TIM BAKER

Yes I am doing work other than Inktober but there is a massive backlog caused by…well Inktober in posting it. These pieces were done in September or late August, of Richmond Hill. The watercolour above was done in about an hour or so sitting on Richmond Hill (the famous one in London, not Leeds as the frankly crap maps on DuckDuckGo suggest) using a new pencil that will appear in my life drawings yet to post – the Stabilo All Graphite water-soluble pencil.

I learned about said pencil on YouTube where an artist said it was the blackest and best water-soluble pencil out there. I had to try it – it’s basically a watercolour chinagraph, which is really strange and a very little goes a long way. But it works although hard to get sharp detail with it. It is like a thin version of the Woody pencil, and can work on all surfaces hence the name.

Those who like a bit of local history, I’ve just looked up what that house is and it’s Petersham Hotel, designed by John Giles and finished 1865. I love the building, it’s very distinct and he also designed Langham Hotel, Hammersmith Hospital amongst others, workhouses and many mental asylums. No wonder Langham’s is haunted.

Another recent purchase was some Derwent XL blocks after really enjoying the free trial pack I won in a tombola at a certain art shop which doesn’t need the advertising (some of it’s staff need some customer service training though). I found them at a cheaper art shop as a set – you get a box of Graphite and another box of Charcoal. They are great fun and I use them a fair bit in my life drawing are also water-soluble. Strange to apply water to charcoal or graphite, but you get really nice effects when you do.

I hadn’t used them on a landscape before, so one day where I was a bit too late to go oil painting I stopped at a bench in the middle of the small wood by the old Royal Star and Garter Home (just looked on the map and it’s called the Tollemache Trail! Another Ham House link and they used to own Petersham) and did the above drawing on a scrap of A2 paper I had folded on my bag. It came out really well, I think – will do more large sized XL landscapes in future…when the weather isn’t so bad!