Mostly drawing

End of the line?

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Ed Mostly

I love a good memento mori, and this is the most striking one I’ve sketched so far. It’s a decommissioned crematorium oven (!) in the museum at Arnos Vale Cemetery in Bristol, found while on a sketchcrawl there with the Bristol/South West Urban Sketchers group last weekend. I also sketched a couple of graveyard statues (below), but the oven was the grimly fascinating highlight. It’s large, rusty, very old, and has obviously seen a lot of use; I started to see it as a gateway to the void, or a final destination, and some other visitors saw it as a face with an open mouth… I’d like to sketch it again, taking more time to do justice to the pipework and rusty textures; maybe I could enter it into James Gurney’s current painting challenge?

Lexington grey in fountain pen and ink brush, watercolour, A5 – 15 mins each for the statues, 30 mins on site for the oven’s line-work and main shading, with another 30 mins at home for the extra shading and colour

Posted in Bristol, brush pen, cemetery, death, figures, Lexington grey, monochrome, museum, urban sketching | Tagged Arnos vale cemetery, Belle and Sebastian, Bristol South West Urban Sketchers, crematorium oven, fountain pen sketching, graveyard sketching, memento mori, pareidolia, sketches of graveyard statues, urban sketching | 10 Comments

Analogue selfies

Posted on September 29, 2015 by Ed Mostly

Um, here goes… thirty self-portraits done over the last few years, usually late evening when I can’t find anything else to sketch to keep up the daily habit… I’m really quite a cheery soul, but the combination of staring into a mirror, and doing these late at night makes me look both dour and wrecked! But self-portraits are a good discipline, and you’re sketching the one life model who shouldn’t be too offended by the results. In some of these I can see traces of family members, in others a slight inaccuracy of line angle or distance has completely altered the likeness. My weight apparently waxes and wanes between sketches, my age seems to wander from twenty to eighty, and my nose grows and shrinks. But the glasses, eye-bags and lack of hair are always the same…

tree1 easter334 camden07

Posted in body, clothing, comparisons, faces, figures, self-portrait, sketching, watercolour sketch | Tagged comparing self-portraits, Rolling Stones, self-portraits, self-portraits over time, sketching self-portraits | 15 Comments

Harbour life #2

Posted on September 26, 2015 by Ed Mostly

More sketches from Tenby harbour. First the view from the quayside looking down and across beached boats at low tide, then a similar view from last year for comparison (stronger lines, lower angle, more pigeons…). Then a mix; a guided tour, two teenagers texting while stood in the water, people paddling, and one of the boats from the first picture afloat when the tide’s in. And finally some attempts at drawing the befuddling reflections of boats, briefly interrupted by an air/sea rescue helicopter and boat that suddenly appeared!

Lexington grey in water-brush and fountain pen, water-colour, A5 – an hour for the first one, and various times for the others

Posted in beach, boats, collections, drawing buildings, holiday, Lexington grey, line drawing, nautical, sea, Tenby, urban, urban sketching | Tagged air sea rescue helicopter, drawing reflections in water, Fontella Bass, ink brush sketches of water, sketches of boats, sketching harbour scenes, sketching water, Tenby harbour, tenby sketches | 5 Comments

Harbour life #1

Posted on September 23, 2015 by Ed Mostly

Four sketches of low tide at Tenby Harbour Beach this Summer. First some boats moored to the harbour wall (white Gelly Roll pen invaluable for the ropes), then small dinghies being taken out for a day’s sailing. The third one is from Castle Hill at dusk, light was fading fast and I could barely see the page by the end; and below it the same view at dusk last year. Finally a collection of all the boat names I could see when wandering around the beached craft, full of terrible puns, tribal allegiances, nautical dreams and yearnings for freedom; spot the name of the only working boat!

Lexington grey in fountain pen and water-brush, water-colour, white Gelly Roll pen, A5 – various times

Posted in beach, boats, brush pen, buildings, comparisons, holiday, ink brush, nautical, urban, urban sketching, Wales | Tagged boat names, boats at low tide, harbour scene, ink brush sketching, nautical sketches, Rozi Plain, sketching boats, Tenby harbour, Tenby Harbour Beach, twilight sketching | 7 Comments

54 people, mostly seated, and 2 dogs

Posted on September 20, 2015 by Ed Mostly

During the Summer holidays I binged on sketching the general public in Bath, my default approach to ‘urban sketching’. I enjoy the seasonal differences: sunglasses, shady hats and bare arms in Summer; compared to high collars, long coats and wooly hats in Winter! The ink-brush works well for this, faster than pen as it produces both line and tone, and the softness of the marks suits figure drawing.

(The Urban Sketchers Bristol/South West group will be visiting Bath for a sketch-crawl next month, Saturday 17th October. Details of time/location soon. Hope to see/meet you then..)

Lexington grey in water-brush, water-colour, A5 – 1 to 2 minutes per figure

Posted in Bath, brush pen, clothing, comparisons, figures, ink brush, Lexington grey, monochrome, people watching, seasonal, sketchcrawl, technique, urban, urban sketching | Tagged Bath sketch-crawl, drawings of seated figures, ink brush sketching, seasonal differences, sketching figures, sketching in Bath, The Mynabirds, urban sketching, urban sketching technique | 3 Comments

Mothly drawing

Posted on September 18, 2015 by Ed Mostly

A quick sketch of a dead moth for my three-hundredth post. Followed by some older sketches of other insects found in our garden for your further enjoyment…

Lexington grey in fountain pen and water-brush, water-colour, tiny – about 10 minutes

Posted in fauna, from life, garden, insects, Lexington grey | Tagged back garden sketching, fountain pen sketch, sketch of beetle, sketch of moth, sketches of insects, The Byrds | 2 Comments

Ink-brush buildings

Posted on September 15, 2015 by Ed Mostly

Following on from my experiments in sketching with an ink-filled water-brush I dug out an old Platinum fude brush pen. The nylon brush-tip’s a bit shredded so it’s not very detailed, but the ink flow is hugely better than the very popular Pentel brush-pen. I love its immediacy and the speed with which you can describe complete shapes, instead of using a pen for the edge lines and then a brush to add shadows and tone etc. I’m still trying to get the right strength of ink to complement the colour-wash, but overall the brush-pen is very liberating, encouraging me to have a go at quick urban sketches around Bath that I usually wouldn’t attempt in the time. (And I’ve given in to the lure of the sable-tipped version to get finer detail. Delivery from Japan takes two weeks…)

Lexington grey in Platinum fude brush-pen and water-brush, watercolour, A5 – various times

Posted in Bath, brush pen, buildings, drawing buildings, ink brush, Lexington grey, street scene, urban, urban sketching, vehicles | Tagged Bath streets, fude brush sketches, ink brush sketching, sketches of Bath, sketching street scenes, The Libertines, urban sketching, urban sketching kit, urban sketching technique | 8 Comments

Regency Parade

Posted on September 13, 2015 by Ed Mostly

Quick ink-brush sketches of yesterday’s ‘Grand Regency Costumed Parade’, part of the annual Jane Austen festival held in Bath. The parade ended appropriately in Parade Gardens, where some of the 500 participants stood still long enough to be drawn. On the right is Cecilia on her ‘hobby horse’, a pedal-free early bicycle, and right at the bottom a tiny glimpse of the wonderful ‘Amazing Camera Obscura’ which provided some Regency entertainment. My drawings don’t do justice to the extreme silliness of the Naval hats, and next year I’ll try and capture more of the wide range of beautiful costumes on display. Maybe I’ll dress up as a Regency sketcher and join the parade?

Lexington grey in ink-brush and water-brush, water-colour, A4 – 30 mins

Posted in Bath, brush pen, clothing, figures, parades, urban, urban sketching | Tagged Bath Regency parade, Camera Obscura, early Naval costumes, ink brush sketches, Jane Austen costume sketch, Jane Austen Festival, Parade Gardens, Regency costume sktches, sketch of hobby horse, The Jam, urban sketching | Leave a comment

Outdoor museum

Posted on September 10, 2015 by Ed Mostly

The Weald and Downland Museum is a collection of old buildings that have been saved from dereliction and demolition and given a new home. It’s like a much smaller, rural English version of Skansen, the wonderful original ‘open air museum’ in Stockholm. There’s lots to sketch, but I just managed the dark interior of a smithy, a thatched cottage from 1380 and some poppy heads with a hover-fly. I had fun gradually building up the shadows in the first picture, and note the other sketcher shamelessly sketch-bombing in the second picture.

Lexington grey in fountain pen and water-brush, white gouache, A5 – 45 mins