TIM BAKER

I have been taking part since January 1st in Inktober52, a weekly version of the original Inktober which takes place every day in October. You might have seen some of these images here already – for a while I doubled up my 5PM Challenge with Inktober52, but now they are separate things. Unlike my first daily Inktober which became rather random, I had more time to reflect and mould the prompts into something more cohesive, to begin with anyway.

You might have noticed a lot of double images in my work, duets between objects – this is not unintentional. I use objects and their positions to ‘talk’ to each other about relationships spatially and also about big R Relationships in my life. Most of the objects used in my still life pieces have special meaning to me and have a specific personal or emotional subtext.

This is because I’m interested in what seems like junk or trite to one person can have deep meaning to another. Most of my still life work comments and trawls that furrow between prosaic and personal. Also I like the secrecy that these objects bring, they don’t talk behind my back as they stay fairly blank in meaning to others, hiding in plain sight. I love putting layers of meaning in my work, a public meaning and a private one.

It amuses me – and in fact that sort of thing was what I did during my degree, in one case actually learning how to encode barcodes so I could put the word ‘SECRET’ underneath the self portrait of myself. Field would have a Freud day.

These are some of the most personal images I do, and I suspect most people miss that, which is just fine by me. It’s not for them.

So week 1 was ‘Flight’, so it being cold I did a still life of two paper planes on F5 paper with Pentel brush pen, pump fineliner and watercolour. Each plane is drawn differently as well, and have differences in design and build. I am not a good paper plane maker!

Second week prompt was ‘Shadow’ and I remembered the 3D glasses I had kept from various jaunts to the cinema with friends – and I wanted to paint the shadows projected from them. Glasses like false teeth, wigs or canes are interesting, because they are an extension of the body and keep the form of the person, and yet are useless without them. They suggest a presence that isn’t there. Eerily so sometimes.

Third week was ‘brick’ and I was stumped, I didn’t want to paint a brick and I didn’t have two of them, so I submitted an image I did for my 5PM Challenge – with Derwent Inktense blocks. It was a classic ‘oops I have to do this, look over there and draw what I see’ image but I think it works well. It is hard to tone down those Inktense colours, they are rightly named.

Fourth week was ‘snake’ – these prompts are getting hard! I wanted to draw ancient Roman snake gods (Glycon) or the Ourobouros, the mythical snake that eats it’s own tail, like the cycle of life and death. But all the images I could find weren’t right – the snake with hair of Glycon just looks camp, so I went with this pair of Roman snake bracelets instead from the Walters Museum in the States. The image is public domain, so I could copy it without any hassle.

Two bracelets, intertwined, might not be my objects (I wish!) but I selected this image to express an interlocked relationship, held tight like with a python. Not necessarily good.

It was another dip-pen image, but I struggled with the gold ink because it actually just covered up my nice lines, it was far more opaque than I thought. At least the metallic inks are actually lightfast, some of the few Winsor & Newton drawing inks that are.

Next up in Week 5 was ‘Balloon’ – given that the UK had just officially left the EU with Brexit, I was rather deflated, so did these life studies of balloons in the EU blue with the golden stars on. I struggled with the Inktense here, so I did a watercolour version which I prefer, even if the EU blue isn’t as accurate. But again, two.

Week 6 was ‘Hammer’ – yes many people did images of M.C. Hammer, I had thought of that but decided to paint the two hammers we have here with indian ink wash to get that texture and watercolour. Probably the most successful of the 11 images here. It is partly about the building work that was happening then, the 8am hammering every day which was driving me mad.

Again two, facing away, to show lack of communication.

Well for week 7, the theme goes awry somewhat with the prompt ‘Dinner’. I am not going to Instagram my dinner, ever, let alone let it go cold while I draw or paint it. So I did an abstract ink painting with the Dr PH Martin’s Bombay inks and various indian inks and conte crayon. Like all painting with those strongly coloured inks, it is hard not to go too far/spread and I feel I lost the white spaces here as I drew a plate with knife and fork and arrow -depicting the hunters who provide our food. I guess two pieces of cutlery?

Week 8 was another stumped one with ‘Spider. I hate spiders with a vengeance, so I portrayed a vampire spider that sucks your blood when you sleep in ink painting and wash and two blobs of watercolour. Probably what the little evil blighters are doing anyway!

The ninth week was ‘Wave’ so just getting some Koh-I-Noor black document ink that becomes green if you wash it (sort of green-black) I decided to have some fun with it. I depicted a screen from the Amiga wave editor I used to use, AudioMaster IV because we’d just been talking about it online. It still is my favourite sound editor, where I learned to edit audio digitally. And yes it is that weird sort of dull green. I also like the idea of depicting modern technology with superseded dip-pens and ink, like my old-skool watercolour and ink drawings of graffiti and urban wastelands. Talking of which….

Oh god here comes the fantasy prompt – ‘Elf’ F*ck. Just no. I do not draw fantasy things, I prefer to work in the real world. But a joke I made to John about tower blocks having very pretentious and overflowery names e.g. ‘Cherry Tree’ which contrasts with their brutalist looks led me to suggest ‘Elven Glades’ as a possible name. The idea was born…planned to draw Tolworth Tower a local towerblock…then I did my back in, and was on codeine and diazepam and could hardly walk.

By the time the next prompt came out, ‘Tower’ I realised I could combine the two…but by this time, COVID-19 lock down was just starting so I was scared of going out to draw. I risked it, hoping that if I sat out of the way, people would keep their social distance…they didn’t! Several people came up to me, it was hard to be impolite and tell them to back away – bless!

I have lost any such niceties now after two weeks of lockdown. I just bark at people to back off.

And the final piece just posted for ‘elephant’ is something I’m rather proud of. Working from photographs is always a bit odd, the creative choices have been made for you – but this shot was taken by myself in 2009 in South Africa at the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi nature reserve of a wild elephant. So it’s my copyright and my own choices! I drew it with the Diamine ink, realising it’s dark grey-blue tone would work perfectly on the pachyderm, and then did a few corrections with my much-abused Posca white Brush Pen.

Happy heffalump, I hope.

I was planning to put ‘COVID-19’ on the side, but given how things have changed since I first had that idea in the world, it’s neither an elephant in the room (everyone is talking about the coronavirus, it’s the neo-Brexit it’s OK to have between exercises) and I felt it unnecessary to lumber a nice elephant with such sloganeering. The title stayed though.