TIM BAKER

Watercolour can be highly variable at the life drawing sessions, but this was a good one for that. I started with drawing, as per recent times, but the Markal drawings didn’t cut it, and only a few of the charcoal drawings were even postable, and one in detail only…None of the drawings were working.

So I was glad when I switched to watercolour that the sessions provided some decent and interesting pieces. Creativity via destruction was the name of the game – ‘Ruin Britannia’ above came about when I was unhappy with how the watercolour watercolour and just decided to let it drip and intentionally tried to destroy it by adding more water and shaking it to start drips. Oddly went from rubbish to ending up being one of my favourite pieces.

Sometimes I do that, I intentionally wreck or distress my work. I hate it anyway, and it can quite often create something that is much more interesting – I’m just as interested in the work that people leave behind in these sessions, scribbled out, which is sad because those are quite often the best pieces! Something about the violent/aggressive mark making, the emotional moment that can create something good.

In a similar vein, the one above was extreme wet-on-wet, with me pouring water on the painting at the end to try and create massive watermarks and do something much more abstract and random. Ended up being my favourite piece, I like the fact that the water erased some of my lines, this time I let it do it, and like the hazy/woozy feel.

I’ve been doing quite a few of these ‘Rorschach’ blots recently. A blotvert? I think I’ll call them the Rorschach Series. Interesting to go through my previous work and finding how more and more abstract I am getting with this. Lines are dropping away, more about struggling to make the watercolour itself work tonally despite the difficult nature of working with

So here’s a round up – starting with Drink n Draw back in April, then Sarita, #33, #34 & 172 in May and this piece in June. Interestingly it’s on the back of #34 (I re-use watercolour paper for pieces I’m not sure about, money is tight – but that work was an inspiration for continuing using this method). And the latest life session I’ve not posted yet includes another good one.