TIM BAKER

Long time without posting, but I’ve been keeping busy. Firstly trying to grab brief moments of reasonable weather after the week of glorious weather went away. From wind trying to blow my artwork away to days that seem nice but turn out grumpy when you finally jump on the bus, had it all. Even had the classic farce of running outside to photo some of my work because my useless app is threatening rain, it starts to rain almost immediately, I run inside, then of course it’s bright sunshine and no sign of this downpour! Weather isn’t just on shuffle, it’s schizophrenic.

But I managed to do some work indoors (to come) and also some watercolours of new places and old. First up is Nork Park, somewhere John told me about. Was during the Easter break so public transport (well lack of it) made it a mega schlep to get there and thus wasn’t much time.

I found a blue chair in the woods, by an interesting dead tree and fallen branches which seemed like a sign. I like being comfy when I paint and draw (standing up holding the clip board or my A3 Not That TuffBox* for hours is kind of a literal ache).

So I did a drawing of the fallen trees, and then turned around and did a watercolour looking through those trees onto the rather Ent/Antenna-looking dead tree.

I was experimenting with something inspired by a Jacob Epstein watercolour currently in the Van Gogh exhibition which I heartily recommend. I was not only using gouache for the first time, but also the idea of having very loose washes of watercolour and then drawing/painting over the top. Problem was, it didn’t dry quick enough and it got dark, and my drawing over it didn’t work, even with conte pencil. So take two…

Take two was a two-pronged affair (no green manalishis though, ho ho) with another rather ‘hmm’ experiment with black and white gouache but when I realised that conte crayon was the solution to the rather unimpressive (and very windy) first version, I went back and the result is far better. This is the photo taken before fixing, it seems that a lot of the vibrancy and a little detail is lost when I fix it, sadly. Not sure if that’s the watercolour paper or just the fact that pastels and conte do lose some of their ‘shine’ when you fix them.

* long story, but basically my first one had to get a refund cos it was So Damn ‘Tuff’ it got broken in the post! Very convenient for keeping watercolours and pastels from being messed up, but don’t jump on it. They’re rather fragile. BTW you can get them cheaper than that at the Range or via Amazon/eBay. Just hope your postie isn’t using it for karate practice like mine (if we ever see them, they seem to spend most of the time being invisible ninjas after privatisation)

And I seem to be obsessed by ‘park’ benches at the moment, they keep cropping up and I love to draw them. Strangely. Must be the 25th anniversary of Parklife or something. (what, Kurtis Blow, Fleetwood Mac and Blur references in ONE post? I am on random music reference fire tonight).