TIM BAKER

Apologies for not posting since the end of last year – I’ve been busy but go out the habit of posting on Instagram and here – so a big backlog of work to post! In January, Feburary and March I was out in all weathers trying to do plein air – including wind, rain and snow! Those snows earlier in the year lead to my first snowscape, a mist piece and some icy pond sketches in Bushy Park.

First up is the Bushy Mist piece, which is from January or the Xmas period. There was amazing mists in Bushy Park and I attempted to try and get that misty gloaming, using Cobalt Violet. Maganese Violet and Colbalt Turquoise – all from Rembrandt. I’ve switched a lot of my pigments slowly to Royal Talens Rembrandt, because the quality is really good and they do the large 20ml tubes in their whole range, not a few like W&N.

Sure I think W&N is great, as is Daniel Smith – but bar a few pigments that seem to be best with those brands (Daniel Smiths Raw Umber cannot be beaten, and I’ve tried many French Ultramarines because I use buckets of the stuff mixing blacks, and really only W&N hits the spot).

One thing I have found in my travels is that Cobalts and Cadmiums are pretty much the same across the brands, cheap or mid-range (not tried the really expensive £20+ a tube sort, I can’t afford those prices, might get a small tube one day) – so save your money and go for Jacksons or Rembrandt or whoever. This is not the same with all pigments, but certain ones tend to be pretty samey.

I found with amusement that a big YouTube art blogger with a million subs said that ‘camdium*’ (awkward) was toxic and dangerous, all the usual scare tactics, and then proceeded to paint it out vs the expensive Cad-free W&N watercolour at full strength and say it looked the same. Err, that’s not actually how you paint with cadmiums in watercolour? Cadmiums are shite at full strength, they go dull and are opaque – no you use them at lower strength in washes.

They have a ‘glow’ that the other paints can’t replicate (although I haven’t tried the Cad-Free yet, partly because I refuse to pay more than actual Cad. paints, when the synthetic version not being mined must be cheaper to produce. Cheek!).

Scientific white papers have been written about the toxicity of cadmium, you basically have to eat the stuff to be at risk, even the paint water is low risk to wildlife. Powder yes, inhaling the stuff is really dangerous, but unless you are mixing your own paints, that will never happen.

‘SuperRaeDizzle’ then deleted my nice polite comment about that… yeah. I guess scaring people is better for business? :-/

Be careful taking art advice from YouTubers, sometimes it’s an unpaid ad, sometimes it’s basically cribbed from Wikipedia, as her antique series was. (Remember me talking about Emerald Green years ago? Well in my research reading many sources it was always called Emerald Green. but she called it Paris Green, which is what the Wiki article calls it. Never seen it referred to that elsewhere (which makes sense, because the Parisian artists who made it famous wouldn’t call it that. That’s like me calling a red bus a London bus while in London, it’s just a bus here?).

She’s entertaining, but both of those were disappointing…with a million subs comes great responsibility (*and better research, I mean an art blogger than can’t pronounce one of the basic colour names which is constantly used in other art Youtube videos – it’s not like it’s Pthalo, Alizarin or Verdigris?).

I have tried my hand briefly at YT art video work but stuff like this makes me think it’s less about experience and talent and more being the hyper millennial Bob Ross. Which is fine, I like Bob, as long as you don’t expect to learn to be a grand master from Bob and his happy little trees…

Also I side-eye showing people how to use modified Crayola pens instead of Copics when the lightfastness will be most likely shit – using kids stuff is a dangerous short hand for art supplies. I’ve done it, we’ve all probably done it – it’s a false economy most times. It is why I’ve always said, use the best gear you can afford, and especially never skimp on ink, paint or paper unless it’s just demo/doodle/sketchbook work.

You will regret it when it fades, or as your nice pigments lighten as they dry massively on the cheap paper, and cheap markers and colour pencils are very prone to fading. Sadly there is no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to those materials.

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Anyway rant over, back to the art! Another day later in the year I was at the Waterhouse pond, in the Waterhouse Woodland Garden in Bushy – drawing the pond and slowly sinking into the mud as I was on my stool. It was very muddy, and got very cold at dusk – and as you’ll hear as a common theme – even a year into the pandemic people got too damned close. Aargh!

It’s hard to stop that sitting by a pond, there is nowhere for me to move…but it’s rude to breathe your viral load down my neck while I am working, endangering me. I don’t think I even had my first vaccine by the time I did this. Also as I left and packed up, the swans enforced their dominance to come and hiss at me…I really don’t get why people hate geese and love swans, swans can be rather thuggish at times.

Otherwise a rather good drawing afternoon, although it reminded me how hard it is to get washes with finer fountain pen and that ink, I really should have used the Jackson’s ink over the top.

The Waterhouse is the old pumping house, even with chimney, which goes back to early 20th Century I think, if not earlier – these were originally private plantation gardens for lodges here. It’s rather quiet in the Waterhouse Woodland Garden many times of the week, bar weekends where it does get busy in Bushy Park. Really secluded from the rest of the park.although it closes at dusk and is gated.

And then we have the pièce de résistance, my first snowscape! In January I sat in the snow and did this watercolour as it went dark and the deer munched all around – even at one point nibbling at one of the fallen logs in the moonlight, it was too late to put them in but a magical moment. What you can’t see to the left of this picture is that the deer had a large feed bale, hence they congregated on that side, having munchies.

The name comes from John’s reaction to it – he said that the log in the front right looked on it’s side like a bear lying in the snow, looking at the sky. It does! And in a sense, I was a bear in the snow painting this, so it fits. Proud to say this was featured on KAOS’s instagram page (I am a member of Kingston Artist Open Studios, a local artist group) and one of my best works of recent times. But there have been a few that I need to post!