TIM BAKER

I may be a few weeks late but finally I got half way on Inktober 52. Weird to look at the 16 imaged below it feels like a marathon even if it maybe doesn’t look it. I stopped several times, most recently after the BLM pieces where I felt the prompts were a little hard to work with. They can be really prescriptive which doesn’t leave any wiggle room for creativity – more of that later!

First up was ‘Joy’ and it was a really bad time for that prompt – because it coincided with the first week of the UK lockdown. A very grim time. The only thing at the time that brought me joy at that time was seeing bats on the river in my daily evening walks, the only exercise/travel allowed. I think given it was the river, that they were probably Daubenton’s Bats and then drew this Dip Pen piece of ‘Basil’.

I’d just got the Hero 234 fountain pen nano-particle ink from China, it had escaped the lockdowns there, so I wanted to experiment. I recommend it – jury is out on the lightfastness, I am testing that atm in the window, but apart from an odd smell it is properly waterproof and makes interesting washes. Although as I’ve learned, washes with FP inks are tricky, and maybe reduce any lightfastness. But I love the cloudy nature of Hero 234.

It WILL clog your pens if left, please be careful, it’s not as safe as say R&K Dokument ink or the slightly cloggy but fine if used regularly Lotte Sketchink.

The next four prompts were colours – Green, Red, Blue…and I was really hoping they’d skip the obvious one, but yes they went there – Yellow. Unlike paint, yellow ink is quite wan and thin, usually transparent and hard to make stand out on white. So I was dreading that one.

First up was green, the daffodils were out along Queen’s Promenade and a sunny green spring was starting – paradoxically one of the best springs in recent memory and most of us were stuck inside! The green in this image isn’t watercolour apart from the background leaves, it’s Koh-I-Noor Black Document ink as we know from the first three months of Inktober 52 washes to a lovely green.

For Red I decided to do a portrait of Karl Marx in Dip Pen and Dr PH Martin’s Bombay Ink wash, and then referenced that very pose in Blue with a self-portrait – the eye glass becomes a grey card, the suit becomes a fleece, and my French Breton Fisherman’s cap, aka ‘Corbyn cap’.

The final Karl Marx portrait was the third attempt, not sure why I abandoned #1, but #2 was nothing like him. So decided I was getting too hung up on detail and to go for a loose quick portrait – oddly although it’s less accurate it feels more like a friendly portrait, a human being rather than a copying exercise.

Yellow came around and I decided to ink paint the yellow crane near me. Actually enjoyed the technical challenge…I think this was an early piece done with my FPR Himalaya v2 pen.

Next theme was Train – I was missing trains and travel so it seemed an odd one to pick, but I sat at the end of a park walking distance from here and drew and painted the train as it went past. More of a watercolour than ink piece but ink is there!

Next theme was ‘Praying Mantis’ – a prompt so utterly prescriptive all I could do is take the piss out of it. ‘Praying for a better prompt’ indeed!

The prompt after was more congenial – ‘Bubbles’ so of course I painted the bottle of sparkling rose that John had bought. Love the granulation in this – this is where I fell in love with Daniel Smith’s raw umber for backgrounds!

Next one was ‘Robot’ and I wasn’t going to do cutesy pics of Wall-E type science fiction robots, but decided to do a self-portrait. Given my dark lockdown state of mind, any three of the next prompts Robot, Stranded and Shell could be used. (I had that choice because I had stopped Inktober for several weeks over the ‘Praying Mantis’ prompt….these silly prompts just put me off!)

The Dark Mode series has been a bit neglected, so decided to do a dark self-portrait, white on black using again the Dr PH Martin’s Bombay Ink on black gesso treated A3 paper. I wanted to do a masked self-portrait for a while, a document of CV-19 lockdown, and the w-o-b seemed de rigeur with Black Lives Matter. Talking of which….

Along with the sand piece I previously posted, there was a shift at this time after the death of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter…I was already uncomfortable making pretty pictures for middle class cis white people who want sunny happiness to escape the reality of this world. I’d had months of that and felt I was complicit with their escapism and avoidance. See no evil, hear no evil…

So the BLM protests were a kick up the arse to start putting more of my politics and self in my art, and this kicked off with Stranded, an abstract piece where I depicted the different races in a literal race down the page, intentionally mixing. Over this I used salt and black inks to put the words BLM into that, across all strands symbolically as it’s a fight for all races.

Not sure the latter bit worked technically, but an important piece of mine.

Hearing the news from the United States and the police brutality at the protests, I learned that ‘rubber bullets’ had a similarly misnomered brother, the sponge grenade. Sometimes marketed falsely as the Non-Lethal round, or the even more grimly humorous ‘Less Lethal round’ – brought to you by our lawyers! – they caused journalists and protesters to lose eyes, horrible injuries such as blunt force head trauma. They can kill.

I’m always interested in words, how they are used, abused, how they reveal and obscure. So when the prompt was ‘Shell’ I couldn’t face molluscs and the beach…all I could see is the 40mm shells and rounds from these beasts.

‘eXact iMpact’ is the brand which reveals a lot especially as these are being fired without precision and intentionally at people’s heads – not as designed, but when does that stop people? And those very warning signs on the shell are ignored, fired at close range to harm or kill.

I did two ink pieces, the first I wasn’t happy with but the second was far better.

Less overtly political was the next prompt, ‘Puppet’ although it also reveals a political feeling and mood. All my pieces have a part of me in them, however sunny or pretty there is always something deeper under the surface. I certainly have felt like a puppet and a robot recently, like this life drawing model, the only sort I can get in real life in a lockdown!

Also I have stopped doing life drawing during this lockdown, for various reasons personal and technical, so it’s especially ironic, as well as introspective. The model is doing the Haters Gonna Hate meme, which no-one picked up on. As I said, many layers.

Next prompt was ‘Lunar’ so back to the current times with this update of Whitey on the Moon, which must’ve been at the back of my head cos of the excellent Kiki & Herb cover they released during the protests of the Gil Scott-Heron classic. Timely, and again I wasn’t going to do cutesy planets or cute aliens!

There is a massive debate in the US and UK about statues, flags and history which intersects heavily with the art world. I support slave traders and colonialists going for a swim!

And the discussion about how white supremacy permeates everything needs to happen – including NASA and the moon-landings, a product of the Cold War one-upmanship and colonisation – even of another extra-terrestrial place. Those flags weren’t just for show, well they were a sort of art happening of fak progress, while civil rights protests were attacked by police and racists back home and riots burned cities.

A giant leap for mankind would have been giving black people the vote.

And finally the 26th week was ‘Half’, so I decided to riff off those words again, with their double meanings and alternatives, puns and surreal word and image jokes.

I always say a glass of water is half-way in fact, but I am a troublemaker! A pointed parody of Dorling Kindersley and their graphic design, which I like but it needs more ambiguity and humour 🙂

So yes, halfway! I started up again a week ago thinking I’d call it quits here because I’ve stopped at least three times in the last 7 months. But I think it’s worth continuing, at least for now. I have ideas for the next few prompts and the latest one is Garden so I know I can do that one!