Three attempts to capture the animation of Bath city centre, drawing people as they pass by, near or far, focussing mainly on the faces and posture and not worrying about overlaps. I was sat down, so some of the closer figures loom over the others. I drew the outlines of buildings, signs and pavements first to give me a loose structure to place the pedestrians in, and then just settled into people watching and bamboo dip-penning!
Sorry for the lack of recent posts; there’s no particular excuse, just the usual Christmas busy-ness and all the rest. I was still out sketching though, so here are four evening scenes in central Bath. Winter’s a busy time for Bath with a very popular Christmas shed chalet market attracting thousands of extra visitors. In the first two I slightly tilted the scene to be able to show more of the people and the streets stretching away into the distance. The third was from an upstairs cafe, so no tilting needed! (The first’s drawn with a fude fountain pen, the second in pencil, and the last two with bamboo dip-pen)
…all done late evening to keep up the daily drawing habit/obsession, and all drawn with bent-nib fude pens, great for both strong blocks of shady ink and fine lines for hatching… (Many of these have been posted to this fun group of fellow self-sketchers)
…and 168 others from the past few years!
Sketches from a trip to London, including trying out a new entry level iPad with Apple Pencil for drawing (I’m using Paper by 53 as the sketching app; it’s very basic in options so not too distracting with choices, but responsive enough to be expressive).
The view on the train to London. Resisting the urge to ‘undo’ is tricky with the iPad. Years of sketching in ink helps, but…
Looking down from the stairs that wrap around the central rotunda in the British Museum (sketched with the Confucius fude pen). The totem poles were being carved in 1850, around the time the museum was being built.
The view looking South from Parliament Hill sketched on the iPad. It looks a bit washed out, and I’ve been using black for my lines since then.
(Here’s the same view sketched in bamboo dip-pen with watercolour last summer…)
A few individuals seen about town, sketched on the iPad.
My reflection in the window opposite, on a rattling and swaying tube train from Oxford Circus to Paddington, on the way home (Sailor fude pen).
And finally fellow passengers and pigeon waiting in Paddington station (sketched with the trusty fude pen)…
Two original pistols from World War One. They could have faced each other in combat on a battlefield, now meeting in peacetime(ish) one hundred years later on a table in Shropshire, while I drew them with a bamboo dip-pen. A German officer’s Luger automatic, and an English officer’s Webley revolver. Very different guns to handle; the Luger is mechanically sophisticated, light, well balanced, while the Webley’s basic, heavy, and tips forward. But both lethal, and now out off action.
Other guns drawn over the years in various museums and collections…
A while ago I became fascinated by the strings of cars I passed as I moved around the city; always there, curling round the city’s contours, but rarely noticed… The mania passed, but it was good practise! (All done when I was using Lexington grey ink in a trusty Lamy Safari, and before I became equally obsessed with drawing people, so the streets look oddly empty…)
Various attempts to sketch sequences of time passing, in most of my favourite media…
