TIM BAKER

Last week was a blast, this week for the Abstract Advent the Christmas Shit™ started to bite, and I found it harder to juggle meeting up with people, portrait sessions, getting all the cards and parcels off in a panic because like storms, flooding, wrong kind of wind, snow and ice on the roads as always Royal Mail can’t keep to their last posting times…

As Sandy Denny says in ‘No End’ “They said that it was snowing in astounded tones upon the news, I wonder why they’re always so surprised ‘cos every year it snows” (well that was the 70’s, climate change means it doesn’t snow here every year but if it does or there are storms it’s a panic like it never happened ever before).

Anyway still going – just although I’ve had to batch several days into one so I could get it done – or post the next day cos as with the Inktober challenges – the bane is waiting for stuff to dry, especially the markal paintstik and wet ink pieces.

Day 8 could have been very rude – I’m guessing it is two baubles side to side and I tried to avoid getting phallic but failed in the end….with the appropriately named Ball Drop – which is indeed a New Year/Xmas thing, in Times Square in New York. Usually one ball though.

Also it reminded me of the cherry reward in Bubble Bobble or other early arcade games and fruit machines – hence NICE 1P! – the message that pops up when you do well. Love working with the Markal Paintstiks again – I dug them out, used to use them a lot for life drawing. Weird things, like oil sticks but used for industrial marking of metal and wood. A lot cheaper too (but probably not lightsafe). They are used a lot in graffiti.

Day 9 was a pipe or candy cane shape, so I went rather 1930’s with a Faber Castell and Stabilo Woody pencils and ink wash. Wasn’t so inspired by that shape. I struggled with Day 10 too, a comb like shape like a chicken’s comb, but quickly realised I wasn’t drawing a chicken so made it a bird with a party hat! Random. I did another piece but like it even less.

Day 11 got better with a shape of random circles – like snow. So I set about making inky black snow, working in wax resist and ink, not sure those worked as well as the ink drops above which was a last minute thought as I was packing up – and the very galactic collection of black holes or coronas – double meaning intentional – during an eclipse.

I was experimenting here with layers, drawing softly then heavily, using the water soluble nature of the Stabilo All pencils to push things back but also get a sort of glow effect as the pigment swirled in the fluid, as I was working with a mix of wet on wet and dry, and then applying water to existing pencil – all which create different effects. I did similar with the ink drops using different dilutions of ink and water. A random technique but I like introducing chance into my work.

Then Day 12 we had a hash symbol, four crossed lines in a grid. This reminded me of the start of a Noughts and Crosses game – something that pops up in my work tangentially and also more directly. So I played with myself (fnar) and lost. predictably.

I then also created a more equal version in black and white, including the crossed circle and ‘no entry’ signs that litter my usual abstracts. And a few new variants. Thinking of that, I then thought about the symbols that appear a lot in my abstract work and created a key for them, another use of a grid, indeed it’s very meta because it’s a abstract advent in Abstract Advent! And indeed a grid within a grid if you look closely. Also at least one of the symbols is a bit of an imposter, it doesn’t appear that much. Can you spot which?

Also as a key without text – well apart from ADVENT and KEY – it’s also rather useless, but I can’t really explain the meaning of these symbols much yet in text. In images maybe?

Day 13 was four squiggly lines, I saw tinsel or Santa’s beard but also a process sequence – like Bob and Roberta Smith’s loop drawing, I love inventing sequences. then following them through. I don’t do it enough! So I did this with the squiggles, repeatedly drawing them top to bottom using a random selection of colours or all the colours, ending on the second version on black, but the Woody Pencil version was completely random apart from the first drawing with the Faber Castell chunky marker. That didn’t work so well since even on the acrylic paper, too much water spread the marks.

Day 14 was our old friend, the white hourglass aka the Extinction Rebellion symbol (but only with a circle around it). So after the success of Ball Drop I did another Markal Paintstik drawing (or is it painting?) but this time added something I did on my old abstracts which is to scratch into the still wet Markal – it takes an age to dry, hence why I have fixed the shit out of each piece so I don’t have to wait days to scan them. I do wonder whether they are the same as the Shiva Paintstiks, they look identical!

(edit: they are the same – but not the cheap industrial ones ‘Markal Paintstik B’ I use, the black and gold Artist ones if you can find those as they are discontinued. I’ve bought some Sennelier Oil Sticks on discount as a self Xmas present so I’ll see how I go with those. I want to get back into oil painting and have a more permanent version of the cheap Markals – which are fine for sketchbook work, but not great for anything like the large abstracts that I might sell or exhibit.

What bothers me about the Shiva/Markal Artists is you can find lightsafe information if you dig really deep (that link is the colour chart PDF) but no pigment details. I don’t know if it’s as important for oils, but I like to stick with single pigments where I can and research my pigments/use ones I know.

Hence why I stuck with the Sennelier Oil Sticks, they publish pigment as well as lightsafe ratings and are slightly cheaper at the moment as well as Cass Arts is having a sale, and check Bargainartshop for the sets on a certain nasty union-busting book-selling site that I try to avoid using).