Mostly drawing

68 feet

Posted on March 25, 2015 by Ed Mostly

Commenting on my recent cafe sketches Chris said “How about a focus on feet and shoes for your next post? They drive me mad, and can make or break a quick sketch.” Be careful what you wish for…

Here are all the feet I could sketch in 20 minutes (just the lines, I added the ink wash later) while sat in a cafe near the counter. These are the customers waiting to place their orders, fidgeting impatiently, but holding still just long enough for some serious shoe gazing.

These are different views of a plaster copy of (Michelangelo’s) David’s left foot. Here’s a clay sculpture of a sinewy foot by Sherry.

And finally a selection of feet in Hokusai’s manga; lots of sandals and strong calf muscles!

Lexington grey in fountain pen and water-brush, watercolour, A5 – a few minutes for each foot/shoe?

Posted in brush pen, cafe, coloured paper, Feet, from life, Lexington grey, line drawing, monochrome, objects, sculpture, sketching, urban | Tagged cafe sketching, collection of feet, drawing feet, fountain pen sketch, Hokusai manga, ink sketches, Michelangelo's David, Ride, sketching sculpture, sketching shoes, urban sketching | 10 Comments

Japanese shrines

Posted on March 21, 2015 by Ed Mostly

Four shrines in Japan, where many of the statues wear red bibs (‘yodarekake‘), placed on them as a sign of devotion and usually faded to a soft pink in the sun and the rain. The second sketch is looking down one section of the many miles of vermillion ‘torii’ avenues at Fushimi Inari-taisha in Kyoto. The third is at a shrine next to the huge fish market in Tokyo, soon to be relocated; I love the fox spirits’ mischievous and slightly sinister expressions. The 2 figures next to the statue in the final sketch were done as a challenge while riding the Bullet Train; they’re passengers waiting on the platform, and the train only stops for 90 seconds in any station so sketches had to be very fast!

toriiLexington grey, Brown 41 and Bad Blue Heron in fountain pen and water-brush, watercolour, various sizes – various times…

Posted in animals, coloured ink, figures, Japan, journeys, sculpture, urban | Tagged bullet train sketch, fountain pen sketches, Fushimi Inari-taisha, Iggy Pop, inari, Japanese shrines, Kyoto sketches, sketching in Japan, torii avenue, urban sketching, very fast sketches of people | 5 Comments

In the kitchen

Posted on March 16, 2015 by Ed Mostly

More late night monochrome sketches, this time corners of the kitchen. In the first sketch I was drawn to the way that strong overhead light made shadows wrap around the apples. In the second one it was the tilted ellipses in the collection of bottles and jars. Working without colour I take more care over line, tone and shade; it’s all there is!

Lexington grey in fountain pen and water-brush, white gouache, A5 – 25 minutes

Posted in coloured paper, from life, fruit, grisaille, kitchen, Lexington grey, line drawing, monochrome, objects | Tagged domestic scenes, drawing ellipses, drawing jars and bottles, drawing shadows, fruit sketch, kitchen sketches, line and tone, monochrome sketching, overhead light, Peter Gabriel, sketching with fountain pen | 1 Comment

Cafe life

Posted on March 11, 2015 by Ed Mostly

People watching in cafes, mostly this year in Bath, but the last one’s from Istanbul a couple of years ago when I was using a marker pen. If you can get a good table a cafe’s a great winter sketching location; strong light sources, sheltered, fairly still subjects, and good coffee. I’ve been finding shoes tricky to get right; there’s something very odd about the angles of the sides of the soles…

Lots of media, including the inevitable Lexington grey, mostly A5 – various times

Posted in Bath, cafe, clothing, coloured ink, coloured paper, figures, from life, Istanbul, Lexington grey, line drawing, marker pen, monochrome, people, urban, waiting | Tagged Bath cafes, cafe sketching, drawing shoes, fountain pen sketches, Hafiz Mustafa, marker pen sketch, Rolling Stones, sketching people, sketching seated people, urban sketching | 6 Comments

Street parking

Posted on March 8, 2015 by Ed Mostly

More cars parked up on Bath streets. I didn’t use the acetate grid for these, but did have to work hard to get the relative size of the receding cars correct, to see what was there and not what I thought I could see. In the first picture I’m looking down the hill, but the cars still rise up the page! Here’s a short article about ways of seeing.

Lexington grey in fountain pen and water-brush, watercolour, A5 – 30 minutes each

Posted in Bath, cars, from life, Lexington grey, line drawing, sketching, street scene, urban, vehicles | Tagged Bath street sketch, drawing a street scene, drawing of line of cars, drawing what you see, fountain pen sketch, Public Enemy, receding cars, relative size, sketching cars, urban sketching | 10 Comments

Camden Road

Posted on March 4, 2015 by Ed Mostly

Chimney pots and windows at the back of Camden Road in Bath, sketched from the road above, while leaning on a high wall (in the foreground bottom left). It’s another view of Bath where the chaotic backs of the buildings are more interesting than the neater fronts. As in a previous post I’ve included the original fountain pen drawing (which I had to stop when rain started) with the initial pencil grid guidelines established using an acetate grid. Then the intermediate grisaille version where I added a Lexington grey ink wash for the main shading. The acetate grid was useful in getting the complicated perspective and proportions right, establishing a sound skeleton for the rest of the sketch.

Pencil, Lexington grey in fountain pen and water-brush, water-colour, A5 – 1 hour

And here’s a lovely loose water-colour sketch by Rowena, who emailed me about ways to get composition right in a landscape sketch. I suggested using some kind of acetate grid, she made one out of the top of Christmas cracker box, and this is her excellent first attempt at an outdoor scene! The eye is drawn down the path, but also out into the sunlit grass.

Posted in Bath, buildings, cars, from life, grisaille, Lexington grey, line drawing, street scene, technique, urban | Tagged acetate grid, Bath, Camden Road, chimney pots, composition of sketch, Fatboy Slim, fountain pen sketch, grisaille, rear windows, rooftop sketch, street scene, urban sketching, using a grid when sketching | 10 Comments

Waiting in town

Posted on February 28, 2015 by Ed Mostly

A bus queue lined up alongside Bath Abbey, and more tourists sat on benches (previously, and here). Drawing directly with ink means ‘mistakes’ are visible, recording the process of feeling out where the lines need to go. Usually I just restate the line, adding a more accurate or expressive one, but this doesn’t work on faces, and sometimes it’s better to start again. Which is why there’s a ghost sat to the left of the first bench. I had another go, and failed better.

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

Posted in Bath, body, buildings, figures, from life, inks, Lexington grey, line drawing, monochrome, people, street scene, technique, urban, waiting | Tagged Bath Abbey, Bath tourists, bus queue, couple on bench, Fail better, fountain pen drawings, mistakes in drawings, people on benches, restating lines, sketches of people in town, The Byrds, urban sketching | 2 Comments

Pan, pancake, lemons and sand-paper

Posted on February 23, 2015 by Ed Mostly

A week late, but here’s a kitchen scene from Shrove Tuesday. The fresh pancakes were too delicious to sketch mid-cooking, so I saved one after we’d eaten our fill and drew it once the pan had cooled. It was the scorched patterns on the pancake surface that had caught my eye, but the brown lines I drew to describe them were too strong; very fine sand-paper helped knock them back but it still looks over-cooked! A small piece of wet/dry paper is handy tucked in the back of a sketchbook…

Lexington grey in fountain pen and water-brush, Brown 41 in fountain pen, watercolour, A5 – 30 minutes

Posted in coloured ink, food, from life, home, inks, kitchen, Lexington grey, seasonal, technique | Tagged Amii Stewart, drawing of frying pan, lemons on a plate, noodlers inks, pan-cake in pan, pancakes, Shrove Tuesday sketch, sketch of kitchen scene, sketch of pancake, sketching food, using sand-paper when sketching | Leave a comment

Busted

Posted on February 20, 2015 by Ed Mostly

A fine pair of portrait busts from the upper floor of Bath’s Victoria Gallery (you can see both of them in the linked photo). First there’s Sir Cloudesley Shovell (honestly), a famous C17th admiral and guitarist. Then George 3rd, king of Britain for 59 years, sculpted by Turnerelli. Both were drawn in situ, with fountain pen for the lines, and dilute ink in water-brush for the shading; I added the blue water-colour to George to help the white marble stand out.

Noodlers Brown 41 and Platinum Blue Pigment inks in fountain pen and water-brush, Lexington grey in water-brush, water-colour, A5 – 20 minutes each

Posted in Bath, coloured ink, coloured paper, exhibitions, faces, figures, inks, Lexington grey, line drawing, monochrome, museum, objects, sculpture | Tagged Bath gallery, drawing sculpture, fountain pen sketching, George Harrison, King George 3rd, noodlers inks, Sir Cloudesley Shovell, sketching in galleries, sketching portrait busts, sketching technique, urban sketching, Victoria Art Gallery | Leave a comment

Cars, at rest

Posted on February 16, 2015 by Ed Mostly

Parked cars on the road approaching Lansdown Crescent (where the sheep were). Below is the picture without the water-colour glaze, then without the Lexington grey ink washes, revealing the ink drawing that I did on site. The pencil grid helped with the basic placing of the cars on the page and is useful with complicated views. I’ve got a piece of acetate cut to the same size as the page and marked with the same grid; by holding it in front of the scene I can avoid major errors of scale and proportion. Which doesn’t explain how the lamp-post ended up as a column…

Lexington grey in fountain pen and water-brush, clear wax crayon (as resist for the white lines), water-colour, A5 – 40 minutes