Mostly drawing

Around Funchal

Posted on April 28, 2016 by Ed Mostly

More from Madeira, three general views around the capital. The first is from a rocky beach (they’re all rocky on Madeira…) near the harbour, buildings crowding the crumbling cliff. Then looking down a central street towards the surrounding hills, cloud descending. Finally a view from the harbour up to the hills, with more clouds wrapping around the peaks. All in brush-pen (just dilute ink in the last one, hence the washed out look), with the ever-useful white gel pen for fiddly bits.

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Lexington grey in brush-pen and water-brush, water-colour and white gel pen, A5 – 30 mins each

Posted in beach, brush pen, buildings, clouds, coloured paper, holiday, ink brush, Madeira, street scene, urban, urban sketching, white pen | Tagged brush-pen sketching, Lexington grey sketches, sketches of cloudy hills, sketches of Funchal, sketching in Madeira, The Orb, urban sketching, white gel pen sketching | 4 Comments

Sheltering and walking

Posted on April 23, 2016 by Ed Mostly

Madeira is famous for its ‘levadas’, over 2,000km of hand-built irrigation channels with narrow paths alongside that snake along the contours of the hills, bringing water from the rainy Northern hilltops to the fertile Southern slopes. Our first attempt to walk them was rained off, so we spent a happy couple of hours in an inn, drinking coffee, eating pastries, and drying out by a lovely fire instead. During our stay several coach loads of other tourists arrived and left, and a cockerel pottered about, pecking crumbs off the floor while the rain hammered down outside. A couple of days later we managed a proper levada walk, and I did a couple of quick pencil sketches as we went, keeping half an eye on the unguarded sheer drops that kill several walkers each year…

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All sorts, including pencil, fountain-pen and ink-brush, all A5 – various times

Posted in Birds, brush pen, fire, holiday, ink brush, Madeira, travel, walking | Tagged levada sketches, levada walking, Ribeiro Frio, sketches of cockerel, sketches of fireplace, sketching in Madeira, The Quik | Leave a comment

Madeirans

Posted on April 17, 2016 by Ed Mostly

People watching in Madeira, where the fine weather encourages lots of public loafing; very helpful for sketchers! The first three were done using Derwent Inktense pencils. They’re very smooth to draw with, quick to capture an expressive line, non-smudging (the key draw-back with my favourite 5B pencils) and full of pigment when wet with a water-brush; a very handy sketching tool.

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funchal221 Derwent Inktense pencils, ink-brush with Lexington grey, water-colour, A5/A4 – various times

Posted in figures, holiday, line drawing, Madeira, monochrome, pencil, people watching, urban, urban sketching | Tagged drawing figures in public, Inktense pencils, Me Me Me, monochrome, pencil sketching, sketching in Madeira, sketching people in public, urban sketching, urban sketching kit | Leave a comment

Madeiran market

Posted on April 14, 2016 by Ed Mostly

Just back from Madeira, a beautiful sub-tropical Portuguese island, 360 miles west of Morocco. Many sketches to share, starting with the main fruit and flower market in Funchal, the capital. I used an acetate grid to mark out key lines, then sketched fairly loosely in pencil from halfway up the stairs, the sketchbook clipped open and mostly stable. If you visit the market watch out for the hard-sell on over-priced passion fruit upstairs, but do enjoy the amazing variety of locally grown fruit and flowers, and the melodiously whistling market porter.

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6B pencil, dilute Lexington grey in water-brush, water-colour, A4 – 40 mins

Posted in buildings, fruit, holiday, Madeira, markets, pencil, people, travel, urban, urban sketching | Tagged Brother Bones, Funchal market, pencil sketch of market, sketch of Funchal market, sketching in Madeira, urban sketching, yellow umbrellas | 5 Comments

Park tree

Posted on April 7, 2016 by Ed Mostly

I went to the Botanical Garden to sketch the magnolias again, but it was shut (“Gates will be locked one hour before sunset”). So I sketched a tree across the road instead. Brown ink in a Kuretake #8 for the line work, and the usual suspects for the rest. Adding layers of dilute Lexington grey lets me boost the contrast in key areas; it’s my favourite part of the whole process, gradually building depth.

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Noodlers Brown 41 in Kuretake #8, Lexington grey in water-brush, watercolour, A5 – 45 mins

Posted in Bath, botany, brush pen, coloured paper, ink brush, Kuretake, park, trees, urban, urban sketching | Tagged brush-pen sketching, building depth in a sketch, ink brush sketching, ink washes for tone, Johnny Cash, sketch of tree, sketching in Bath, urban sketching | 2 Comments

Cloudy

Posted on April 3, 2016 by Ed Mostly

The same cloud sketched four times, continually changing as sunset approached (‘cloud’ is sometimes more verb than noun). The light pencil lines were mostly drawn blind, with watercolour wash added straight after the final drawing, the colours still fading from the sky. The clouds were clouding over a city, and I was stood in the city sketching them; is this urban sketching? Below are some other attempts at clouds from the last few years.

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Pencil and watercolour, A4 – 30 minutes

Posted in Bath, blind drawing, clouds, collections, line drawing, sky, sunset, twilight, watercolour sketch | Tagged blind contour, blind drawing, is this an urban sketch?, Kate Bush, pencil sketches of sky, sketches of clouds, sketching at sunset, sketching the sky | 2 Comments

Magnolias

Posted on March 31, 2016 by Ed Mostly

Three attempts to catch the rich lusciousness of magnolias blooming in Bath’s Botanical Gardens. For the first and last ones I used fountain pen for the initial drawing, for the second one brush-pen and white roller-ball. The white paper and Payne’s Grey wash on the first helps to capture the petal’s glow, but this was scuppered in the last one by using grey paper and grey ink for shading, duh!

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Posted in Bath, botany, brush pen, coloured paper, comparisons, flowers, garden, urban sketching, white pen | Tagged Bath Botanical Gardens, fountain pen sketches, sketches of flowers, sketches of magnolias, sketching in Bath, The Apples in Stereo, urban sketching | Leave a comment

City life

Posted on March 26, 2016 by Ed Mostly

People about town; waiting for the lights to change so they can cross the road (excellent fast sketching opportunity, the tableau changes every couple of minutes…), watching a busker (the violin playing slack-rope walker I’ve sketched before, see below), dodging a heavy rain shower, and enjoying the current Grayson Perry exhibition. The brush-pen’s liberated me to do many more of these ‘on-the-go’ sketches, leaning against a wall, trying to catch the key shapes of life flowing past, great fun!

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Lexington grey in Kuretake #8 and water-brush, water-colour, A5 – various times

Posted in Bath, brush pen, buskers, figures, ink brush, Kuretake, Lexington grey, monochrome, people watching, shoppers, street scene, urban, urban sketching | Tagged brush-pen sketching, Manchester Symposium, monochrome, Seu George, sketching in Bath, sketching people at gallery, sketching people in the rain, sketching street scenes, urban sketching | 2 Comments

Walking zoom

Posted on March 20, 2016 by Ed Mostly

A sequence of tiny sketches, starting half-a-mile away from Bristol’s St Mary’s Redcliffe church (which Queen Elizabeth I called “the fairest, goodliest and most famous parish church in England”), passing the Thekla boat, and gradually zooming in on the beautiful and unusual moorish doorway and one of its C14th carvings. My favourite brush-pen was great for this, quickly capturing the lines and forms in 5 minute thumbnails. The sketches were done on the way back from the latest Bristol/South West Urban Sketchers meet-up, where I was too busy chatting to get much sketching done!

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Posted in Bristol, brush pen, buildings, church, ink brush, sequential, street scene, urban, urban sketching | Tagged Bristol sketching, brush-pen sketching, ink brush sketching, Kuretake #8, sequential sketches, sketch of church, St Mary's Redcliffe, The Byrds, Urban Sketchers Bristol/South West, urban sketching | Leave a comment

Bath Half

Posted on March 15, 2016 by Ed Mostly

Sunday was the annual Bath half-marathon, with great weather helping over twelve thousand runners pace the streets. It’s an amazing and moving spectacle, with a huge variety of people running for lots of different causes, some very personal and some very public. Many were in fancy dress (spot the large wig), including two taps, a squad of storm-troopers, a camel, a two person pantomime horse, and one was carrying a fridge full of beer. They were mostly moving too fast for me to sketch with a pen (see final picture), so I switched back to brush-pen, which gave me a better chance to catch the generic poses and shapes that were flowing past in a continuous stream for over an hour (must work on improving my visual memory). The spectators were much easier…

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