TIM BAKER

Forgot to post these from last week, it’s not often we get to draw two people at once at Portraits At The Pub, it makes it a LOT harder, because you always get one person better than the other, one likeness will be closer than the other, or you spend too much time on one person and neglect the other. You have to pace yourself, almost like timing yourself ‘now it’s 5 minutes I need to start on the other person’ etc.

This week was of mother and daughter Marian and Betty, and you got a real feeling of connection and family there, which helped. They were great models.

I think these came out fairly well, I’ve created details of the bits I liked and think worked best. I mostly did my classic fountain pen – technical pen – watercolour – paint sticks sequence (I think that as the order) but jazzed it up with some brush pen work, which I found quite fluid and fun, I got into a flow state with that, very Japanese. Similar with the technical pen, parly the old ‘keep the pen on the page’, very loose like some of my old Pigma drawings.

I did these two on the same pose, a long one, so I felt several quicker pieces might work better. I actually did four – but the other two were false starts!

Sadly as I’d not done this in a month, some of my technical pens and fountain pens had blocked, you can see me frantically trying them on one of the pages! Most of these have been since fixed, but I learned my lesson, my ‘new’ (second-hand but not used before I think) 0.25mm rOtring nib totally blocked, and is totally dead. I’d only used it a few times. *sigh* Those very thin technical nibs are risky like that, you really need to use them and immediately flush the pen out.

The paint stick piece was the last one, of Julian who is related to these two, not sure how but he got dragged in to model! There’s usually a quick pose at the end, so paint sticks (aka King Art Gel Sticks courtesy of TK Maxx, no neither are paying me – but they are totally the same as the kid’s paint sticks) fit this quick ending pose well.

Not sure of the watercolour piece – it’s always a stretch doing a freestyle (i.e no line) watercolour in the dim lighting of the pub, and then painting two people makes it even harder, and then I had issues with using too much water….like my Rorschach series of old. Again one of them works better.

My favourite piece was the first, the fountain pen piece in my style what others have compared to Quentin Blake – I get the comparison, even though it wasn’t something I intended. There’s a real feeling of compassion and support with this pose and drawing, of connection and care. And although I think Betty came out slightly better, they both work, so not a major boo-boo on either.

I find this loose wash style really easy, I can do it in my sleep, but it is effective. Almost like a caricature or cartoon, but not quite.