TIM BAKER

Here’s a spooky portrait session for Halloween – and not one for those who have coulrophobia – it’s Tony as the Joker from Batman! This was a lot of fun, and rather hard painting and drawing someone with face makeup on. There are two approaches – either ignore it, or go abstract, because I know from experience if you try and go representational it just won’t work – so embrace the surreal comic nature. I chose to go abstract – it worked. It’s more the darker graphic adult novel style. I wanted to reflect the creepy scary nature of clowns and I think I got that.

Also new session, new sketchbook – I was trying out the Fabriano 1264 A4 sketchbook which I found cheaply at Ken Bromley (again, no kickbacks for that link) which is 25% cotton paper. So how did it go?

I don’t usually do comic based work, nor anything for this spooky time of year this was a refreshing change and a big challenge. I started with a quick piece on the Flat White which didn’t make it here, and then tried the Fabriano 1264 with a watercolour and fountain pen piece. I later did another piece in this book of the Joker sitting down which was more much more mixed media – adding in Lyra Graphite as well and scratching in HA HA HA into the background.

I have a feeling there is a pose like this in the Dark Knight books?

I also did a piece in the Flat White book with watercolour, sgraffito and pen – this actually seemed to be overworked and weirdly looks a bit like Donald Trump. More scary! And goes to show you, more time isn’t always better. I feel that piece is a bit overworked, although it does have ‘a vibe’. I realised it wasn’t going that well, hence spattering the page with watercolour. I sometimes start to destroy or distress my work if I feel it’s not upto scratch (pun intended).

The 1264 very similar to the 35% cotton book I’ve been using, bright white and really nice. I was hoping for something closer to Fabriano Rosapina but unlike that there is a texture so not as good as the Flat White for pen work, but for water-based media, it’s perfect. I would say it slightly shades the 35%, maybe. I’d get whatever you can get cheapest, really. Given I use Fabriano a lot in my single sheet work, having something of that calibre in sketchbook form is a big deal. This isn’t Artistico or Rosapina admittedly, but look at those prices, it’s a fraction of that!

Only one problem – it’s bigger than A4 actually, I guess the A4 starts at the perforations, so if you work right up there, you’ll miss some of it on your scanner.

As I said in the previous post, watercolour work has come back with a bang, so trying out the new sketchbooks – yes I finished my last Flat White sketchbook last night in just over 2 months, and coming to the end of the Canson XL A3 too. So I was short of my stock of Artway Flat White I decided as well as ordering more of the Flat White including an A3 version, I’ve also been researching what other mixed media pads are out there at a similar price. Preferably cheaper – cos the Canson is great but a bit pricey cos of the exchange rates.

Not many, as the Artway ones are a real bargain especially if you order direct from them or are a student as they do discounts. So other ones I am trying are the Daler Rowney Graduate Mixed Media 240gsm budget pad as sort-of reviewed last post, Royal Talens Mixed Media 250gsm, the Fabriano 1264 as mentioned above, and the Faber Castell Mixed Media 250gsm pad. On my future list is the Daler Rowney 250gsm Mixed Media pad as well, given how good a bargain the Grad Pads are – I want to see how that compares!

So back to the artworks – I said about how weird it was last time that I didn’t do any paint stick pieces (that link is the Little Brian ones, I use them interchangeably with the Kwik Stix ones and they are identical) so this time I made up for that with two paint stick pieces! The bright kid’s colours as I thought worked well with the clown, so I did a close-up the same sitting pose, and then did a larger A3 of another sitting pose where Tony was holding his head.

I debated whether using white would work to show face paint, I avoided that with the watercolours and inks, but here it does work. Again with the Ha-Ha’s! His hair wasn’t green btw, it just came out like that, it was more of a straw-grey colour but that’s a hard colour to create with bright paint sticks.

And the best piece was a really quick one – 15 minutes early on, I basically attacked the page of the A3 Canson with some simple drawing, bold abstract watercolour, then went over the top with sgraffito and Lyra crayon. Very loose, very quick, but seems to catch the feeling very well, even the tears of a clown, but also like all clowns ominous.