Bath is full of steep footpaths, and I’ve sketched this one several times before, always looking down. Here I’m looking up for a change, on an overcast afternoon.
1mm Pigma pen, water-brush with dilute Lexington grey and Windsor and Newton inks, white gouache, A5
Saturday morning sketching with Louise and Mark at the farmer’s market in Green Park Station, Bath. (The last train left the station in 1962, part of the notorious Beeching cuts.) The line drawing took about 30 minutes, with another 20 minutes adding an ink wash at home. I was trying out a large panoramic sketchbook I’ve made; having the extra space was a luxury, but it was tricky to handle when standing…
Topical note: Spot the red poppy being worn by a shopper ahead of Remembrance Sunday, today. (Click here to see the picture bigger)
Fountain pen and water-brush with Lexington Grey ink, A3 – 50 minutes
Guns, tipi pegs and keys from the recent ‘Gangsters and Gunslingers’ exhibition at the American Museum just outside Bath. Strange to see so many battered objects intimately associated with legendary figures. Dillinger’s fake gun was a particular delight.
(Following a post by Tina Koyama and a recent discussion on the Urban Sketchers Flickr pool I’m now adding the approximate length of time a sketch takes; each of these 4 sketches took about 5 to 10 minutes.)
Pencil, Lexington grey ink, white crayon, A4 – 30 minutes
Drawing hands continues to be a challenge so here are some recent attempts. The first set was while watching TV, pausing the program and drawing any hands in the shot as fast as possible. The second is a range of hands from the first few pages of Tintin in Tibet; Herge’s hands are brilliantly clear and simple and very hard to reproduce… Finally my left hand drawn from life.
Black, blue and brown Pigma pens, watercolour, A6
1mm Pigma pen, watercolour, A6
Pencil, watercolour, A6
Toy figures are well-behaved models, holding their poses indefinitely. They also give the opportunity to sketch rarely seen creatures, and from unusual angles.
Broad dip pen with Carbon black ink, water brush with dilute Carbon black ink, A5
White Uni Posca marker pen, 1mm Pigma pen, Lexington grey ink, pencil, A6
Pencil, Lexington grey ink, A6
Pencil, watercolour, tea, A5
Returning to a favourite model for a Halloween still life. This one’s a full size plastic medical model, bought in a flea market years ago. Skulls are fascinating subjects to draw, loaded with cultural traditions and artistic baggage, and currently appearing on t-shirts all over the world; ‘memento vivere’ or ‘memento mori’?
I used a cream Uni Posca marker for the initial lines, following contours to suggest volume and form, then Lexington grey ink for the shadows, and some pencil for final detail.
Uni Posca marker pen, Lexington grey ink in a water-brush, pencil, A7
And here are some earlier skull sketches…
Three pictures of seated subjects from the same day sketching around Bath. Ceramic ‘Immortals’ at the Museum of East Asian Art, an excellent busker called Ben Powell, and a resting shopper. The last two sketches are tiny, and the black line through the first picture was left from a previous drawing…
Pencil, lexington grey ink, watercolour, A6
Pencil, watercolour, A8?
Pencil, Lexington grey ink, A8?
Looking down The Shrubbery, a steep path near our home in Bath. You have to squint a bit for it to work, and that’s a conservatory half-way up the house on the left, built on a balcony. (I blended dilute Winsor and Newton inks to make complementary colours and then loaded them into 2 water brushes. The sepia tone ages the picture, but it’s a very portable set-up…)
Dilute Winsor and Newton ink in water-brushes, A5
Here’s an earlier sketch from further up the same path that I posted in February.
Marker pen filled with carbon ink, water-brush filled with Diamine grey ink, A3
People watching at the seaside this Summer. The first was drawn at beach level, with nearby families, passing promenaders, distant swimmers and surfers. The second was from a cliff path, the figures tiny and silhouetted on the sunlit beach below; some of them look like they’ve wandered out of an L S Lowry street scene.
Pencil, water-brush with dilute Lexington grey ink, A5
Water-brush with Lexington grey ink, A6
More sketches from the recent British Museum Pompeii exhibition. First the famously contorted death-cast of a guard dog, followed by a mosaic door sign (“Cave canem”- beware of the dog) found in the same villa; it’s hard not to see the sign as a portrait of the dead dog when alive…
And this was one of a pair of sculptures depicting violent hunting scenes, found in the ‘House of the stags’ alongside the drunken Hercules I posted last week.
All pencil, with a little dilute Lexington grey ink and watercolour, A5
Mostly drawing 