TIM BAKER

A return at the start of this year to Richmond Park and the area I call Mirk Wood and it saw some New Rules – bigger, more colour, new mediums like the paint sticks, back to oils (sort of), and different butcher types of sketchbooks, sgraffito, and more sculptural ink sketches, very much inspired by Jacob Epstein’s Epping Forest paintings and, well the usual standby, Van Gogh. A lot more additions to the Dead Tree series!

It was cold though, I’m helped by new wool baselayers (poncey word for long johns) but still, it has been a mixture of a few nice days and a lot of grey rainy and stormy days.

First up is the large pieces – after the fun of using the acrylic pad, and a comment from a friend saying I was trying to cram large work into A4 and A5 (guilty as charged – partly cos of economics, partly because I’m not really a canvas size queen), I got a cheap A3 Canson Watercolour XL pad. Very good, and meant I could do the tempera paint sticks in a larger size, but also do watercolour and mixed media/ink.

The title of the above piece – which was the first page in that sketchbook references the fact that I was missing an important ‘official’ meeting accidentally while I was in Richmond Park, and the resulting fall out and dramatics has made me realise that yes, I am better off away. Totally bad for my art and mental well-being, I can’t go back to where I was before. So this is looking to the future, not the past.

I have been drawing a lot of logs and trees lying on the ground, don’t know why – but rather proud of the ‘Fallen Trees’ drawing, I seem to have captured the twisty turny nature of the trees. It’s quite hard, been drawing trees for 3 years now, and I still find them a challenge. ‘Richmond Logs’ was painted as it was going dark, i tried to spatter the ink on to show the leaves….not sure that worked.

The one on the left is using one of two new A4 sketchbooks – the Artway Flat White ‘Multi Arte’ sketchbook. Really recommended, I found my old Eco sketchbooks were struggling with the mixed media and heavy ink or watercolour I was doing, it was going through the pages….this is bright white and 250gsm, and made from 50% coffee cups, so better for the environment. It takes a lot more abuse than the 170gsm one.

I have been experimenting with oil sticks and decided to give landscapes a go with the acrylic pad – you will recognise it’s the same favourite tree from above. I decided that oil sticks are far too messy for landscape work – far better than oils I used to do, people still ask why I stopped doing them, it was lugging the heavy tubes, the drama of getting it home wet and the mess.

Oil sticks still have some of that, thankfully the tempera paint sticks just dry really quickly. I can more easly do sgraffito and all that with oil sticks, and mix easier, but still the whole messy hands where there are no sinks issue. And I forgot to take any wet wipes!

I do want to get back to proper oil painting, but the fact the chemicals – turpentine etc – made me wheeze and it stank and I had some nightmare portraits that went wrong losing everything, well….there’s a lot that put me off. I’m also not as comfortable in that medium as watercolour and ink, it felt like stepping backwards in a lot of ways.

A couple more ink pieces – ‘Fungus’ was one of the first drawings of 2022, when I first went back to Richmond Park in January….I did a few meh pieces that day, and that one stood out, of fungus growing on a dead tree stump. The ‘Tree Lightning’ drawing was because there is a branch hanging off a tree like a lightning bolt, I was fascinated by the shape. I have been experimenting with simplifying my backgrounds to mostly ink washes.

I was drawing this while people were lurking in the dusk behind me, making me jumpy. A few people around the Mirk Wood area do that, sort of wander and lurk at dusk, I mean seriously, some common sense – don’t come up behind people in the dark in a spooky forest!

Is that so hard to do? Apparently, yes.

Talking of spooky woods, here’s some wintry rainy spooky trees from late Jan or early Feb. I like the gloom in this, it was quite dour, and I was trying out a new sketchbook as well – the Artway Studio 35, a 35% Italian-made cotton sketchbook. After my variable experience with the Indian-made Panorama book, I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but actually it’s really good.

I see they are out of stock at the moment, I hope that’s not a permanent thing as I would happily buy more of these when needed. Artway are always a bargain, and they sell the same paper in A4 & A3 sheets which are also very good. I know this blog quite often sounds like a plug for Artway, but they are one of the best sketchbook and paper makers out there, and it seems so many people are sleeping on them and buying Seawhite or Daler books which in my experience do not last.