SKETCHBOOK SAMPLES

I've decided to introduce the New Year with some of my sketchbook studies. For quick sketching outdoors I keep things as simple as possible. I carry a Rotring Art Pen, Pentel Colour and wash brushes and A4/A5 cartridge paper sketchbooks. Recently I've started to use ZIG Art and Graphic Twin This drawing tool has well-pointed brush in one end and a fibre tip nib at the other. This makes the Rotring pen obsolete.

Digital Explorations

I'm posting digital explorations of two different subjects. They each started as pen drawings in and A5 sketchbook colour was added to both with painter 13 from scans. The first sketch was drawn in Le Cateau, the birthplace of Henri Matisse. The second is a view of the Beginhof in Bruges.

DISCOVERY OF OLD FAVOURITES

Decided to have a clean up in preparation for the New Year. This consists of transferring old image files to an external hard drive. Inevitably this leads to renewing acquaintance with old favourites. Here are two Watercolours of locations in Venice that I hadn't seen for a long time. I think they are worth sharing.

Guidecca waterfront: Venice

San Vidal: Venice

AN ENCOUNTER IN OSTEND

 

Last year on the seafront at Ostend I encountered a small flock of 1st winter Lesser Blackback Gulls. It was bitterly cold and windy - not the weather for hanging about. I took several useful photographs.

I had enough material showing the birds in different poses the problem with photographic references is how to make use of them. Charles Tunnicliffe I know would compose an unruly flock into a carefully arranged design. That level of skill is beyond my reach at the moment. Lars Jonnsson however has made some delightfully simple paintings showing just two or three birds set against the sea. Lars Jonnson wins on this occasion!

I’ve chosen two of them to compose this picture. The gulls were scavenging on the promenade near the ferry terminal so a more natural environment was needed. The rocky motifs were taken from some pictures I took on a visit to the Farne Islands. I decided to place the background for this picture in first. The gulls winter plumage was quite subtle and delicate and I felt that a strongly stated background would be out of character.


TUSCANY: THE ARNO VALLEY

This is another reacquaintance with an Acrylic painting made a few years ago. The hills lie on the south side of the Arno valley near Pisa.

 

ARCTIC TERNS OVER RAMSEY SOUND

This is another version of a painting I posted back in November 2011 – then it had a flight of oystercatchers over the Sound. I was never really happy with it so I have reworked it again. I repainted the Sound to hide the Oystercatchers. I’ve reworked the sky because the overcast evening sky didn’t work. Some tonal adjustments were made to the cliffs on Ramsey Island.

To create a new wildlife interest to replace the Oystercatchers I’ve attracted some Arctic Terns to fly in from the Farne Islands to complete the picture! All this is helped by the quick dryinf properties of Liquitex Acrylics.

I’m reminded of how Alwyn Crawshaw always ended his TV demonstrations with. "I’m happy with that." That sums up this post for me too.

 

iPAD PAINTING

I've prepared this blog for friends who have shown an interest in digital painting to help them get started. The simplest way is to use a graphics tablet like iPad. All of these quick sketches were done on an iPad but now cheaper android tablets are coming into the market with their own apps. I've always got on best with Autodesk software and android versions maybe available now.

 

 

Autoink This is a very simple drawing app. It only allows you to draw lines though thickness and colour can be varied. It simulates drawing with coloured ink but without the freedom to dilute - all marks are fully saturated.

All of the following sketches were drawn with Autodesk Sketch
 
 



This flower sketch was made from life and is essentially a first statement, Autosketch allows the use of layers to build up the picture. The colours were added on the new layer placed above the drawing layer.

 

 

I used one of my photographs for this study. It was created quite freely by making quick bold marks in different colours and blending them. AutoSketch allows the use of layers and I created a new layer for the owl taking care to get the shape right. Finally the linework was touched in with a fine 'brush'.

 

 



Here the landscape background was painted quite freely from memory. Autosketch comes with a whole range of brush settings which can be used for textural effects. These show in the middle distance  If I was taking this further the foreground would need some work. I'd also have to tidy up the Magpies - they need more careful drawing from observation.

 

 This is an imagined seascape. It was inspired by one of Fred Cuming's videos where - painting outdoors - he pushed paint about on a large canvas until he got the effect he wanted. I've done the same. I used a more advanced technique to add the oystercatchers using one of my watercolours.

I selected and made a copy of the flight of birds in Corel Photopaint and dropped it onto a new layer in Autosketch. Layers can be moved around and resized to get the motif in the correct position. The tricky bit is to erase the watercolour background from around individual birds.

MORE ON LINE AND WASH

I don't know of a waterproof ink that you can use with a fountain pen like the Rotring Art Pen. But that isn't a great problem you can create washes from the pen lines with a Pentel wash brush or a wet watercolour brush.   

 

Although a pen is best for sketching buildings I much prefer to sketch directly with a brush for street scenes. I drew the sketch of Napier with a sepia Pentel Colour Brush. The brush marks can treated with a wet watercolour brush to create washes.

 

TINTED SKETCH with a Pentel Brush Pen

This sketch was drawn with a Pentel Brush Pen in an A5 sketchbook. The Pentel Brush Pen has replaceable black ink cartridges. The Brushmarks are waterproof when dry.

LINE AND WASH IN WATERCOLOUR

 The following sketches were posted to supplement a tutorial given to a local

Art Group.

 

A Rotring Art Pen was used to create this line and wash sketch.

Anyone brave enough to develop this sketch further?

Print off this ink line drawing to add washes

 

STRIPPING OFF THE LAYERS

I made this study of a Little Owl at the ICBP at Newent - I used Autodesk Sketch Book Pro.

 At the end I thought it a bit overworked so I decided to strip off the colour layers and develop the line work. I feel this simpler treatment gave a better rendering of the Owl's pose and character.

As a final touch I dropped in a new colour layer for a background. I may decide to print it as a notelet.

  

MAGPIES BROWSING FIELD STUBBLE

For most of the summer the field adjacent to my garden has been covered by a crop of maize. Now the maize has been cut and the stubble left until the ground is dry enough to plough. Immediately it has attacted the interest of Pigeons, Jackdaws, and Magpies.

The Magpies are the most interesting subjects and I decided to try a direct iPad sketch of a group of them browsing the stubble for worms and seeds. I've not used the iPad much for direct sketching sur le motif but I can see it has advantages over my usual sketchbook and charcoal method. It makes colour available without the burden of watercolour box, brushes, and bottles of water. So it's very handy for quick notetaking and you have a digital file saved for future reference.

With an iPad file you have a two choices. First to use it to create a digital print. If I think the file has possibilities print it as a limited edition of 10. These are offered signed, mounted and unframed. Alternatively the sketch can simply be used as the basis of a painting in a traditional medium. I think this will be the starting point for acrylic on board. I used Autosketch Pro to create the picture.

DREAMY DOODLING

Year’s ago I read a book called ‘On Not Being Able to Paint’. The author was Marion Milner, a clinical psychologist who was also a keen painter. All I can remember was her advocating an exercise aimed at suppressing logical ways of observing and allowing emotional responses to take control. To do this she advocated relaxing into a state of reverie and allowing the hand to make marks.  She claimed that the results could be quite surprising. Sitting comfortably on a warm summer day in front of fine view could sometimes result in vigorous mark making that suggested a violent storm.

From time to time I try this method and adapt it to making marks which don’t represent anything other than being what the eye likes. I like to use a medium like soft pencil or Charcoal which can be used to exploit a range of design elements notably Line, Tone, and Texture. One of Picasso’s artistic objectives was to ‘realise forms’ and once a form is realised it is there to lead a life of its own.

Here are two examples which don’t represent anything other than forms. They’re what my eye likes but they may not appeal to anybody else.

DIGITAL SEASCAPE painted with the iPad

This is a seascape created from memory - though it owes something to the view across Cardigan Bay The treatment is characterised by a struggle to achieve subtle blending of colours and expressive marks which engage the eye.

To give the painting more interest I created a new layer and imported a flight of Oystercatchers. The birds were taken from a watercolour I painted of a view across Morecambe Bay near Arnside.

I copied a rectangular selection which enclosed the birds and pasted it onto the new layer. The tricky part was removing the watercolour background from around the birds to reveal the iPad painting on the first layer.

DIGITAL WAYS

I went to Nature in Art last week to meet Shelly Perkins who is a Digital Painter and was the artist in residence. After all the publicity given to David Hockney’s use of an iPad I was surprised to find that Shelly’s computer set up is simple – she currently uses a standard desktop PC and a scanner.

She starts her project by making a set of pencil or ink drawings. These may be of leaves, flowers, insects, or other wildlife. Then she prepares watercolour studies for background features or animals and birds that will be important elements in her composition. These studies are her working drawings which she imports onto separate layers in Photoshop. Using the software she is able to transform her layers by resizing or applying transforms - rotations or reflections. Colour can be added or modified as well. Interestingly she often adds colour onscreen with a standard mouse.

The final step is to merge the layers and save the file for printing. Two examples of her work are given below. Visit Shelly's website to see the full range of her digital creativity.

http://www.shellyperkins.co.uk/

 

Yarrow Spread Flat

 

The Ugly Duckling

 

TALKING ABOUT RON RANSON - and a few others.

I can't resist browsing in OXFAM bookshops and there's a good on in Hereford where I came across a clean copy of Ron Ranson's book 'Watercolour Fast and Loose.' He gained popularity by his using a 2in Japanese Hake to quickly dash in the main features of his watercolours. I remember he was a favorite with many Ludlow Art Soc members who often asked me  if I was going to buy a hake. I never did because one of our tutor members had directed me to Jack Merriot's 'Discovering Watercolour' - long out of print I found a copy in a second hand bookshop in Tewkesbury.

I always thought the title of Ranson's book was unfortunate - nothing of quality is ever executed fast or loose. For me dear old Ron doesn't rate alongside Trevor Chamberlain and I note he included some reproductions of Trevor's watercolours in later chapters of his book. In fairness to him though he did introduce beginners in watercolour  to a brush that develops confidence to boldly apply first washes and build on them.

I never owned Ron's book and I was tempted to buy it for old times sake but – no – I was seduced by 'Nature's Engraver' a biography of Thomas Bewick. Just shows I can rarely escape from an OXFAM bookshop without buying something.

DEATH AFTER BREAKFAST

Hearing a dull thud as something hits our ground floor windows is a frequent occurrence. I was alerted by a rather loud thud thump last week as I was having breakfast. I rarely bother to take immediate action as usually they are caused by blackbirds chasing other birds from their territory. So I let the dust settle – so to speak – because the unfortunate bird will often   have a broken neck; or if it us still alive I place it in a shoebox with a few seeds and if it is going to survive it will be ready after an hour or so to place under a hedge and freedom.

A peep through the lounge curtains indicated there had been a major incident – feathers were carried by a light breeze across the lawn.  As I rounded the corner of the house I disturbed a Sparrowhawk who had opened the carcass of a Wood Pigeon and already had sampled a good portion of the breast.

By tidying away the carcass I missed an opportunity to observe what would have been more interesting behaviour. An hour or so later the Sparrowhawk  returned only to find some other thoughless beast had deprived him of his meal.

 

A MEMORY OF NIDARA

 

Nidara was the Hindi name – meaning Fearless – given  given to the female snow leopard cub born at Dudley Zoo. Sadly she died of a stomach infection after 6 weeks. This is a quick study of her.

The sketch was drawn with Autosketch Pro6 on my iPad. I started with a screen capture of a video frame taken from a BBC news item on ‘Midlands Today. I imported the frame into the base layer of an Autosketch file. Subsequent stages of the image were painted on new layers which were built up independently of the captured video frame. Finally the video frame was removed and the sketch saved in PGN format.

SWLA 50TH ANNIVERSARY EXHIBITION

I paid a visit to Twigworth Hall last week to see the SWLA Five Decades Exhibition. It’s a display of members work organised to celebrate the Society’s 50^th Anniversary. The exhibition is a breathtaking show of past and current members’ work. It was good to make acquaintance with a fine Charles Tunnicliffe watercolour of a flock of Lapwings. I may have seen a print of it in ‘Tunniclifffe’s Birdlife’ but any book illustration cannot compare with seeing the original.

I’m currently a big fan of ‘The two ‘Darrens’ that is Darren Woodhead and Darren Rees. I’ve blogged about Darren Woodhead following his appearance on ‘Springwatch’ he also tweets regularly on Twitter. This exhibition was the first time I’d been able to study one of his full-sheet watercolours painted outdoors infront of his subject. I was immediately enthralled by how he simplified the subject to accommodate the nature of the watercolour medium.

I first encountered Darren Rees’ work from a copy of his book ‘Bird Impressions’. He is another artist who works from field observations and the book illustrations consist of quick direct pencil and watercolour sketches. The painting he is showing in the exhibition is a more considered painting in acrylic – a pleasant surprise.

I’ll just have to make another visit to take a second look

iPad PAINTING: LITTLE OWL

I'm back in iPad mode and using Autosketch Pro6. This study of a Little Owl was made after a recent visit to  the International Bird's of Prey Centre at Newent, Glos. It was one of the birds they were flying and I've made use of sketches and my own photographs. I'm planning a set of prints in signed limited editions for showing later this summer.