TIM BAKER

Despite the general artistic malalse of ‘what am I doing?’ I have kept myself busy, even working more frequently down on the river, something I burnt myself out of two years ago during the pandemic, but this time exploring with other media, drawing people who are sunbathing on the riverbank, drawing the odd things that get dredged up by magnet fisherpeople, and back to night painting (which will be detailed in another post). This is the third in a very irregular series.

First up is a paint stick piece – these can be highly variable on the river, but as I was trying to express the lurid acid sunshine colours and the colour of the buddleia, I think it works.

Having a blot on an ink piece can be a total disaster – but in this case, it wasn’t. The blot fell where the trees were anyway – I never worked out if they are cypresses or poplars – and I used a proper brush to spread and paint with it. I don’t think I used a brush pen, but I might have….but I think it was just a very quick piece.

Although a lot of my work looks pleasant, even sunny I think the title of this one, named after the Radiohead track but actually I was listening to the Ane Brun cover, indicates my state of mind. It wasn’t good,and although I feel I overworked the sky I do like how the bloom suggests sunlight peeking over the very dark and turbulent riverbank.

If my pieces look attacked sometimes, it’s because they are….I take my anger out on my pieces, hence liking sgraffito and subtractive methods.

I don’t usually draw people outside of the portrait sessions because I feel it can be a little intrusive, but seeing people enraptured in their own bubble on the riverbank is fascinating, especially as given they are out in nature, they are quite often looking at their phones. Text #2 was done during the massive mid July heatwave, and is here because I am writing from the future 😉 The other two pieces are older, late June most likely as they were scanned on the 1st of July. I loved the coloured hair of the goth? girl on the final piece, there’s a sort of reverie going on there, a quiet moment.

I must say when I did these I half expected someone to come over and call me a creep or think I was being strange, but it was fine. I regard them as similar to my public transport drawings.

Capsize is called that because one of the rowing boats indeed did capsize and the person on the riverbank was watching that…sadly I didn’t get to draw the actual capsize for by the time I got to a bench and sat down and got my sketchbook and pen out they had righted it…but this is the aftermath.

I mentioned magnet fishers, you quite often see rusty things on the bank they’ve found, but I think this is a record! What seems to be the type of trolley with shelves you see supermarket workers using or at a nursery, and it had obviously been down in the water a long time! I was fascinated by the shape versus the old viewpoint sign. Agan apart from the ‘cage’ – experimenting with looser drawing styles.

Boats still feature a lot in my work, as they are free landscape subjects that move! And Fixing The Engine comes from the sign that was affixed to the boat, obviously they weren’t meant to moor that long on that spot – and Santa Maria is the name of the boat on the outside, a regular along here.

I love this one of Raven’s Ait, because I so rarely do freeform watercolour without line. Well there are lines but after the fact using sgraffito. I much prefer that way of working…

And finally a piece like Fixing The Engine showing my darker more recent use of woody pencil with landscapes – well riverscape here. The light was hitting the water where the swans were making them black in silhouette as it was late in the day. I like the turbulent nature of this, it’s not a ‘twee watercolour’ or nice pen image. It’s turbulent as the river was when a large motorboat went by!

Also being at the end of the day, you do get those heavy black shadows on the waves.