TIM BAKER

Of all the challenges this err, challenge has, I didn’t forsee Christmas being a problem. For a start I made my own cards which turned out to be more of a time sink than I thought – and all the other stuff to do with Xmas, I decided to suspend it over the Xmas and New Year period. So I resumed it a little late on January 3rd 2020, and have found it harder to get back in the swing. It really has been something like a two or three day challenge rather than a daily challenge.

Still I’ve done some good work if rather intermittently. The first bunch above are the figurative pieces, one is an interior ‘environmental’ self-portrait on the new Fabriano Rosaspina paper using the Molotow pump brush pen. The other is a quick fineliner sketch I did at the Royal Academy of the cast of the Farnese Hercules, which links back to Academic drawing and classical method – they used to teach students to draw this very sculpture. I have seen the original in Italy, it is amazing.

I am planning to do more sculpture drawings, as a sort of DIY Academy thing at various museums here.

Talking of interiors, these are purely interior ‘still life’ drawings (or paintings?) – something I haven’t done for a while but sometimes I like to just draw what is in front of me when the time comes around (hence the public transport drawings or the pink wine). I have been experimenting with Derwent Inktense blocks over the last week or so, and these are almost going back to my oil pastel days as a teenager, yet watersoluble. Unlike the watercolour sticks or NeoColor II crayons of old, these are actually quite soft, and easier to use. Lightfast too!

The others are quite hard and waxy, which although I loved the intense colour, meant I didn’t get on with what ended up like a child’s drawing as they didn’t really dissolve that well. The opposite can happen with the Inktense actually, sometimes. I’m OK with that. One thing: they aren’t as waterproof when dry as they make out, they can become like mud if you layer too much. White helps here. As Derwent says themselves, they are classed as ‘watercolour’ (hence not knowing whether these are strictly paintings or drawings!) but they are closer to ink or the Woody pencils in reality.

As well as interiors I have been working with still life using the blocks. Yes back to the bottle(s!). (And yes you might recognise this French Olive Oil bottle from Inktober!).

Also a friend commented that she find she could not do fine line work with the Khadi paper, that it was too rough and it spread. I decided to test this with my Khadi pad – which was the ‘smooth’ one, although still quite rough, more Cold Press/NOT that HOT. I drew a bottle I found at my parent’s old cottage in Shropshire, it’s obviously hand-made. I didn’t have any problems there with spread, unlike the separate sheet A3 Khadi which spreads a LOT. Maybe it’s just about timing – not rushing something in 20 minutes – and control?

Or maybe the Khadi smooth pad and the smooth paper sheets are totally different things.

Also talking of paper, surprisingly I have really been getting back into using the Daler Cellulose Watercolour Pad, and the A5 media pad. Cotton rich papers are just different, not necessarily better…I think I prefer the controllability of wood-based paper, the spreading that others love so much is actually a bit of a nightmare for a control freak like me.

Even if that random spreading and blending looks amazing and really cool sometimes. Good for more expressive impressionist blotchy ‘Flake Advert’ * works but accuracy? Give me wood paper any day.

* P.S. The rain really improved her watercolour, it’s terrible like a small child did it!

Next is a new piece I did last night from memory as it was raining and I was late, I really wanted to draw this scene, so later on I drew it from memory. Comparing it with the original scene on the way back, I didn’t do a bad job! Missed the wobbly bridge though, knew something was there but couldn’t ‘fix’ it. I quite often try and keep images in my mind during the life drawing sessions and keep going an extra 5 minutes…I want to be able to work from mental image eventually.

Then we have the abstracts – which aren’t a massive jump from the landscape above as they are abstract landscapes! Some like ‘Flog Curse’ above are totally imaginary but recall somewhere I once visited (I walked past a golf course next to a sea cliff which seemed a silly place to have one).

Others are like narrative abstracts – I take a bus ride and then just draw the symbols, shapes and patterns I see outside the window. So it’s like some sort of map or plan of the journey – if you rode these same buses, you’d see these things too. This goes back to my Cubist past (which sounds more mysterious than it is – basically I studied Cubism for my art A level).

Finally a rather cosmic spacey abstract – yes return of the glowing spheres sun (I call them silver sphere and golden sphere) and the plant like fronds and S-curves. This was I think the first drawing I did with Inktense blocks…and I was in love! Love the colour in this.

(Incidentally it works just as well rotated 90 degrees clockwise, where it again becomes a landscape, literally and figuratively. But this is how I drew it…)

By the way, some of the 5PM Challenge images are missing here because they are also part of Inktober 52 (yes there is a weekly Inktober across the whole year I am taking part in). They will get a separate post, probably when that project is finished – maybe 2021?