Recent Sketches

I started this blog with the intention of it being a kind of sketchbook diary, hence its title. Since then though it has changed and developed and now contains more finished studio work than field sketches. Ten years or so ago, pretty much all I was doing was sketchbook work with very little, and in some years no finished studio pieces being produced. Now I seem to have turned full circle, with nearly all of my time taken up with studio work and very little time being spent outdoors. I need to redress this balance, ideally I would like to set aside some time each day for some serious observational drawing, even if only for half an hour or so. The following are some recent sketches made over the last month, actually they are the only sketches I have made over the last month. So you can judge for yourself how much time has been spent outside, (even some of these were drawn from inside the house looking through the windows!).

A dejected looking Dunnock in the back garden in a heavy rain shower.
6b Progresso Graphite Pencil.

A Heron sketched as it flapped lazily overhead as I sat in a supermarket carpark.
Rotring Art Pen.

Two Jays sat on the fence at the bottom of mums garden. Eyeing up the fat balls hanging from the birdtable, trying to work out how to get to them.
Rotring Art Pen.

A female Sparrowhawk drawn as it flashed passed chasing a Blackbird. The drawing on the left is all wrong the wing shape looks more like a harrier!
Rotring Art Pen.

This afternoon we had an hours walk around Winscar Reservoir on the northern edge of the peak district. This Common Sandpiper was on the edge of the shoreline, the Wheatear on the moor above the reservoir.

Common Sandpiper.
Rotring Art Pen

Female Wheatear
6b Progresso Graphite Pencil and Watercolour.

Waste not want not

Sorting out some shelves I came across some small odd shaped offcuts of lino, and not wanting to throw them away. I decided to see if I could compose some designs to suit them. Thinking it would be easier I picked the largest of them (65mm x 282mm). This is what I came up with, a simple one colour print.

Swimming Otter. Linocut. 55mm x 210mm. Open Edition.

As this was a single colour print I printed it with a border, not something I do very often. I can't quite make up my mind about borders. I think they look great on other printmakers work but I've never been entirely happy about the few prints that I have made with a border around them.

Something you don't see much of nowadays.

Waiting for Collection.
Pen and Ink and Watercolour.180mm x 125mm.

The porch of a barn in Littondale with three milk churns waiting for the lorry from the Milk Marketing Board to collect them.
Well not quite, I think its a long time since these churns contained any milk. Once this would have been a common site at farms all over the country. Now though the milk is piped from the farms into tankers and the milk churns have become redundant. These were actually full of dried dog food for the farm sheepdogs.

Mini Prints

I came across a call for entries recently for a British Printmakers Council Exhibition, so I thought I'd have a go. I downloaded the entry form and requirements and then started doodling some designs. Then I read the entry requirements. 'Works should be no larger than 8cm x 10cm.' I read that and thought 'that seems small.' Then I drew it out and realised how small it is. I work bigger than this when I do thumbnail sketches! For printmaking the smallest I usually work is slightly under A5. Anyway, thinking that the simpler the better. I discarded my rather grand ideas for what I was going to do and drew out a design based on the Avocet sketches from a couple of weeks ago. I really struggled with this and couldn't get anything to go right. I needed an edition of a minimum of 10 prints. By the time I had finished I had 5 useable prints, and that was with only four colours! So for what its worth here is the result of my efforts.

Avocets
4 Colour Reduction Linocut. 100m x 80mm.

Back to the drawing board with a bit more care than I took with this.

North Landing, Flamborough Head

North Landing, Flamborough Head.
11 Colour Reduction Linocut. 270mm x 180mm.

With the addition of the final dark colour this print is finished, and now I really have to buckle down to preparing for the art in the pen event. Prints have to be framed and then I have to figure out a way of hanging them in a cattle pen! So there may not be time for another big linocut before then.

Next Colours on the Flamborough Print

Colour 7 is a dark brown for the shadows on the base of the cliffs and for a few patches on the beach to represent the wet sand left by the retreating waves.

 Colour 8, a darker blue for the sea and top part of the sky.

 Colours 9 above, and 10 below, two shades of green.

Which leaves us with just one more colour to go.

Elland Gravel Pits

Had an hours walk around Elland Gravel pits this afternoon before picking the kids up from school. Or to give the place its new name ; Cromwell Bottom Local Nature Reserve. It used to be one of my regular haunts but its a couple of years since I last walked round it. I didn't have much time but still managed a few record sketches and a study which I may be able to develop into something more.

The two butterflies are Ringlet and a Small Skipper, birds are male Reed Bunting, Wren and male Whitethroat. All pencil, watercolour and pen and ink.

Further along the canal I came across a large shoal of Bream idling just beneath the surface in the shadows of the overhanging trees. These two were the tail end of a shoal of about 15 or 20.

Bream and Damselflies. Watercolour.

Its not turned out quite as I intended, I started to loose control of the watercolour. But the tone of the two fish is about right in relation to the darkness of the water. Its a useful starting point for further development perhaps.