TIM BAKER

After completing Inktober for the last two years I took a well-deserved rest this year, but am taking part in the slightly shorter ‘Abstract Advent’ as run by @artpedagogy, like an abstract advent calendar but on Instagram – so it runs from the 1st of December to the 24th. Unlike the word prompts of Inktober, he provides a shape for you to work from or adapt, and you can work in any media including photography and sculpture, not just ink. This feels like a better fit for me!

It has been a lot of fun so far – here are highlights from the first week, I usually do 2-4 pieces per day, and the reasoning is with the bad weather and my seasonal depression I have gotten out of the habit of drawing or working every day, so kicking myself back into it – that’s how I used Inktober in fact, it’s how you start a habit, do something for a month – hopefully 24 days is a good compromise.

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First day was a halo/two circles, and interestingly like my first Inktober piece ever, I went wet on wet with it using the Woody Pencils and kept it simple. I love the fractal like shapes as the black Woody pencil spreads on the Artway Eco sketchbook…not really had the same with other paper. There was an interim piece which developed into the third piece ‘ Omicron And On’ – as it was also World AIDS Day, this is about pandemics, current situation with the COVID Omicron variant and the fact that Omicron’s greek letter is a circular O.

Day two was a serpentine shape, which I called ‘wriggle’ but I made it into a snowscape of gnarled trees and a pagan-like symbol called ‘Solstice’ (the Advent thing being a little to Xtian for my liking as I’m not a Xtian, and the fact that it is a pagan celebration that was stolen by the Church needs to be stressed). Both were brush and ink paintings with Jackson’s ink, using a large Daler Rowney watercolour brush.

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Day 3 was an arch like shape, so I just took the curve of the arch and combined it in several ways using vintage fountain pens. I feel guilty that its also #inkadvent and wanted to bring some inky FP things into this. I also used wash. a tissue and my finger – finger painting and tissues were soon to become a theme…

Day 4 was a round shape with legs, so sort of a table or a bug – I did a piece with Woody pencil’s little brother, the Stabilo All Pencils. They are like a watersoluble chinagraph and was using them because I found out that during lockdown Quentin Blake started sketching on textured canvas surfaces with them! Something I used to do at university. So inspired by that I got some cheap acrylic paper with that sort of texture and dug out my old Stabilo All pencils.

Bug was the result, I added some Sumi ink for the darkened edges, although took an age to dry, and my first attempts were wash outs (almost literally) so never got posted.

At the same time as the Daler Simply paper – available at Poundland! – I got some cheap black paper, and so wanted to draw white on black. Nice idea, but my Edding paint marker had different ideas…hence the finger painting. I usually self-crit my work, but don’t usually use text in my work – but I did here to show my process. The X’s in my abstract work are quite often me crossing out something I hate, or changing/destroying it. Here is is very much that.

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Day 5 was a strange beak like shape, which suggested birds to me, so I drew them in my chunky Faber Castell marker having a Xmas party! I also did some pieces with Derwent XL graphite and charcoal blocks – another media I haven’t touched for a while. Very messy and has been sprayed so many times to stop it rubbing off in my sketchbook. Part of this is challenging me to work differently and think laterally. The party drawing was featured on artpedagogy’s account as a nine image of works from the day!

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Day 6 was a scribble shape which suggested to me Christmas lights in a tangle, something that was very present from my youth – and indeed the better LED lights still do this! The first attempt was me dribbling Molotow white acrylic ink on the black paper, but it didn’t work as well as it was too weak so abandoned it.

I then moved onto my Eco A4 sketchbook and drew it with Posca and the Faber Castell markers…and did a black paper reverse version which wasn’t as bright as I hoped. I turned my attention back to the first piece, and liked the way the ink was drying so drew over it in the Faber pen….and cos the ink was still wet, you had a really interesting effect as the black pen scraped off the ink but left a ghost of the original lines. I then did a piece intentionally doing that, it all turned out like a load of Pollocks 😉

I had already used Posca on this page, so those poking out and the different whites and the white wash on black gives it real depth.

And then finally we had a cube shape – a present for Day 7. I was late doing this because I was doing Portraits at the Pub that night and then I came down with food poisoning so I had to do two in one day. As a result I feel I didn’t really take this day as further as I would, but I liked the combination of the ink blooming – those fractal shapes again, and the hard edged lines. I like to confound the viewer in my abstract shape landscapes, I like to fracture shapes and make them impossible like MC Escher. And yes, I did study cubism ar A Level so the title is a pun on that.

But the next day was really good…but that’s for the next post 🙂