Two Months in Crete : Sketch - Potted Hydrangeas

Potted Hydrangeas

(Rotring Art Pen in 195x195 mm sketchbook)

Feeling a little lacking in energy, I decided to sit in the sun on our apartment's patio area. I can never sit still for long without wanting to do something, however, so I thought I'd draw the big pot of hydrangeas near me.

I started in the middle and gradually worked outwards. There's a kind of meditative tranquility that takes hold of me whenever I draw something that needs careful observation like this. Everything else ceases to exist.

I hadn't used my Art Pen in a long time because it had clogged up, but I thought I'd found a way to clean it out and really enjoyed using it again. Unfortunately, when I was done, there was ink all over my fingers and I had to retire it from use again.

Urban Sketch Crawl

I'm filled with trepidation. My Regular Reader will know that I am not a stranger to drawing outside. I'm not even a stranger to drawing outside in towns. But I've always been somewhat averse to drawing outside in towns in the UK. 

For some reason, I'm prepared to stand in the street in a town in Crete or Croatia, get out my pen and sketchbook and spend an hour or so drawing what's in front of me. But I've always hated the prospect of doing it in British towns and cities.

Having said that, in the early days of my artistic endeavours I drew this building in Newcastle, standing in the street:

Northern Goldsmiths, 4th November 1990 
(Fine point marker and sepia ArtPen in A4 sketchbook)

I didn't enjoy the experience; it was terribly cold and once my feet had thawed out, they ached. I did no more drawings of this sort until I began my BA Fine Art course at Newcastle University in 1997, when we were required to go out every day for a week, drawing the urban environment. Here's a couple of the sketchbook drawings I did then:

 High Street Fire Escape (A4 sketchbook)



Concrete Walkways (A4 sketchbook)

Looking at the drawings I do every year on holiday you'll see that I often draw houses. I don't draw houses in the UK, but choose instead (if I'm put in the position of having to draw in a UK town) big chunks of urban concrete. There's a reason: Mediterranean buildings are often quite simple in design and are not cluttered up with neoclassical columns and bloody windows! Since the repeal of the Window Tax in 1851, we've stuck windows in every available wall and not just ordinary openings-with-shutters like Greek houses have, but complicated, fanciful structures with ornate lintels and ... oh, you get the picture, I'm sure.

But really, this is just another excuse for not getting down to drawing my world. Windows and architectural fol-de-rols may be awkward but they will no longer stand in my way. I will act! And hence my trepidation: tomorrow I'm off on my first Urban Sketch Crawl. I tried to link up with SketchCrawlers a few years ago, but no one in this area seemed up for it. Just last week, however, I discovered Sketch Crawl North East on Facebook : a group of occasional sketch crawlers in and around the cities of the North East. And by chance someone proposed a crawl tomorrow.

Now all I have to worry about, apart from what I might find myself having to draw, is what I'm going to draw it with and in which sketchbook. Life is full of difficult decisions ...

Malta Sketchbook #3: Tigne Battery - Gnomon

Tigne Battery - Gnomon 
(Rotring Art Pens, black and sepia, over two pages of A4 sketchbook)

For some reason, I stopped dating the drawings in this sketchbook, so I'll have to give them titles. This one I've called "Gnomon" after the part of a sundial that casts the shadow.

You can see that this concrete building was badly damaged by the Luftwaffe during the War, leaving it shattered and pockmarked. I find this sort of ruin every bit as fascinating as some ancient archaeological site, like Stonehenge or Lanyon Quoit. It would be better if the graffiti, drinks cans and bottles, used condoms and syringes were cleared away, but hey, you can't have everything when it comes to urban archaeology.

A Missing Piece

Funchal, from Hotel Sirius. 13 August 1992
(Rotring Art Pen in A5 sketchbook)

I knew when I posted the painting of Madeira that I'd missed out a sketchbook study that was an integral part of the painting. And here it is, found in the sketchbook which I've been using as my holiday travel sketchbook since September 1990.

This is where posting from the sketchbooks starts to get complicated. In the time I've been blogging here, I've posted a great deal from this Holidays Sketchbook, so I think it may not be desirable to post the same things again. But maybe I'm wrong. What do you think?

Sketchbook No.2 (#7)

Tree Form, Devon, August 1996 
(Rotring Art Pen and watercolour in A4 sketchbook)

One of my first drawings showing an interest in plant and tree forms, inspired by the work of Graham Sutherland, which continues to the present.

This is last drawing in Sketchbook No.2 and a big jump in time from the previous sketch - 1992 to 1996. I wonder if that means there's a gap to be filled by looking at other sketchbooks. As I've mentioned before, I began to buy sketchbooks faster than I could fill them and to use them for specific subjects.

Watch this space if you're interested. There'll be more to come. There's the Museum Sketchbook, the Saltwell Park Sketchbook, the Malta Sketchbook ......

Sketchbook No.2 (#4)

On the Mole, Funchal, 10 August 1992 (Rotring Art Pen in A4 sketchbook)

It was quite intimidating drawing this huge grab. It towered over me and getting the perspective right was a challenge. Putting the two pages together in Photoshop proved almost beyond me, however, so apologies for the slight disconnect at the top of the drawing.

Sketchbook No.2 (#1)

Northern Goldsmiths, 4th November 1990 
(Fine point marker and sepia ArtPen in A4 sketchbook))

Having begun a course in painting with the OCA, I decided I needed to get serious about my sketchbook, so this drawing is the first done in a lovely black bound A4 sketchbook from Atlantis.

It was a freezing cold Saturday afternoon in November and I stood on a corner of Westgate Road to draw this great example of Victorian Newcastle. I was just outside a pub that was later closed for allowing drug dealing on the premises..My thermal socks, fingerless gloves and whisky-primed hip flask failed to keep me warm and by the time I went home I was almost frozen solid.

It's interesting to note that in 1990 there were still flocks of starlings settling on the tops of buildings. Even individual starlings are a rare sight in town now.

Rookery Time - Sunday 8th May (pm)

Tree Round Rock (Brushpen, coloured Conte, sketchbook)

Rain had sent me back to the house after drawing the Tree with Green Head and it seemed set for the rest of the day, but when a break appeared that promised a reasonable time of clear sky, I set off for my newly discovered Rock & Tree.

I began with a futile attempt to work with my favourite Rotring Art Pen. The nib has dried up again. [Note to self: check your materials before going away again!] Back to the Brushpen again then and this time I began to find a new pleasure in its use. There's a nice fluidity about the way it handles and quite subtle changes in the line quality can be achieved.

I think I intended to give this drawing more colour, but the black clouds were moving my way so after quickly laying in two colours of Conte to push the subject forward, I ran for the house in the beginnings of a downpour.

Dales Diary - Wednesday 28 April (pm)

Scar Top (Rotring BB Art Pen, watercolour, in 21 x 25 cm sketchbook)

Every day on my way down to breakfast, I'd look out of the rear window and up to the empty farmhouse on top of the hill. I knew I wanted to draw it and on Wednesday afternoon I sat out on the terrace at the back of the house and made this drawing.

As soon as I sat down on my stool I realised the view was better from inside the house because of the slightly lower viewpoint, but I'd made up my mind to do the drawing from the terrace. As a result, rather than do a portrait-shaped drawing, I opted for this landscape one. The black trees against the sky turned out to be something of a nightmare, but a wash over the soluble ink of the Art Pen proved to be the solution.

This turned out to be the last drawing I did at The Rookery. Thursday's walk along the far side of the beck, where I'd hoped to find some new material, ended when I met two of the others coming back, having been chased away by a sheepdog.

Dales Diary - Tuesday 27 April

Scar Top (Rotring Art Pens, 21 x 25 cm sketchbook)

At the top of the hill behind TheRookery and overlooking the valley was an old farm house, Scar Top. Derelict for some time, it's now being renovated, but while we were there no work was being done. It was a fascinating place with 17th C milking parlours and an eerie shed with tables and chairs laid out formally, heads and skulls of animals on the walls next to old iron traps and bottles of wine in a rack.

To draw the house, I stood on the steep track just as it turned onto the top of the hill, and used my favourite Art Pens. I've mentioned before how these had stopped working, but just before I went on this trip I followed the advice given me by Wibbler in the Comments and - hurrah! - they work perfectly now.

Lindisfarne

Holy Island (Rotring ArtPen, sketchbook)

I was last on Holy Island (Lindisfarne) in November 1996. It was a cold wet and windy day and the visit was only fleeting, but I managed to get this sketch done,despite the ArtPen beginning it's journey into clogging scratchiness, a journey from which it never recovered. Frustrating, disappointing and so far, despite advice from all quarters of the Interweb, non-reversible.

I'm off to Holy Island again tomorrow, this time stopping overnight and I had hoped that the weather - such a delight over the last week - would serve me better and perhaps let me get some more sketching done. Of course, as luck would have it, the weather has changed again for the worse, so I may find myself desperately searching for shelter on what is, as I recall, a rather barren island.

More Drawing Angst.

Mont Louis (A5 sketchbook, Rotring Art Pen)

I was reminded of this sketchbook drawing by some reading I've been doing across the blogs.

James Hobbs says in his blog, "Cafes remain a favourite place for me to work. They are often fantastically located, in the heart of a town, offering outdoor seating, tables to spread out on and plenty of refreshments."

I understand this absolutely. I still recall making that drawing in Mont Louis, on a walking holiday in the Pyrenees in 1991. Half way through the day we sat at a cafe table and ate our lunch, while I took as long as I felt necessary to make the drawing of the building opposite, refreshments arriving as required.. The fine lines are an indication of how my eyesight is not now what it was, and it was done with the instrument I loved so much then, the Rotring Art Pen. The damn thing seized up long ago and nothing I've been able to do to it has unclogged the nib. I'd buy another, were it not for the fact that I did buy another and the same thing happened to that. If anyone knows how to unclog them, I'd love to know.

It's become increasingly obvious that there's a huge movement around the blogosphere to encourage drawing and looking at this sketchbook makes me think again about how little I do myself.

There was a time when I did nothing but draw. By which I mean, I hadn't started to paint. I made images only with pencil or ink. Colour was actually something I avoided like the plague. I couldn't come to terms with it. At school, I would drag out the drawing part of the exercise so that I wouldn't have to "colour it in" and ruin it.

I began to paint seriously in 1989 and it's been a long hard slog to get to grips with colour, and colour and I are still wrestling with one another. In the process, I've allowed my drawing practice to fall away.

I'm not sure why this should be. Perhaps once I stopped having to make artworks in my spare time (when the actual lack of time meant that a black and white image was a more economical use of the time), it didn't feel necessary. I don't know.

Maybe the need to create paintings to sell and prop up the sybaritic lifestyle to which I've become accustomed led me to feel that a drawing would not contribute to my welfare (despite having sold several drawings in the past). Perhaps.

Some of it may be to do with my working methods. In the early days of my painting, I would take a photograph, run it through the office copier and make a charcoal drawing from the photocopy. The resultant painting would come from using all three - the photograph, the photocopy and the drawing - as source material. But as time has gone on and my abilities have improved, I don't need to do that now, because I can make some of the adjustments that the process achieved, in my head.

As a result, I find that I only seem to draw when on holiday and even then, not a great deal. The drawing above is from a sketchbook started in 1990 and still less than half full. I really must rectify this, but how to do so, when all my good intentions to do so have so far failed? Maybe I should try to get involved with some of the blogging initiatives that I see happening, like the Moleskine Exchange project that Casey Klahn is about to take part in. But how do I get involved in something like that? Anyone care to throw me a lifeline?