These are I think the last of the river pieces most done at night – that barrel has been well and truly scraped and is heading over Niagara Falls, well Teddington Lock at least…the first is a piece I did on a windy day – the nice Indian Summer didn’t last long although it has made sporadic short comebacks – using candel and ink and brush. It has two titles – the original was ‘Candle in the Wind’ given I was drawing with candles indeed in the wind…but I forgot all about that title and named it ‘Windy Stormy Day’ on Instagram. How boring!
The next is a river panorama I think I did just before I headed off to Coventry, and is a two pager in my A4 sketchbook using the blue/black Parallel Pen and brush. A person on Instagram mistook this for Amsterdam…I know what they mean. Also that probably means my old master influences are showing…Rembrandt and the Dutch school ink drawings, even Van Gogh’s early drawings? Oh yesh.
River Blues – Panel 1, Parallel Pen with my R&K Blue Black mix and Wash, A4 Sketchbook. 
River Blues – Panel 2, Parallel Pen with my R&K Blue Black mix and Wash, A4 Sketchbook.
You can keep Tracey Emin and her carbon paper spider scratch ‘drawings’, I’m over here obsessing over 18th century drawings of locks and canal and trees… #notcool #notfashionable and I really don’t care. Drawing needs to get back to basics, there is a lack of skill and laziness in the way I was taught.
Next up is a quick watercolour I did and I think this might be the last river piece I did, or one of them – kind of cheated yesterday by painting a view of the river that didn’t show the river, but even that felt a little…soulless. The amazing sunsets on the river are hard to document and I’ve gotten into working in part in a loose large brush style especially with my abstracts – and this was an attempt to unite the two. This painting is definitely brought to you by the numeral 2 and the colour purple – manganese violet to be exact.
The two people were completely accidental and not in the picture at the beginning, they came and sat down in front of me in mid paint, so like the birds they got included. The two people give it a more expressionist quality, a musing on the light show ahead and how nature – and indeed pandemics – make you feel small. A duet of nature and humanity – one that has been sung out of tune recently.
And finally it seemed best to end on a night piece, and a rather abstract one, a pure watercolour in the etchr pad. Green, purple, blue and orange, it almost seems that there is mist on the river. Named after the Depeche Mode track – one of my favourites in fact. The lyrics sum up the Night Work series – and my life where I tend to get work done at night when people are sleeping and it’s quiet – in a nutshell:
I’m waiting for the night to fall
Depeche Mode – Waiting for the Night
When everything is bearable
And there in the still
All that you feel is tranquillity
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