TIM BAKER

Another very loose post compiling the odds and ends of my sketchbooks – mostly a visual tour of Kingston but a few further away but still pretty local. First up is a small watercolour of the funerary chapel next to the Cloisters, and the weird war memorial where a baby holds onto a man’s arm next to a very sharp sword. Health and Safety, people! I feel this chapel is older than it looks – Victorian? It used to service the small burial ground which was turned into a park where the war memorial adjoins, and now the modern Cloisters with Boots etc surround it.

This little park is usually filled with drunken/shouty people, so not somewhere I go often.

Next up is the little cafe in Kingston I have my Saturday breakfasts for the past few years, a long-term tradition that got upended when I moved here because of money, and then years later because of lockdown. It would seem like any time, it it wasn’t for the large bottle of hand sanitiser and the Test and Trace QR code on the wall.

This next piece is the closest you’ll get to a river scene at the moment. I sat at the small area next to The Ram pub near Kingston – this area is now re-opened after being shut down for months because around 200 people gathered here when the pubs re-opened, not social distancing – well you couldn’t in a tiny space like this with that many people – so they fenced it off. Unusually I grabbed my A5 Bockingford Pad which I feel a bit sad for since etchr has grabbed all my attention. Despite the bendable horror that is Wiro o-rings which is why I don’t use it as much, it is still great.

Also yes – like the cafe piece – people? In MY work? Must be the lockdown – I don’t usually paint people in my landscapes, I prefer them empty.

The next piece should be familiar – the original sketch was in the Surbiton round-up as a piece I started as I waited for the bus to Box Hill. Well I finished it, but not without drama.

I had finished the piece and was putting some final touches on the bus with my Kuretake brush pen when rather than taking the cap off I unscrewed it and I’ve converted it as an ink-dropper. Ink everywhere – which I cleaned up, but sadly the work took most of the hit. Hence having to redraw parts with the Molotow and having that positive/negative thing which I like now.

You might remember I did a similar thing with a piece on Box Hill – that was twice in the same day, and this was the piece I wrecked on the bus. I have learned not to do that now! A complete waste of Rotring ink as well.

Cigarette Island might sound like a trendy tobacconist or some kind of hideaway for nicotine addicts, but it’s actually a small park by Hampton Bridge that used to be an ait or small island separated by a creek – in fact it was called Davis’s Ait or The Sterte orginally. When they built the current bridge in the 1930’s they redirected the Mole into the River Ember and filled in the creek, creating the current park which is opposite Hampton Court.

It’s called Cigarette Island after a houseboat ‘Cigarette’ that was moored here, in fact houseboats and a shanty town of caravans, converted railway carriages and lean-tos used to be here because of an old edict from Henry VIII’s time where a bunch of gypsies moved here during court and Henry said to leave them be as long as they moved when asked…and no-one asked, well not until it was purchased as a park. This place was a favourite of local naturalist Richard Jefferies, he described rowing here early in the morning.

Nowadays the only houseboats seem to be wrecked? ones in the River Ember, and the ever-present fishermen…it’s very muddy on the bank, my stool dug in and I almost fell back into a field of nettles. This is another Parallel Pen drawing this time with fountain pen, and yes what can I see? Another bench!

And finally back down the River Thames to Kingston but not a river view – it’s a more traditional attempt at drawing the Canbury Gardens bandstand I painted before.

Wwith the cafe nearby with it’s tables which wasn’t there when I did my first watercolour, it’s a lot easier to sit and draw it. It got quite dark and a woman arrived who was dancing inside the bandstand, practice I guess…sadly it was too dark to see a pose and include her otherwise I would have. And yes more benches sneaking in there.

Quite proud of this one, I think my drawing has come on greatly. I like how the ink wash of the foliage interplays with the dip pen lines. Dip pen is not a quick sport, and is unusual for urban sketching since it require time and space, but I do prefer it when I can draw that way. Much more measured and contemplative, almost meditative.