Celtic Hearts Entwined

I finished the Celtic Valentine card in a bit of a rush - like, while I was making the first cuppa on the morning of Valentine's day. I was reasonably pleased with it but the longer I looked at it the less happy I was.

So I started again.

Watercolour and coloured pencil on Fabriano Classico .5 HP 140lb. watercolour paper

Happy now Awa Rich?

Yeah, well, y'know... Get'n there.

Don't Call Me Shorty!

A diminutive Nordic character. Watercolour and coloured pencil.

No particular reason.

Celtic Hearts

Last week's brief at the Putney School of Art and Design Illustration class was to create a bookmark or a Valentine's card.

Several people produced Valentines bookmarks so I was not being original. I removed some bits after the show and tell session as the general opinion was that they were unnecessary. I had to agree.

I was going to do more to it but this morning I decided it was done. There are more ideas germinating from this project.

There always are Awa Rich. Thing is to do summink about 'em!

Can you see 6 hearts?

(Watercolour and coloured pencil on 200gsm cartridge paper)

Knot So Fast Buster!

A good place to start telling a story is in the middle. I put this Celtic knot picture in a previous post as an example of a drawing I'd made using the 53 Paper app. on my iPad. It started as a doodle, a warm-up for some other sketches in a proper paper sketchbook, but I reworked it after drawing more of the same with pencils, coloured pencils and watercolour.

Decisions I made while using physical media influencing decisions about the digital image. Using the eraser a lot - much easier in the digital context, though in the 53 Paper app. there is only a hard eraser whereas a real eraser can be more subtle. Real paper can only withstand a certain amount of scrubbing but a digital eraser can rub out as many times as you like.

I like the effect of layering colours you get with coloured pencils, the way you can see the granular texture of the colours in the previous layers. I tried it in the digital image and achieved a fair approximation. A pleasant effect, better than flat colour. Using the pencil tool to draw the thick outlines was useful as I could over draw lines to make them stronger or ease back on others - more like a real pencil and less digital looking than using the pen or marker tool to give a solid line.

Overlaying watercolour glazes creates some interesting effects but nothing like real watercolour.

Here's a page from my sketchbook with the same design drawn with non photo blue pencil - to establish the design - overdrawn with a 0.5 mm mechanical pencil then coloured with Derwent Studio coloured pencils.

The design below has been outlined with black ink.

Finally, a more worked up version done with a combination of watercolour and coloured pencil on Fabriano Accademia Desegno e Acquarello 240 gsm natural grain paper - which is very absorbent for a paper that declares itself suitable for watercolour, though you can achieve some interesting effects once you get used to it.

The absorbency of the paper exaggerates the way watercolours dry lighter than they appear when they're wet. Some colours appear very dark when wet but almost disappear when they dry.

So, how did I get here? I was marvelling at The Book of Kells on my iPad - get it in the AppStore for the price of an average bottle of wine, you'll be enjoying it long after the wine has gone.

You should go into advertising copywriting - back in the '50s Awa Rich!

I was wondering where you'd got to.

Same here Awa Rich. I was beginning to think you'd abandoned me.

I've been fascinated by Celtic knotwork since I was a kid. My brother Nick and I went through a phase of filling any available piece of paper with intricate designs we called 'creepers' like the tendrils on a pea vine. We'd discovered fractal self similarity, though we didn't know it at the time.

A prize with no bells on it for you Awa Rich!

This made for fertile ground when I got a book about the Vikings from a 'book of the month club'. It had some knotwork design on the cover and/or there were photographs of wood or stone carvings inside. This is all fogged by the passage of time.

That's my version of the story. Nick might remember it differently.

It was Nick that took knotwork as his own thing, beginning with the dust jacket of the Vikings book. The original must have been pretty boring as he replaced it with his own design. From then on, any available surface was fair game. Take a look at his website, there's a link over there on the right.

The design in the image at the top of this post was copied from a small pendant on a troll in a Brian Froud illustration.

All this because I was scratching around some designs for a logo or monogram for my sketchbooks. Actually, a seal to replace the bead on the end of the bookmark ribbon.

Is that the future feature Awa Rich?

One of them, yes.

Sketching at Fulham Palace

On Friday (20th June) the illustration class from Putney School of Art and Design had a PlayAwayAwayDay at Fulham Palace. Bright Phoebus shone most glorious and a good time was had by all.

Find out about Fulham Palace

Fulham Palace is a haven of tranquility and contemplation in the midst of urban London. It's a great place to sketch as there are usually people around - on Friday there were a couple of school groups and a wedding - several interesting buildings and the recently renovated walled garden which is a lovely place to escape from the hullabaloo to read, sketch, eat your lunch or canoodle - as evinced by several couples who found the sunshine and seclusion highly conducive.

I stayed all day and did two sketches, one in the walled garden and one of the facade of the palace.

Ian drawing the greenhouses in the Knot Garden

 Ian is an architect who eschews 'puters and still draws the traditional way. He does fantastic pen and watercolour drawings. I did this sketch on A4 200 gsm cartridge paper with a 3B mechanical pencil and Derwent Studio coloured pencils.

A gaggle of school children in front of Fulham Palace

I did this sketch on A4 200 gsm cartridge paper with a 3B mechanical pencil and  Rembrandt watercolours using a Pentel waterbrush, which is great for sketching as you don't need a pot of water which can spill all over the parquet floor.

When you visit a museum and Uniformed Security Personnel (What's your USP Awa Rich?) search your bag. They're not looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction, they're after your watercolours, as Ian will relate.

I got the proportions a bit askew, the building is wider than it appears here. Another problem I always have with buildings is dividing up the space between the windows and doors. I think I can do it by eye rather than using a perspective division method, but as you can see - I can't.

Linda asked Ian how he gets his drawings to look so accurate, he just shrugged and replied "years and years of practice". The answer no one wants to hear but know deep in their hearts to be true.

Accept no substitutes eh Awa Rich?

True enough. Now go practice!

p.s. I can thoroughly recommend the coffee and the chocolate brownies in The Drawing Room cafe, I went back twice!

Sketching with Olivia by the Thames in Richmond

This morning I left the flat in the rain and cold - yes, the Summer Solstice is on Saturday - and caught the train to Richmond. A small group of us (current and former students of Putney School of Art and Design Children's Book Illustration class) get together to sketch the Out There now and again. Sometimes we head into the city, sometimes out.

Two of us couldn't come out to play today, so it was just me and Olivia. After walking upstream to that point where we might keep walking and not do any drawing, we decided to stop walking and sit.

The bench was quite wholesome, not too much moss, lichen, bird poop, ice cream or other unidentifiable unsavouriness. The view was reasonable - river, trees, buildings, boats, people. We sketched for a couple of hours and the sun came out. A pleasant way to spend a morning, drawing what's in front of you and talking of, well you know, those brassicas and monarchs again.

I'm still enjoying using my antique Derwent Studio coloured pencils. Olivia went for pen and watercolour.

Go to Olivia's blog to see her sketch.

Olivia's pen and watercolour sketch of Richmond Bridge

On the Thames at Richmond - click for bigness

It's Full of Cats!

Ten thousand years from now - when we've all gone to our accounts impenitent - and Tony Robinson is digging up the internet only to discover it's made entirely from cats - I want the Akashic record to show that I made a small but significant contribution.

The cup of my drafts folder runneth over with incompleteness so here's a bit of silliness to tide you over until the next post.

Oh the bugles played the next post in chorus, and the pipes played the flowers of the forest.

Mr. Foo is my downstairs neighbour's cat. I don't want to know that he's really called Keith or Fankle J. Roosevelt. He sits on the window sill surveying his domain, looking like an old Mandarin.

I didn't utter a word Awa Rich.

I drew him with Derwent Coloursoft pencils.

Fairy Thoughts

The week of the second May public holiday (formally known as Whitsun) was a washout - as I mentioned in my last post.

A time for reading, writing, drawing and conversation. Even the residents at the bottom of the garden were taking shelter wherever they could.

I was checking in on Olivia's blog to see what she'd been up to lately. There was a delightful watercolour of a thoughtful fairy, which inspired me to draw a fairy.

OliviaArtbox

I always take a bag full of art materials on these sojourns and spread them out all over the dining table when we arrive. I'm usually disappointed by the amount of creation I've completed by the end of the week. This time I just took a large and a small sketchbook and my ancient Derwent Studio coloured pencils.

It's been ages since I last used coloured pencils but I really enjoyed pfaffing around with them. Layering the colours and creating different textures. You can exercise a lot of control with pencils. Anything from soft and delicate grainy hints to deep saturated glossy colour. It's amazing how limitations and restrictions can increase your creativity.

It was the first drawing of the week and it was a bit weak.

Let Olivia do Olivia picters and Awa Rich do Awa Rich picters Awa Rich!

Agreed, but it got my hand movong and I made marks on paper. I could see there was potential, not just in the texture of the pencil marks but the subject too. Vegetation, Fungi and anything sheltering beneath, raindrops (on noses and whispering kittens, snowcakes in freezers and fingers being bitten... Sorry, couldn't resist that Awa Rich).

Very droll.

The warm humid weather of the previous week had brought forth a profusion of small mushrooms in the grass. Nothing of any culinary interest but excellent places for wee folk to seek respite from the precipitation.

If you think that this critter bears more than a passing resemblance to the blue folk in James Cameron's Avatar, I would point you in the direction of Brian Froud and Alan Lee's book of fairies where you will find several similar looking beings. This book predates Avatar by about 35 years.

If you're too clumsy in your approach to a faerie, it will turn sideways to the sun in an instant, leaving a vestige of its presence, for a few seconds, lingering in the space it occupied.

Very poetic Awa Rich. You just didn't finish it, that's all!

True, but I really enjoyed doing that background. Building up layers of colours, feathering the edges of the tree trunks to make them look out of focus, creating the filigree network of fine branches in the undergrowth.

I am liking these pencils and playing with them has given me some clues for using watercolours better.