Two scenes of Tenby beach-life, complete with seagull drones, ice-cream van, and parasols. The first was from the cliff top, the second from rocks at the base of the cliff, and each is followed by their pre-watercolour version. Finally the same view as the first from last year’s trip to Tenby. Memories of Summer while wind and rain lash the windows…
Lexington grey in fountain-pen and water-brush, watercolour, A5 – about 1 hour each
My friend Barry is writing a book about his recent experience of learning to use a wheelchair and the wider impact this has had on his life. He’s kindly asked me to illustrate it, so once a month I go round to his house and sketch objects and scenes. The book’s made up of reflections and anecdotes, some positive, some not so, and each illustration has a colour to match the mood of the piece. It’s interesting doing a series of pictures with such a specific and consistent ‘look’ (fountain-pen for line, ink-wash for shadows, and water-colour), especially as I now rarely use pen for line in my daily sketches. It’s also lovely to sketch a diverse range of subjects in such good company and in the comfort of someone’s home; instead of leaning against a wall, outdoors, I’m sat on a chair, eating freshly-baked bread and listening to great music!
Lexington grey in fountain-pen and water-brush, watercolour, A4 – about 1 hour each
All the lines were done in brush-pen, loaded with various water-proof inks; Noodlers Brown 41 (the first four), Noodlers Lexington grey (the fifth), and Carbon black (the last). The warm brown ink suits the subject best, merging with the colour wash at times, and the blue paper adds a deathly hue… I’m trying to use stronger water-colour washes, as they always dry weaker, and not just relying on grey for shadows.
Kuretake ink-brushes with various inks, watercolour, A5 – about 20 mins each hand
As a break from ink-brush propaganda here are some pencil landscapes from the Summer. The first is on a lane in Lancashire during a light rain shower, the second and third on the Galloway coast (clouds over the distant Isle of Man, and a peaceful dusk near Kirkudbright). Pencil’s lovely for feeling out the lines in a landscape, and great for blind drawing the clouds and foliage. The way it smudges for tone is also useful, but not the way this then spreads through the whole sketchbook… A water-colour wash seems to fix the graphite to the page, so I’ve tried using just gum arabic as a portable and non-stinky clear fixative – fail! Any ideas?
5B Grafwood pencil, water-colour, A5 – 20/30 mins each
Another sketch of the rear windows of the Circus (older versions below), this time using the Kuretake #40 ink-brush. Ink-brushes are wonderfully suited to drawing soft, curved and organic subjects (people, clothing, foliage, landscapes etc) so I’m seeing how they work with subjects that are more linear and ‘technical’. I’ve darkened the ink (or rather, stopped diluting it) and this has helped to make the brush-strokes more definite than in the second earlier sketch. The soft brush-tip demands more control than a pen-nib to ensure lines have a consistent width when needed, but this is more than balanced by its speed, versatility and expression.
Lexington grey in #40 ink-brush and water-brush, water-colour, A5 – 30 mins
If you want to try ink-brush/brush-pen sketching I recommend the cheaper, but still excellent, Kuretake #8 which has a nylon brush-tip. (There’s a more expensive #13, but this has exactly the same tip as the #8 (and also a #50, which again has exactly the same sable brush-tip as the cheaper #40!)). And even cheaper is a ‘detailer’ water-brush filled with ink… Whichever you choose they all have much better ink flow and brush-tips than the popular Pentel brush-pen. There, no excuses for not having a go!
The evenings are drawing in, so there’ll be more interior sketches for a few months… Here are recently harvested apples and kitchen shelves, all done with my new preferred kit (Kuretake #40 brush-pen with Lexington grey for line, dilute LG ink in fine water-brush for shadow, and watercolour). “How do ya like dem apples?“
Kuretake #40 ink-brush with Lexington grey, water-brush with dilute Lexington grey, water-colour, A5 – 20-30 mins per sketch
From a visit to Aberporth a couple of years ago, trying out an inflatable canoe (it’s great!). I paddled around the headland to an inaccessible cove near the missile testing range, and sketched the beached canoe as the tide came in…
Lexington grey in Lamy Safari and water-brush, A5 – 20 mins lines and basic shadows on the beach, 20 mins boosting the shadows at home, resisting the urge to add colour!
Lots of buskers, mostly in Bath, and some of their audiences (ranging from the totally disinterested to the partially engaged). There’s a few more sketches of barefoot Ben Powell, a bottle-neck slide cigar-box guitar player, and a couple who were accompanying Morris Dancers looming like giants over a very fast sketch of Saturday crowds on Milsom Street. These sketches are all brush-pen, apart from one using the trusty Lamy Safari. If only I could combine the precise clarity of pen, with the loose liveliness and speed of an ink-brush. Darker, fuller (go-go dancers!) strength Lexington grey could be the answer…
Mostly Lexington grey in brush pens, and water-colour, A5 – various times
I’ll follow Stuart’s advice and post something cheerier and less morbid (mostly). So here’s a range of faces seen on a day trip to Oxford, most from the wonderful Ashmolean Museum, which I’ve posted about before. They span the whole history of portraiture, from the twenty-five thousand year old ‘Venus of Brassempouy’, through the second century CE Indian sculpture of an ascetic and a Roman Fayum mummy portrait (a brief return to the death-related), to happy faces in a lovely twentieth-century Chinese print. The final face is contemporary, seen on the train home; he’d fallen asleep…
Lexington grey in Kuretake #40 brush-pen and water-brush, water-colour, A5 – about 15 mins per face?
Mostly drawing 