The minnow hunters

Well, admidst the three inches of snow in Kent at the moment, I thought I'd send a ray of sunshine in the shape of this watercolour of a couple of years ago. The minnow hunters in question are my children, Hannah & Jack. They were looking for tiddlers in a stream which fed the mighty river Avon in Hampshire. Painted from photographic reference, but with a healthy portion of artistic licence in omitting unnecessary background detail, I think it nicely conveys the seemingly endless summers of youth.

Quink ink pot (in white ink)

Still on black paper and white ink, this lunchtime I did a still life of what was close at hand, my little Quink Ink pot. It's a brain-teaser trying to work out where a white becomes a grey and a grey becomes a black when you're effectively painting in reverse, with a white medium.

Cockerel, white ink on black

Today's lunchtime sketch, a Chinese-style cockerel painted in white ink in my black paper sketchpad. Painting the fiddly tail feathers in the negative was a little tricky and not wholly successful, but the inner body feathers in white on black are effective, especially where the white ink sinks in giving varying strengths of white, depending on how dilute it was.

Adam & Eve in a carved snake frame

A quick backtrack to Christmas and a case of 'artist imitating frame' here. I bought this amazing (Indian?) carved wooden frame from a lovely antique shop called Warehams in Whitstable for my girlfriend Fiona. It was unglazed but that was soon remedied by a visit to a local glaziers. The frame is intricately carved in a pierced style and reveals four snakes eating each other's tails around the edge. Surrounding these creatures is a jungle of delicate leafwork and flowers.
It's a stunning frame and naturally inspired the linocut image of Adam and Eve. The print is hand-burnished, on white cartridge, though I may yet experiment with green-tinted papers or even another linocut image, as this one was completed speedily for Christmas! (The ink up close is visibly stuck to the glass!)

Scamps for 'The Elephant Man' play (poster)

Peter, a good friend of mine is directing a stage play version of ‘The Elephant Man’ for The Sawbridgeworth Players (Herts, UK) in the spring and has asked me to come up with some ideas for the poster. These Moleskine scamps (or thumbnail sketches) are a neat and practical way of getting the first seeds of ideas in my head onto a page, without thinking too much, or perhaps thinking more intuitively. It's a practise I do every working day in my art director role - scamps are a useful way of 'viewing the idea from a distance'. In taking very litte time on each early idea and keeping them on a small scale, it allows the designer/artist an 'at-arms-length' viewpoint, much like standing back from a canvas, the proportions and dynamic elements are seen much more easily. It doesn't pay to be precious about minutaie at this point - it's about filtering out the good ones with potential. Next stage, I'll draw/sketch up bigger versions of our joint favourites (a maximum of three) from which the final design will proceed. I am thinking along the lines of a design and medium to suit both the atmosphere and the period of the play - 'Victorian woodblock billboard poster'-style, perhaps with an linocut image. Charcoal also would be suitably gritty!

‘Adventure’

Titled somewhat ironically as the guy is obviously asleep, but he had the word Adventure emblazoned on his outdoor coat. Hey, everyone’s entitled to a day off from climbing Everest. This was my very first drawing to christen my new (and first) Moleskine sketch book. Sleeping models are such useful subjects. Apart from the odd waking up episode where he eyed me suspiciously, he resumed his pose well. Anxious never to waste a single spare centimetre of paper, I sketched this on the inside front cover. Fountain Pentel on cream-coloured Moleskine pad.

Isle of Sheppey Storms I & III

I’ve been recently commissioned to paint some local Kent seascapes for a couple near the Kent coastal town of Whitstable. Visible from the shore there to the west is the Isle of Sheppey in the Thames estuary. Anxious to please, I did a trio of alternative paintings, initially for myself, but took them along unframed to the buyers so they could make a choice. The one they went for is being framed as we speak, so isn't here to show, but was in a similar vein. The sky is a mixture of wet-into-wet and dry techniques applied therafter. Incidentally, I always use BIG brushes. My favourite in fact is a Kolinsky blue squirrel size 26 mop! It holds water like no other and has a fine point should I be feeling in a delicate mood, which is rarely.
On the paper front, it was interesting to see how differently a heavier-weight paper behaved with the water too. This is 400gsm rough and took substantially longer to dry compared to a more commonplace 300gsm paper. The benefit of that of course, is a longer working time, which can be useful. Sheppey Storm I in particular is a good example of the spreading pigments creatinga rainy effect as one colour imposes upon others in the dramatic billowing cloud effects. The rough-textured surfaceI’m very pleased with these, clouds were made for watercolours. The rough-textured surface also lends itself well to dragging a dry brush (with a little pure pigment on) across the sea or sandy foreshore, to great effect. £95 each, inc P&P (UK only). • UPDATE: Friday 6 August 2010 - SHEPPEY STORM is now SOLD. Only Sheppey Storm III remains. Email me for non-UK postage.

The snow mixed with the stars

Still on the subject of arborial landscapes, I bought some white Winsor & Newton ink lunchtime from Cass arts in London’s Berwick Street. It comes in an old-fashioned trapezium-shaped bottle and sits inside a packaging design that seems to have remained unchanged since I first saw it at college when I was 17. Experimenting with stages between undiluted and very diluted, it was a joy to use the white ink on my black sketch pad, watching the pigment sink in and lighten as it dried. The result on such paper inevitably has a nocturnal feel about it, but I’m not complaining. Those birds are up late.

100113 Winter Walk

This handmade Khadi Indian paper is very pulpy and absorbent, so tricks like the soft-edged clouds are really done justice with this paper. Inspired by the consitent snow we‘re having and my New Year’s walk on the 1st of January in a Kentish wood. Quink ink.

Benson the 64lb carp, RIP 2009

Reading the festive 'looking-back-at-the-year' Angler’s Mail over the Christmas break, I read about and was inspired to sketch Benson, a 64lb common carp, who shuffled off his watery mortal coil to much media attention during 2009. Massive carp aren’t really my bag when it comes to fishing, though I do enjoy catching carp with a fly rod in the summer. But it must be something else to catch a true whopper like Benson and credit to anyone who managed to pull in this bag of spuds! Charcoal pencil and Quink ink on Khadi Indian rough paper.

Tudor Tea Rooms Christmas

A painting finished last night for a very nice chap called Anthony who runs a unique architectural gem of a building called The Tudor Tea Rooms in Harbour Street, Whitstable, Kent, UK. It has lovely arched windows with white stitch-effect details and herringbone brickwork shown in the painting under the sills. This will be the cover image of a calendar Anthony will be giving away to his happy customers. The rest of the calendar will feature 12 of my other 'local/Whitstable' works seen on this site in landscape format. Anthony will be hanging some of my works inside the restaurant soon too. Watercolour and gouache on 300gsm Langton rough.