TIM BAKER

I’d forgotten to post this set, there were some really dynamic poses chosen again by Kate and I loved drawing almost all of them. ‘Leap’ shows you exactly what you can’t do in a traditional life drawing class, freeze a moment in time like that as with a photograph. This works to the strengths of a virtual photographic life drawing, rather than reminding you that’s it’s not the same as a physical presence that can really not be replicated in a photograph. Also with the pose above, that’s not something that any model can hold for the 20-30 mins I did that drawing.

I did learn something though – fountain pen inks are not right for washes, and very difficult to work with. They are already very liquid and tend to not shade well – the carbon and Sketchink I was using had two modes – deep, deep black and light grey – getting a mid range was hard. You can see this when I switched to the Jackson’s Indian ink below for ‘Back (Woman)’. Suddenly I had a range of shades, which was a struggle to get in ‘Man’ above.

Also it’s a bit of a waste – even the cheapest light safe/permanent document fountain pen ink like the R&K Lotte Sketchink or Chinese Hero 234 carbon nano ink is still much more expensive than plain old Indian ink

I like the patchwork feel, but that was in part me trying desperately trying to build up any tonal shade at all.

One that worked better was ‘Anxiety’ – still a struggle to get any tonal range from the ink but that seemed to work better here – maybe the paper, the Unica is really dry like blotting paper and tends to just soak up ink. It’s hard to draw with fountain pens on it as a result. Here I was using the smoother Seawhite A4 pad – the first image in that new sketchbook, always a scary one that. (Nothing worse that doing a poor piece as the first one, makes you want to throw the pad away and try again! I used to leave the first page blank in my Foundation and degree sketchbooks for that very reason, to have no pressure).

Thankfully this one worked out, and also summed up how I am feeling. Seems that dramatic, moody or anguished poses from men is my thing. And as someone who was taught in the sculpture department but also had a love of B&W photography, I love very sculptural forms, and noir/contrasty lighting.