Friendly or unfriendly is the Thames…These are the theme of the next two watercolours. The first is below, a piece called ‘Come Friendly Thames And Run Softly’ and is of Steven’s Ait and the Kingston rail bridge on Fabriano paper. I sat on a landing pontoon over 2 metres from the bicyclists who still insist on whizzing past too close to people, and indeed one silly woman rode onto the landing and stopped right next to me and I had to tell here to back off.
I drew this with the new Sailor fude de Mannen pen which I ordered over a month before The Event, and I think the Hero 234 ink which again has taken months to arrive. It’s weird to get care packages from your past, like that, but it’s welcome.
The next one is how the Thames can be less friendly, a piece that reflects more my state of mind, ‘All Hands’ – as in ‘gone down with all hands’ featured above and below, and the hand washing we have to do with this damn virus. It is of a sunken narrowboat, which a swan and two coots have made their temporary home – but must have been there for while given the warning buoys.
The Hero 234 ink is a cheap Chinese carbon nanoparticle ink, and takes a while to dry but has very different properties to other inks. It can be used in fountain pens as well, and doesn’t have the big grains of indian ink, but is very matt black.
The drying time was a problem here because there was a cold wind blowing and I had to finish it ASAP, I couldn’t wait for the ink to totally dry so it became more of blended ink + watercolour piece in places rather than a separate drawing with watercolour.
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