TIM BAKER

• 

• 

Recently I have been increasingly drawing and painting the views from a bus shelter. It is a challenge as not many shelters are in picturesque places! I started doing this in 2019 and early 2020 just waiting for buses or hiding from the rain. This became rather more urgent and even poltiical in lockdown because until fairly recently there was no inside places to go for those of us who don’t have large houses, flats or cars. I had to make bus shelters and disabled toilets my studios, so from that restriction came creativity.

You might recognise the first four images, Seething Wells from the small bus stop opposite the University accomodation was my first bus shelter drawing, then we have the first drawings of the Clocktower waiting for the 465 on one of my many trips to Box Hill.

Then what I think is the real genesis of this series ‘Bus Shelter from The Rain’ sitting in the shelter during the summer of 2020 – it was raining and few places to go, I think restrictions had lifted but I was avoiding any indoors places for my safety. This is the Woodbines Avenue stop on Portsmouth Road.

So to more recent times, back in March we have these two pieces done around the same time from the Claremont Road stop in Surbiton – the first of the ornate Victorian buildings in a rather orange, even purple stone from across the street in Derwent Graphitint. I think it got rained on despite the shelter, hence the speckled sky. It was chucking it down – and a Sunday evening, which usually is really quiet on that stop but for some reason there was loads of people.

Another time, I think a few days earlier I did another part of the building quickly as I waited for a bus in my smaller A5 sketchbook. This was Roberts Cleaners, which only have this pot plant and a lucky Chinese cat (the ones with raised paws) in the window. The sign got cut off, hence ‘berts CLEANERS’. My note at the bottom is that I used the Waterman 32 on this one.

More recently given the nice weather has become ‘shuffle weather’ showing us all varieties of weather in one day, usually involving sudden downpours, I have taken again to working in bus shelters. And yes we are getting to some of the newer pieces at last!

Last week I did this view of the river and cycle lane from the East Lane bus shelter in Kingston. It was a Friday or Saturday evening, people were quite bemused at me sitting there – but there was only one bus in the nearly two hours I was there, so apart from a passing stream of nosy looky-loos which are legion in Kingston, I was actually alone in the bus shelter. (A friend suggested I should say they can only look if they buy something 😉 )

A rather busier bus shelter was the one in Clarence Street by the All Saints Church and opposite John Lewis and indeed Bentalls. I liked the traverse angles, as usual and did this in Graphitint. It took a long time and it turned out the quiet stop gets quite busy at times, so a fair few curious people…including a bloke who asked me if I was drawing the Bentalls Centre (I find it odd when people ask if I am drawing the thing I am facing and my drawing is not that bad, it’s fairly obvious what I am drawing, it’s a really dumb thing to say).

I was tempted to respond ‘no I’m drawing the shape of the stupidity of this conversation’ but that would probably be deemed really unfriendly so I just said yes. He then asked if I would draw him (no, because I’m drawing this), and immediately after would I wave to his girlfriend leaving on the bus (err…no again?) and he was leaving now…Very strange.

The thing is, I am working. This isn’t a hobby, so I need to concentrate. I don’t want to be really rude but I can’t spend the time chatting with loads of random people about the weather, their girlfriend, what I am drawing, how they wished they could draw like that, their uncle/cousin/cat/dog/hamster-twice-removed is also an artist etc. I wonder do they ask everyone in the street if they can see their work?

Sometimes those conversations are nice, but if I am rushing to get a drawing or painting done in a high-stress environment where I keep getting attention, the conditions are making it hard, or it isn’t going well, my extreme social awkwardness/self conciousness just goes *ping* and I get irritated or angry. It is hard not to get distracted by working in public spaces. In this case I am placing myself in a very public area so to some extent it is expected, but sometimes even the headphones and my glower force field aren’t a barrier to approaches.

And finally and amazingly a piece I finished last night! I mentioned the hacked Pilot V7 pen with fountain pen ink and the Rotring white ink in the ethical green artist blog – and here are the results. Hard to get dark lines using the Pilot Pen as a source for washes, but otherwise it works very similarly to fountain pen. The white ink has a different tone to the paper, which used to bother me in the past – but now I use that to give depth and subtle colour. This is a view of Claremont Gardens, a small park near the Clock Tower – in fact it’s behind the Clock Tower as drawn in ‘Surbiton Clocktower #2’.

I think given the variability of the weather this spring and probably summer, I will be doing more of these. I like the challenge and showing views that aren’t traditionally seen as ‘beautiful’ or picturesque. The hard part is finding shelters that aren’t really busy – they do exist, but they don’t always look onto things I want to draw. A housing estate or an iron railings are challenging thing sto make interesting!