Colman’s Mustard jar, my favourite

Colman’s Mustard. No manly food should do without it. As they used to say themselves ‘Meat needs mustard’. An iconic design and personal favourite of mine, drawn in scratch pen and acrylic ink with watercolour on 300gsm The Langton’ Grain Fin’ paper. Warhol had his Campbell’s, my muse is mustard. Email me if you’d like to give a similar original as a present headlined with ‘(insert name)’s favourite’, to a loved one - maybe a jar of their favourite marmalade, a bottle of beer or wine, or even a pair of Converse, anything goes. petergander@gmail.com

My inky handiwork for British company ‘Next’ (Home)

‘Beachcomber-themed’ hand-drawn art  © Peter Gander 2014

© Peter Gander  2014

Just a quick snapshot of only one item we spotted featuring our designs at Next (Home) in the UK. Next produced quite a swathe of ‘beachcomber’-themed products from coffee cups to wall art based on our www.haveagander.biz designs that we hand-drew many moons ago for the Summer 2014 season.

Mollyjogger scrimshaw knife for Jack

The pack with postcard banded to the underside

Pack base

‘Mollyjoggers’ expalined

A personal note from Mollyjoggers’ Rick

The whole shebang

Now for the creative bit. Tracing out a design (that works around the pins)

The pencilled design sits atop the provided carbon paper, held in place with masking tape.

The first attempts were scratched in and ink applied, but I needed a stronger cut!

Getting there, the ink now making an impression

Applying more ink via the cotton bud, which is then buffed away. Engraving tool, bottom right.

The final result, a ‘Trapper’s Knife’ fit for a 14 year-old.

Ta-Dah!

 

 

I have long been a fan of the art of the ‘Scrimshander’, the sea-faring sailor scriber of scenes and voyages of the whaling era who used a sewing needle or knife to carve out intricate artworks onto the teeth of the whales they hunted. ‘Scrimshaw’ has also been applied to bone (as I did here), ivory and horn. Sailors often used squid ink to colour their engraved lines and the principle of inking a cut line applies to the various forms of the scrimshanders’ art to this day.

I was looking for a creative way of personalising a penknife for my son Jack so when I googled ‘scrimshaw’ and ‘knife’ together, my prayers were answered in the form of mollyjogger.com And not only was the scrimshaw connection fruitful but I was also much taken by the fishing provenance as I am a keen fly fisherman too. The Mollyjogger Scrimshaw Kit came with a lovey, bone-clad two-bladed foldable knife, scribing tool, ink, carbon, steel wool, ink applicators and a sheet of huntin’ & fishin’ images too, with instructions. I wouldn’t say it was easy, carving into bone is like scratching onto stone, there is no yielding surface like a sheet of lino! Also, bone has porous areas close to the surface (visible in the last photo) where ink will seep into the cavities, which are hard to erase and repeated inking will just make these spots darker and darker, so this is certainly a case of applying the ‘less is more’ approach. Be bold but brief. However, after engraving the letters a few times and re-applying and rebuffing the ink, the end result, I thought, was characterful and satisfying and my son Jack was elated with the gift.

Fiona’s Converse

Fiona’s Converse  © Peter Gander 2013

I’ve always wanted to draw these iconic shoes from my youth and my wife Fiona wears them, so I got her to part with them for an hour. The drawing was done sans sketch/pencil 1st, so it remains nice and loose with a spontaneous feel. Ink and dip pen with watercolour (mostly Payne’s Grey) on Hahnemuhle Andalucia 500gsm paper.

Inked ‘Cockerel’

The final illustration  © Peter Gander 2013

A new www.haveagander.biz addition to the ‘Menagerie’ series of hand-painted animals which we make into rubber stamps and hand-print onto greetings cards.

‘Thank You’ swallow gift tag art

Swallow Thank You’ tag  © Peter Gander 2013

Today I adapted the artwork of our ‘Swallow’ card www.notonthehighstreet.com/haveagander/product/hand-printed-swallow-card to customise it for a ‘Thank You’ gift tag & card. Original: The swallow image and new banner were hand-drawn in black ink with a brush and scratch (dip) pen.

Drawing the new banner with scratch pen  © Peter Gander 2013

© Peter Gander 2013

‘Stanley’, Parson’s Russell Terrier

Inking Stanley

Dog card  © Peter Gander 2013

The latest Have a Gander card mock-up, featuring our very own Stanley, a Parson's Russell Terrier.

Inking ‘Swallow’

Inking the Swallow  © Peter Gander

 A 'bird's eye view' of a work-in-progress shot inking the Swallow, one of a set of new Have a Gander 'Animals' Greeting Card images. The painted image is destined for the rubber stamp maker. Once it's turned into a stamp, we'll individually hand-print them onto blank cards. All a very painstaking process, but the result is a beautifully-handcrafted card with a very special quality worth all the effort.

‘One for the pot’ (lobster)

‘One for the pot’  © Peter Gander 2012

A poor photo of this painting (at A3 or 42cm x 21cm it’s too large for my scanner), but hopefully you’ll get the gist. The outline was done with a jumbo bamboo dip pen and Ultramarine ink. Watercolour and ink on The Langton Prestige 300gsm rough paper. • SOLD

‘You, me and a cup of tea’ greetings card

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

Unlike our tea towels, the greetings cards have the capacity for full colour, but not wishing to move too far from the original design, I added just a tinted green background variation and infill to the hand-lettering. Ink and dip pen on paper with digital colour.

Chocolate greetings card design

Chocolate greetings card  © Peter Gander 2012

Hand-lettered Chocolate A6 greetings card for Have a Gander range. Pen and ink, digital colour.

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.