attempt to draw my hand in the right position as a drawing but it’s not much use as reference for my comic strip.

I tried one of Keith Sparrow’s suggestions in Manga Now! and put a small mirror on the desk to check out the outspread hand for the poacher dropping the knife but I couldn’t get my hand into the correct perspective nor could I hold the pose in the twisted outstretched position (too many cups of tea at breakfast time, as usual!)  and nor could I effectively sketch it single handed. Another problem is that my fingers are long so my hands don’t have the proportions that I need for my powerfully built poacher character.

I’d struggle in a similar way if I tried to take a photograph my hand so I’m concluding that building up the hand in simple block form (above), another suggestion in Keith Sparrow’s Manga Now!, is going to be the best way for me to get the dynamic hands in this story doing exactly what I want them to.

Link; Keith Sparrow author of  Manga Now! How to Draw Action Figures

Feet

feet2footIt’s so hot today that I’ve gone into shorts for the first time so this is a good opportunity to switch from drawing hands to feet.

My feet aren’t as weather-beaten as my hands but when it comes to watercolour I still go mainly for yellow ochre and dashes of permanent rose with neutral tint, burnt sienna and raw umber in the shadows.

The drawing with my foot resting on the arm of the sofa gives more descriptive lighting than the one down on our grey sofa because there’s a secondary light from the patio windows filling in the shadow down the right side of my foot.

I’ll try and use secondary lighting to add a touch of drama to some of the frames in my Waterton comic strip. Waterton went barefoot when he climbing trees, so I’m going to have to include feet at some stage.

Hand Coloured

hand in watercolourWith so many hands to draw for my Waterton comic, I might as well get a bit of practice in while I wait at the hairdressers.

I like the flat colour and confident line used in many comic strips, for example in the Adventures of Tintin, but my wiry pen drawing is better suited to watercolour.

A flat flesh colour wouldn’t give a true impression of the back of my hand which has yellowish and reddish patches plus a variety of browns and warm greys in the shadows. It looks lived in. Using pen and watercolour runs the risk of overloading the comic strip with visual information but I think it’s worth trying to make it work. My section of the story is set in a wildlife sanctuary so watercolour going to work well for the colours and texture of the natural world. In his autobiography, Waterton describes himself as looking as if he has spent his life out of doors in all weathers, so he needs to look like a part of the natural world too.

Customers in Costa

customers in CostaPerhaps because I’ve been rattling off so many storyboard frames for my comic strip project, I felt relaxed when I took the opportunity to draw the customers during our coffee break this morning. Perhaps the prospect of a large latte was helping me get in a suitably laid back mood too.

I like the way my new fountain pen glides about on the paper, perhaps a bit out of control but that’s something that it can be good to go along with. In fact I’m getting so mellow that I even quite like the wax-resist effect of the paper in my Moleskine sketchbook, an effect probably accentuated by my hand resting on the paper as I draw.

Auntie Bar

Barbara and Jack at my christening
Barbara and Jack at my christening

ebony warriorAs an 9 or 10 year old I pinned a map of Africa on my bedroom wall, surrounded by a collection of the 3D models of African animal heads that they printed on the back of Corn Flake packets. I hoped that some day I’d be able to fly out to Tanganyika to visit my godparents, Barbara and Jack Wilkinson, though sadly that never happened. I’ve still got the five inch tall ebony warrior that they sent me. He still sports his feathery plume, hide shield and Masai regalia but he lost his spear long ago.

Jack taught biology at the agricultural college at Arusha, close to the Kenyan border. It’s a beautiful setting with Mount Meru and Kilimanjaro looming in the background. Returning to Britain when Tanzania won its independence, they settled in Leek, Staffordshire, where Jack continued to teach biology. He died of cancer about thirty years ago.
Barbara was doing fine when we visited her last summer before my mum’s fall but she too had a fall at new year. She died on the morning of my mum’s funeral. Like my mum she was in her 97th year.
We made our way, via the Peak District, to her funeral today. I’ll miss our occasional visits to Leek to meet up with her and go out for a lunch, which for me was always Staffordshire oatcakes (a kind of pancake), at the White Hart Tearooms.

Fast Figures

medical staff

Waiting in audiology gives me a few moments to make snapshot sketches of the medical staff and patients, trying to take in as much detail as I can as they pass then sketching from memory.
in the waiting room

The man with broad shoulders in the black leather jacket was such a distinctive character but it wasn’t until he reappeared that I noted that he was wearing baggy black trousers, not matching leather trousers as I’d assumed. You can see my initial sketch was of close-fitting trousers.

sugar lumps

The bowl of sugar lumps is from yesterday’s coffee break at the Brasserie in the Courtyard near Settle.

 

Passers By

passers byFrom the window that I’m looking through I get to see people pass by just for an instant but each individual seems so distinctive that I think ‘this time I’ve got it’ but then I start thinking was his hat blue or was that his sweat shirt? What was the grey lady wearing on her feet? Was the strider with the haversack wearing some kind of waistcoat or body warmer?

passers bymanAs I said the other day, the more I practice doing this, the better my memory should become not just for the telling details but also for overall shape and character of each figure.

Perhaps I should find a cafe table overlooking a precinct and have a coffee morning drawing the crowds.

 

 

Great Knits of the Nineteen-sixties

spaniel and friends

I’m fascinated to go through the colour slides that I’ve gathered together from my mum’s. This photograph of my brother, my dad and Vache the springer spaniel was at the tail-end of an Agfacolour film, partly exposed to the light. I’ve had to do a bit of work in Photoshop to improve the exposure.

It reminds me so much of the knitting patterns of the period so I spoofed this up and e-mailed it to my sister. She writes;

‘Amazing picture!

I knitted those jumpers myself. Bill’s yellow polo neck was one I made to wear for riding lessons with Mr Dunn at Warmfield when I was 8. (Mum and Dad wouldn’t let me have a riding hat because it was too expensive and Health and Safety hadn’t been invented.)

The grey school jumper was from the same pattern but the V-neck version. In those days the yarn was pure wool without the advantage of added synthetic fibres and it looks as if both jumpers have felted and shrunk in the wash.

I think I still have the pattern.’

Even at that age my sister had a quirky sense of humour and I’m guessing that she must have taken this photograph and that she’d directed us to assume to poses of ‘knitting pattern boys’. Bill, who has always had theatrical leanings, is playing the part perfectly while I have been distracted, as I always am, by the nearest animal. My dad is probably wondering if Linda is operating his Akarette 35mm camera as she should.

Work isn’t Working

‘Your imagination will never come up with anything more exciting than what’s in front of you.’

Lachlan Goudie

people pageAt last I’ve got on to my new sketchbook, the one that I’m going to use for trips around town. We’re heading for Leeds on the train so it’s ideal for trying out Una Stubbs’ approach to drawing surreptitiously in public places;

‘If I’m on a station platform and somebody walks past, I’ll try and remember what they look like and then, when I can, I sketch them. I love drawing old people. I’ve always loved old people and how one line can change a face.’

Una Stubbs

costawestgt

Una Stubbs is a presenter on The Big Painting Challenge, currently on BBC 1 on Sundays, and Lachlan Goudie, a painter, is one of the judges. I find the series quite inspiring and although it features non-professionals  I find myself thinking why should they have all the fun?

shopperI try memorising the people in the Costa Cafe at Wakefield Westgate. A list of details such as pin-striped grey suit, Hawaiian shirt and two-tone shoes isn’t enough in itself to conjure up the pose, body shape and character but, if I keep practicing, my visual memory for these subtler traits should improve.

working democonsultant costa coffeeThis demonstration was about cuts in welfare benefits but my take on ‘Work isn’t working’ would be that if work always feels like a chore you should probably consider finding something else to do. Work takes up so much of your life.

The demonstrators were drawn from life from the vantage point of a department store window with a view up the Briggate pedestrian precinct. It was the first thing that I drew in the new sketchbook and I thought the slogan made a suitable aspiration; to be more relaxed and enjoy every drawing.

Buskers

busker busker

There are two kinds of buskers in Leeds; the ones that can belt it out but look rather ordinary . . .

. . . and the ones who look striking but still need a bit of musical training.

On the train back to Wakefield I had a chance to draw a man at the far end of the carriage from life rather memory. man in baseball capI realise that drawing from life is what works best for me but I’ll still keep trying to draw from memory.