TIM BAKER

Since Inktober I’ve been ramping up the daily drawing (with a new challenge I will post about shortly) but this has a knock-on effect with working generally. I’ve been continuing the experimentation with white on black as part of the Dark Series (someone on Instagram called it ready for ‘Dark Mode’ which I might nick), as well as using Indian Ink in markers and refillable fine-liners.

The latter are better for the planet, since I do worry about all those pens adding to the plastic mountain or the stuff floating in the oceans…in this the likes of Pentel, Molotow, Liquitex, Montana, Dope Beast and apparently now Pilot get cheers in providing refillable options or empty markers so you can use your own ink. Although I’d prefer in the case of Pentel Brush Pen to have a local ink option rather than the expensive cartridges. In fact if I see the Liquitex pens cheap I buy them then throw out the weak-as-piss ink and add my own. The pens are great, the ink less so…

But Uni-ball aka Posca, Pigma and Staedtler get boos though for providing good pens without being able to buy the ink separately or officially being able to refill them (you can refill some Poscas, I use Molotow ink in my older Posca 17Ks but not all the Poscas can be opened).

Anyway here are some recent drawings of the Seething Wells Filter Beds near me using Jacksons and Winsor & Newton ink in said markers, and also those naughty Posca pens and the nice Molotow pens on Clairefontaine A5 pad in panoramic mode across two pages. The Zig Zag stairway above has inspired some of my abstract work already, and there is something rather Japanese about the drawing of the bank of the Filter Beds below.

The large ominous black hole in the bank inspired the title, which comes from a Timbuk3 song which came on shortly after finishing it. Of course my usual playing with language comes in, all is never what it seems (Who’s daddy? Who’s mine? Who’s down?).