TIM BAKER

I am breaking one of my rules which is to post 5PM Challenge works first over at my Instagram, and another that I also that I post them as a series in the Highlights posts but these drawings feel like they should be together, in fact they are from the same sketchbook. They all come out of the arrival last week of my Himalaya V2 Ultraflex Fountain Pen. After nearly 4 weeks shipping during the pandemic from the United States, and another expensive customs charge because why not attack your victims during a crisis, it was worth it. But it signals the last of the pens for a long time because it’s not just the UK that is on lockdown, my finances are too.

I’ve decided to name my River paintings and drawings ‘River Man series’ after the Nick Drake song…the song reflects the feelings I have doing them, I feel with all my years of working depicting rivers, streams and lakes I have become The River Man. From trees to rivers via a virus? But water always has a contemplative, darker nature for me, as you’ll hear in my River Songs Podcasts or Rainy Day podcasts, something deeper pulls me to water at times of distress.

The thing about the Himalaya is that it’s the closest thing you’ll get to a dip pen in fountain pen form, with the Ultraflex nib acting very similarly to a Zebra G nib. Not quite, and the pen railroads a little too often for my liking and it gobbles ink, but it’s a world away from the sometimes scratchy cheap Chinese pens I have been using. Only the Sailor fude is as smooth. It also came with a free eyedropper-filled fountain pen which is pretty cool.

The first drawing was the loose one of the Kingston Market House and then shortly after I did the ‘Kingston Bridge Shadows’ above. The walkway by the bridge was wonderfully quiet apart from the odd Deliveroo courier waiting for an order, and one idiot who was obviously new to the area and thought it was a cycle way!

The next drawing was a reflective one in more ways than one, even the title is a reflection of the times…empty boards, closed shops, things not working. The lonely figure – yes the benches that litter my work are being populated – seems to sum up this isolation. She arrived while I was drawing this and I put her in. I rarely put people into my landscape works pre-COVID-19, the irony doesn’t escape me that as soon as the virus started I had to put people in to show this isolation. Otherwise it looks no different from my other works!

Positively a party (and hold that thought since I am not sure they knew each other closely and friend kept coming up and not keeping distance) in my work is this quick piece I did a few days ago. Not the first time I have painted this view, but first time I have put people in it but I was fascinated with the shadows. And if the pen isn’t railroading – which might be that it needs a clean – it’s faster that a dip-pen to draw with, which was partly the point. I wanted something cleaner for urban sketching – you can’t use a dip-pen on a bus!