Mostly drawing

In Memoriam…

Posted on December 31, 2014 by Ed Mostly

Tombs, memorials and statues are another great source of patient models for sketching, so here are seven monochrome examples spanning three thousand years to finish 2014. ‘Memento Mori’ or ‘Memento Vivere’ depending on your mood in the run up to the New Year… First there’s a Victorian Duke’s tomb in Chester Cathedral, complete with a loyal hound resting at his feet (in the medieval style).

Then a Tudor mathematician’s memorial (inventor of the ‘equals’ sign!) and an unusually cadaverous fifteenth century tomb, both in St Mary’s Tenby.

Followed by a Bronze Age female skull in Tenby museum, and a statue of Prince Albert with a seagull perching on his head, also in Tenby.

And finally a pair of military memorials from Bath Abbey; a Civil War tomb, the faces vandalised over the years, and a bas-relief of an eighteenth century Brigadier General.

Pencil, white Gelly Roll pen, Lexington grey and Brown 41 ink, white water-colour, gouache, A6 – range of times

Posted in body, collections, coloured ink, coloured paper, death, inks, line drawing, monochrome, monument, sculpture, skeleton, urban | Tagged Bath Abbey, Bronze age skull, dog at feet of knight, drawing of skull, Edwin Starr, Hugh Lupus Grosvenor, memorials, Prince Albert, Robert Recorde, sketching in churches, sketching statues, St Mary's Tenby, statue of dog, tombs, urban sketching | 1 Comment

My left hands…

Posted on December 28, 2014 by Ed Mostly

…eleven of them this time, in a range of media. It’s a very reliable model, always there when I’m stuck for something to draw at the end of a long (Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young and Jones!) day, increasingly familiar, but with a fairly limited range of poses. And not at all sinister.

Pencil, fountain pen, the 3 usual inks, watercolour, mostly A6 – around 10 minutes per hand

Posted in body, collections, coloured ink, coloured paper, every day matters, from life, hands, inks, line drawing, monochrome, self-portrait, sketching | Tagged Crosby Stills Nash and Young, drawing own hand, fountain pen sketching, left hand, my left hand, noodlers inks, sketching hands, sketching with coloured inks, Tom Jones | 3 Comments

Him off the Teevee

Posted on December 25, 2014 by Ed Mostly

TV is always a good source of faces to sketch, press pause and they’ll happily pose for as long as you need; I like the way the drawings tend towards caricature. There’s sometimes a bit of lens/screen distortion on archive clips, and I think the trick is to work fairly fast. It doesn’t have the satisfaction of translating the 3D world into 2D, but it’s great for spotting the key lines and tones on a face, and rendering them accurately. So here’s a leonine BBC history presenter enthusing about castles, an all-round entertainer smoking and singing, a top international chef with a fine forehead, and an extravagantly coiffured late 1960’s singer/songwriter. Happy Christmas TV viewing!

Noodlers Brown 41 in fountain pen, Lexington grey in water-brush, watercolour, A6 – all fairly fast

Posted in brush pen, coloured paper, inks, Lexington grey, line drawing, monochrome, people, sketching, television | Tagged Chef Oberoi, Dr Sam Willis, faces on tv, fast sketches of faces, fountain pen sketches, noodlers inks, Otis Redding, Peter Sarstedt, Sammy Davis Jr, sketching from the tv | 1 Comment

On the beach #3

Posted on December 23, 2014 by Ed Mostly

A final batch of monochromes from Tenby’s beaches. First the tractor that pulls a mobile jetty up and down the beach in time with the tides (here’s a similar beach-tractor in Aberporth), with sight-seers returning from a boat trip to Caldey Island. Then a fast brush-pen sketch of the North Harbour and beach seen from the castle hill on a stormy evening in fading light. And finally some strangely eroded stones I beach-combed. The rocks have been nibbled away and thoroughly tunnelled by piddocks, leaving them oddly light, like petrified sponges. I added a yellow background to the picture, but think the original’s better…

Noodlers Lexington grey and Brown 41 in fountain pen, Lexington grey in water-brush, white gouache, A5 – Tractor/30mins, harbour/10mins, rocks/40mins

Posted in beach, boats, brush pen, clouds, coloured ink, coloured paper, from life, holiday, Lexington grey, line drawing, monochrome, sea, Tenby, vehicles, Wales | Tagged beach tractor, beach-combing, Caldey Island, eroded rocks, mobile jetty, monochrome sketches, piddocks, Primal Scream, seaside sketching, Tenby harbour, tractor, urban sketching | 4 Comments

On the beach #2

Posted on December 21, 2014 by Ed Mostly

Another couple of coastal sketches from Tenby. First a collection of people on the beach (both in full technicolor and the original on location line-drawing), followed by the same beach seen from a cliff-top bench, with nautical railings obscuring the view. Beaches are great for quick sketches of people, with all ages doing all sorts of things, both moving and static. There’s usually a good viewing position above the scene, and the neutral background makes the shapes easier to read. Below are some similar pictures from previous posts…

Noodlers Lexington grey and Brown 41 in fountain pen and water-brush, watercolour, A5 – 30-40 mins

Posted in beach, coloured ink, every day matters, from life, holiday, inks, line drawing, people, sketching, watching | Tagged beach, cliff-top view, collections of people, Dinosaur Jr, drawing distant figures, fountain pen sketching, noodlers inks, people on a beach, people watching, railings, sketching on the beach, Tenby | 4 Comments

On the beach #1

Posted on December 19, 2014 by Ed Mostly

Two from Tenby, where I spent some blissfully vacant days sketching in the Summer. First a range of boats beached in the North Harbour at low tide, with an inquisitive pigeon exploring the seaweed. This was drawn on location, along with the key shading for the boats, but the colour was added later from memory; I’ve posted the uncoloured early version below for comparison. Then there’s a picture of the same boats seen from the opposite direction, while sat on a cafe terrace in one of the candy coloured buildings that appear top left in the first picture.

Noodlers Brown 41 in fountain pen, Lexington grey in water-brush, water-colour, A6/A5 – 30 mins each

Posted in beach, boats, buildings, from life, holiday, line drawing, monochrome, sea, Tenby, urban | Tagged adding colour to a sketch, boats at low tide, candy coloured buildings, fountain pen sketching, North Harbour, seaside sketching, sketching boats, St Etienne, Tenby, urban sketching | 2 Comments

Sketching cars #2

Posted on December 12, 2014 by Ed Mostly

A second collection of car sketches. First a very cute Corvette I saw near our home; lots of beautiful details in this car, all the way down to the sting in the tail of the ‘G’ in the logo. Next there’s a full-size wire-frame model of a London taxi on display at Heathrow airport. Then another Citroen, less glamorous this time, followed by most of a Ford Anglia (like Ron’s), and finally a taxi- driver seen briefly in Kyoto.

All the usual inks, pens, water-brushes and paints, a range of sizes, A5 to A8 – various times, 5 mins to one hour

Posted in Bath, cars, coloured ink, coloured paper, from life, inks, line drawing, monochrome, street scene, urban, vehicles | Tagged Benedict Radcliffe, Citroen 2CV, Corvette Stingray, drawings of cars, Ford Anglia Deluxe, fountain pen sketches, Japanese taxi, London Taxi, sketching cars, Taxi Driver OST, urban sketching, wire frame car model | Leave a comment

Ow, my head hurts

Posted on December 9, 2014 by Ed Mostly

Two bisected heads; first a pickled crocodile at the Grant Museum in London (tiny and old but very lovely), and then an anatomical model human at the Tokyo Museum of Emerging Science (large and modern, where I saw all the robots). I sketched them 3 days apart on either side of the globe, the wonders of the jet age. (That’s a printed line map of Japan on the human face, pre-stamped before I drew the head. I was running out of paper…)

Noodlers Brown 41 ink in fountain pen and water-brush, watercolour, A5 – 20 minutes each

Posted in animal, body, coloured ink, death, exhibitions, from life, inks, Japan, line drawing, monochrome, museum, skulls | Tagged anatomical sketches, bisected heads, crocodile head, fountain pen sketches, Grant Museum, Rage Against the Machine, section of crocodile head, section of human head, sketching in museums, sketching with coloured inks, Tokyo Museum of Emerging Science | 3 Comments

Sketching cars #1

Posted on December 3, 2014 by Ed Mostly

I kept noticing interesting cars during the Summer, and tried sketching a couple of them. Here’s Eelke’s well-loved and well-travelled Citroen DS (it’s a ‘1974 DS 23 Pallas injection electronique hydraulique’). Eelke had driven it from Holland, around England, Wales and Ireland, and was on his way back to Holland when I met him in Tenby. My drawing doesn’t capture the various scratches, dings, modifications, bodged repairs, replaced panels etc that added to the car’s wonderful patina.

cars3 Pencil, Pigma 1mm pen, watercolour, A5 – about an hour

The curves and proportions are very tricky on cars, especially when you’re drawing standing up. I used a transparent grid to get the initial key lines correctly placed but still managed to draw the bonnet too short… I sketched the rest of the car freehand in pencil, adding the ink lines, tone and shading at home. Below there’s the sketch in progress, and a photo of me drawing the car; you can see how the Citroen’s luxuriously long and elegant curves stood out in the car-park. I just stood out.

Here are some blander cars, sketched on a windy day while sat on the steps outside No 1 Royal Crescent, Bath. More car sketches to follow.

Pigma 1mm pen, water-colour, A6 – 30 mins

Posted in Bath, cars, coloured paper, from life, line drawing, monochrome, pencil, urban, vehicles | Tagged car proportions, Citroen DS, DS 23 Pallas, Fantastic Plastic Machine, grid lines in drawings, No 1 Royal Crescent, sketching cars, urban sketch of cars, urban sketching | 1 Comment

I, Robert

Posted on November 29, 2014 by Ed Mostly

Some robot/robert sketches from Japan, mostly at the Tokyo Museum of Emerging Science. First some animatronic manikin heads that nod and change expression empathetically when you speak into a microphone. They’re looking down on Asimo, the museum’s star attraction, named after Isaac Asimov, which walks in a most unsettling and hypnotic way… Then there’s a ‘hepatic touch’ robotic hand looming over some earlier drawings of people resting on the grass outside. And finally a 5 minute sketch (“Ed, the coach is about to go…”) of a MASSIVE Transformer robot outside a shopping centre. That’s a small child stood by its right foot.

Lexington grey and Brown 41 inks in fountain pen and water-brush, pencil, water-colour, A6 – 5 to 15 minutes each