TIM BAKER

Winter plein air drawing and painting is a cold affair, but also in some ways easier – less foliage to depict, more bold/graphic images of empty trees, snow or ice, white or purple darkened skies and mists. Returning to Bushy Park, these works are all but one from the early part of the year, pre-Spring – and even the one allotment piece that’s relatively new, it has a very wintry look about it. In all I was glad of hot soup if I took it – I think one of the pieces I posted last time I got so cold I couldn’t stop my teeth chattering – some of these like the watercolour piece it was likewise.

First up is an ink drawing of the allotments – there are allotments on what used to be the royal paddocks in Bushy, and you can see through the fence. I was amused by the fact that someone seemed to be growing planks of wood in theirs! Major building work, seemingly. I was having to stand doing this, so was having to juggle sketchbook, pen and waterbrush.

During this piece I realised the hard way that some vintage pens are made in part of hard rubber – a vulcanised rubber with sulfur. This leaches out in vintage pens due to exposure with water or UV – and if you put it in your mouth to hold the pen – eugh! Not good for you, or the pen.

Oddly my Derwent waterbrush pen lid is similar, and I wonder in that case as the lid doesn’t have a breathing hold whether that’s coated with bitterant. Both I found out at the same time during this drawing.

I haven’t been to my favourite tree, the Hollow Tree this year, not for a painting anyway. I wanted to try the Graphitint paints with a landscape, I tend to use Graphitint more for urban work – and on Fabriano paper. Not sure this experiment worked, not as well as I hoped – the sky is good, but I found the graphitint spread far, like watercolour. This is a problem since unlike most watercolours, graphitint doesn’t totally lift – you can apparently rub it off but didn’t risk that with watercolour paper. It tends to muddy when mixed too much, or darken the page where you lift it off. I feel graphitint is best on normal paper.

In January I bought a new product from my favourite stationers, Artway – the Indigo Panorama sketchbook. Made of cotton in India, it’s an affordable sketchbook with deckle edges as you can see. This was the first version which had issues with the binding, but I contacted Artway and Ian Way told me they were aware of this and the next batch which should be in stock now was improved. I have had to fix it with tape, and treat it with care.

But the pad is really good, and a very good price for a 100% cotton pad. Not comparable to say, Fabriano cotton paper, but far better than the trainwreck that is Khadi paper (that’s South Indian paper, this is from North India so pretty sure it’s not the same – the paper acts totally differently too, and consistently sized, whereas Khadi paper quite often acts differently in each sheet!)

So this is the first two pages in the sketchbook – one big winter panorama – I think from Feb, or late Jan, a winter sunset using a lot of the manganese and cobalt violet. I like the winter light in these two…very different to my usual style, I have been shifting from what is basically the artistic version of Sunny 16 to moodier lighting and views.