TIM BAKER

This week’s Portraits at the Pub was a convivial affair, and I got some good work done with some new paper and some old crayons. Looking back at the work it’s like the life drawing of old, the regular comment that it looks like the work of several different artists (why I used to say I had no style). Remember the Caran D’ache Neocolor 2 crayons? Well I dug them out a while back for some abstract work and really liked them compared to Inktense and the watercolour sticks. So I’ve used them in the Abstract Advent and now the Portraits at the Pub session as an alternative to my cheap watercolour pencils – they also need less water.

You still have the issue that I only have bright colours – I think they tend to only come in those, so I work with false hyper colouring, fauvist work like the pencils and combining them…but I think given I had fat crayons to work with, I really got Ian here. It’s a high-risk style for me, sometimes it really works, sometimes it doesn’t, here I think it does.

Less successful I think was the traditional watercolour after the success 2 weeks ago with Rick – I dunno, it didn’t seem to work although the face is spot on, some of the other parts I rushed drawing them and are not proportional, shown is the best bit. Still nice to work with watercolour again though.

But much more successful and the best of the bunch is this sombre piece on black Simply Daler paper with again the Neocolor 2 crayons. and wash. Again surprised I got this accurate with them, as they are fairly chonky although not as much as the Woody pencils or the Inktense. Goes to show you that you can do subtle with these, it just takes a little time to get there. One of my best drawings of recent times for mood and technicality yet it flows – I have done more technically accurate drawings which are dead af. This nicely has a balance of the two.

I do recognise this style, it’s like when I did more pastel work a long time ago or even did that recent loose drawing of Rick. It’s hard to get into that headspace, it’s like I have to not care and just draw, and then it comes out good, whereas if I think about it too much, it goes wrong. Like as I’ve said before, the proverbial Arthur Dent and flying.