St Edmund's School Canterbury, dip pen & digital

St Edmund’s School Canterbury, pen and ink  © Peter Gander 2012

Having taken on two commissions to paint St Edmund’s School Canterbury as a watercolour, I found a reference photo on my desk and thought I’d produce a version my way. Forever keen to keep things looking spontaneous and fresh, I avoided a direct trace approach and pinned up the pic at a distance and drew it freehand with dip pen - not even drawing a sketch in pencil first. Risky, but worthwhile if it comes off, as it did here. I scanned in the indian ink and dip-pen linework and added colour very roughly with simple use of a straight lasso tool, ensuring the piece had that block printing look, with little time for detail. Thus it has a lovely and airy misregistered feel, where colours don’t quite fit the lines. It reminds me slightly of Edward Pond’s art which used to populate the London Liverpool Street to Cambridge train carriages a couple of decades ago, although you need to imagine this without the black linework! Indian ink and dip-pen on cartridge with digital colour.

The old trout lake, Woodchurch, Kent

The old trout lake, Woodchurch, Kent  © Peter Gander 2012

Now sadly no longer a fly-fishing venue, Woodchurch lake closed to fishing last year. It was one of my favourite venues, a peaceful gem in deepest Kent, but not before I was able to ‘catch’ a nice painting of the place. In the distance to the left of the church is the windmill, also shown here.

Winsor & Newton watercolour on The Langton rough 300gsm watercolour paper.

Tea towel: You, me and a cup of tea

© Peter Gander 2012  You, me and a cup of tea

Another hand-drawn design for our Have a Gander tea towel range in ‘tea-leaf’ green. Original artwork drawn with dip pen and Indian ink. We now have over 10 independent Kent, Sussex and Surrey shops making orders for the tea towels and the brilliantly-named To Dry For specialist tea towel retailer has placed an order for our Jubilee design. Available May 2012.

St Edmund’s Canterbury, main school painting

© Peter Gander 2012  St Edmund’s main entrance

A second commission from local Canterbury school St Edmund’s. This time the main entrance, which faces the Whitstable road. This part of the building has lovely pale stonework and a gothic lancet arched doorway. The painting was very much ‘dabbed’ at to retain plenty of summery white paper spaces which infuse the work with light, (rather than lay down areas of flat colour). Winsor and Newton watercolour on The Langton Grain Fin 180gsm watercolour paper.

Tea towel: Pig cuts

Pig cuts tea towel  © Peter Gander

Another in our range of Have a Gander tea towels featuring a slightly less orthodox-than-usual dividing of the pig’s meat including Sunday Roast and Bacon butties! Hand-painted with brush and ink and coloured digitally.

Fisherman Whitstable

Fisherman Whitstable  © Peter Gander

Back to my favourite subject. Fish and/or fishing. Again, hand-painted ink and brush linework (like the previous eel post), a Whitstable fisherman poses with a mighty catch against the backdrop of Whitstable harbour and its tall characteristic fishermen’s huts. Ink and digital colour.

Eel postcard image

Eel postcard image  © Peter Gander

A client who works for CEFAS commissioned me to come up with some eel-themed designs for a conference coming up later in the year in Edinburgh, Scotland. After forwarding some rough ideas, we settled on this celtic design-inspired ‘Eel knot’ as it was seen to not only look striking but also represents one of the creature’s habits of writhing underwater in huge ‘eel balls’ where hundereds of the creatures form a rolling sphere of eeldom, careering downstream in a dark shiny mass! Hand-painted ink linework with charcoal and digital colour. As usual, the type is hand-drawn too.

Re-drawing the design in pencil with a tad more precision thank the original scamp

Getting knotted over the puzzling shapes...

Painting the final linework on Canson Detail Paper, beautifully thin and transparent, so I can see the pencil sketch underneath

Treating this as a completely seperate layer, I drew some stylised ripples in charcoal, later turned to white