TIM BAKER

Another good session for ink – it seems when I try to add colour – e.g. Inktense or watercolour – it goes wrong. Combining them can go well – or it can go very wrong with the sole watercolour below ‘Whats-Her-Face’ (named after a Christine and the Queens song) which despite the fact the face was scrubbed out three times and in the end just left I rather like it.
I love the idea of laying down loose watercolour then going over with brush and ink, although in the 20 minutes any possibility of the watercolour drying is something that only happens in the hottest summer day! (I live in Britain, we get very few of those).

I also tried out using ink and wash over a fine line drawing on the Khadi pad (above), which turned out to be the best portrait of Megan. I think I overdrew this, then again after seeing Picasso draw in timelapse / reverse at the Royal Academy exhibition, I am trying to be less self-aware about that now. Like my erased watercolour he scrubbed out lines, redrew them, rubbed them out again, and again…he was never happy. One of the best artists in the world, top of his game, constantly adjusting and erasing what he did.

Sometimes you need to push things forward, even destroy them, to get to the other side. ‘Knowing when to stop’ is a bit of a misnomer, because you quite often don’t know what is too far until you have stepped over that line, and that teaches people to not take risks. You have to take those risks, and develop strategies for reverting things when they go wrong or too far.

Sure, stopping after you have stepped over that ‘too far’ line is good, but drawing and painting is a process, the mistakes are part of that process, and quite often you look at things where you did stop and realise it was too early.

I was also trying out some new brushes, the Derwent Technique brushes meant for Inktense which Rymans has for £5 at the moment. Bargain! I got them for the fan and the comb brush, which I was missing for my landscape foliage, but found that the sword liner and rigger brushes fast became my favourites. Love the swooping lines of the sword liner, and the ability to draw with the tip, and the fine lines of the rigger (which was designed for rigging of ships, hence the name).

They are basically synthetic Taklon-type brushes but they are decent quality, being Derwent. (Tip: always buy Derwent things on sale, they are pricey but shop around).

And finally, a back view called ‘Watching The Stars Go Out’ which like the others I planned to use colour with but ran out of time. Here I am using various brushes, the sword liner and rigger, even a large makeup ‘blusher’ brush on the background which was created by intentional spattering and blobbing various inks on wet paper. It feels like a sister piece to ‘Staring At Dead Stars’ end of last year, and the name is a reference to one of my favourite Dubstar tracks.