‘Jolly girl’ cycling card

Sketching out the new card

Inking the banners

The final print with traditional watercolour and digital colour.  © Peter Gander 2013

To sit alongside our www.haveagander.biz ‘Spiffing gent on a penny farthing’ greetings card, we needed a female counterpart. Hand-drawn in pen and ink, I used digital colour on the illustration and a traditional watercolour wash for the background.

‘Skullbikery’ watercolour edition

‘Skullbikery’ watercolour original edition  © Peter Gander 2013

An update of a previous digital edition, this one’s been painted as an original as a gift to a cycling-crazy friend. Hope you liked it Dan ; - ) Winsor & Newton watercolour on The Langton 300gsm Grain Fin paper.

Keith’s wooden house

Keith’s wooden house  © Peter Gander 2012

Last month my old college friend Ben, my brother and myself took off on a circular cycling tour around Bordeaux. This is my brother’s friend Keith’s place, nestled in a huge woods. He built the place himself and was kind enough to put us up for the night. Not only were we treated to a huge chili con carne, but lashings of local red wine and Keith’s performances late into the night on slide guitar and spoons! Definitely our most raucous night of the entire trip. Thanks Keith - this painting’s winging its way to you as a ‘thank you’ ; ) Black Indian ink (via dip pen) and Winsor & Newton watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm NOT paper.

 

Detail

 

Skullbikery

Skullbikery  © Peter Gander 2012

With my graphic designer hat on, I have always been a fan of mixing two images to make a visual statement, so here’s an example, Skullbikery. It’s hand-drawn with a brush and ink (the shading on the left done seperately as a seperate ‘plate’ as it were). Then I scanned the artwork and added colour digitally. Designed to be produced as a digital print.

The pedalling painter 1: Reculver and back (12k)

The artist © Peter Gander

In little less than a year I will be doing a cycling tour along a portion of The Compostela di Santiago (The Pilgrim’s Route) -  in the south-west of France, with my brother and old art college friend Ben, a trip of at least 600 kilometers and today it was time to start something resembling a training regime. Admittedly a 12k round trip is no big deal at all, (even the paper boy would scoff) but not having cycled properly for some years I needed to set my sights, well, on Reculver Towers, 6 kilometers away and just visible from Herne Bay’s seafront. It’s an ancient Roman monument which bizarrely was only partly demolished in the 1920s. They left the towers to the front of the building in situ as a navigational aid to passing ships. Anyway, my wife Fiona is far fitter than I and regularly runs 5k or so which she takes, erm, in her stride. And she dutifully ushered me along the way with the odd reassuring word and the habit of disappearing over the horizon like a out-of-reach carrot to a hungry donkey, in a similar way that my brother did when we recently did a ride or two in France. Still, I was enjoying the 20mph cold north-easterly gale in my face, supressing my forward progress like I had the ‘bike handbrake’ on. And I use the title ‘The Pedalling Painter’ in a wishful sense, as it really was howling with wind, plus we had to be back for an appointment, so the chances of sketching en route were very unlikely (I’m hoping for more balmy weather too in France). Thus Fiona took this shot which I opened up on the Mac and sketched from a distance, freehand. Cheating perhaps, but better than nowt. Future Pedalling Painter posts will be from longer rides with a proper sketch stop built in, something I hope to carry on doing on our French trip at the end of the day or during a lunch-stop. Ink and brush with Winsor and Newton watercolour on 210gsm Khadi handmade sketchbook.