Inktober 2025

 I wasn't feeling it so much this year but I stuck with it to the end. Glad I did. It's always worth drawing even if you don't want to.

Busman's holiday

 Just did five solid days of life drawing at the Oxford Arts and Crafts Summer Scool. Run by Laura Degenhardt with Anthony, Peter and Naomi as models. I've come away groaning under tthe weight of who knows how many drawings. I feel there are plenty of things in there that will emerge in future work, and also got to try out a number of things, many of which I already have in my posession. I feel energised and ready to attack some of the ideas I've felt too jaded to even look at recently. Anyway here are a few of the drawings...

 

Inktober 2024

 I had a touch of artist's block at the start of the month, so Inktober forced me to actually sit down and draw every day. This year's words struck me as some kind of adventure, so they turned into a story...

Inktober 2023

 I enjoy this little challenge. To just draw things I haven't chosen. Or at least bend the word towards something I want to draw. I post the drawings as I go on instagram and then try to remember how flipbook works and post that here.

Skinny Woman

 The starting point for this was one of the life drawings I did back in March. It was one of the 3-minute drawings. It's a scribbly affair - working fast to get it done in the time. But I worked on simplifying it, making it more of a line drawing.

The other week I was browsing ebay (great art-historical source) and came across a few prints by Michael Hofmann (b. Chemnitz 1944). He used a technique like this, so I thought I'd give it a try. First I printed an uncut block in black, then a block cut with lines printed in white over the top. Then finally the colours.

My first attempt didn't work out very well. The lines were a bit weedy and the black and the white wood blocks seemed to fight with each other. So I decided to use lino for the uncut black to give a flatter background. Then I re-worked the white block, giving more variety to the thickness of the lines. I'm much happier with the result.

Detritus

 Rugby Bike Fest today, so we persuaded our neighbour that his Harley Davidson, "Detritus" should be a model for us to draw. I pushed the boat out and did a number of drawings and finished with a linocut, I thought it would be difficult, and it it turned out to be even more difficult than I thought. As always with artists' problems, the question is, "How much can I leave out."

Life Model

 Not quite finished,yet. I need to work on the surface she is sitting on, but I thought I'd post at this stage anyway, I'll add the finished print at the bottom when it's done. Next weekend, probably.

Last night was a newly resurrected Life Drawing session at the local Art Gallery and Museum. It's been getting on for four years since the last time they did it. Since then it's been on hiatus due to lockdowns and reorganisations.

I hadn't realised how much I'd missed these. So here's a little celebration card based on one of last night's drawings.

In the end I decided not to add any background detail. So I just tidied it up and printed using dark blue ink,

Inktober 2022

 Just got to the end of Inktober this year. It has been a challenge. Very few of the words have lit my boat, as it were. But it's been worth pushing through that. Getting outside my comfort zone. 

I also give myself the limitation of not spending much more than 20 minutes on each one. After all there are lots more things to do in a day. So they are almost all disappointing in that they are not finished, polished works. But they have been opportunities for me to try different things, so are valuable in that sense.

PS It must still be Sunday in Google Land, hence the date stamp on this post.

PPS I just noticed that I didn't update #16  word. Ir should read "Fowl".

Bent Flower 3: Pink Chrysanthemum

 

This is the third of the Bent Flower prints I did for Warwickshire Open Studios. I wasn't sure I'd get a third one done before close of play yesterday, but I hadd a big push and didn't wait for the inks to dry properly. I'm pretty happy with the results.

I quite like the graphic/not-graphic thing that I've got with these prints, through not using a proper key block. My original drawings werre done quickly in crayon, and I wanted to maintain that vibe in the prints. Here's the drawing for this one.

It's been an interesting exercise, and it's given me an insight into the technical and emotional processes of my work and has helped somehow to cleanse my mind. I also feel I've taken on the WOS scene on its home ground and acquitted myself well. I'm happy.

Inktober 2021

Last year my son and I did this pretty much for our own amusement. Though I did post my efforts on this blog in lumps of 10 here, here and here. 

I decided to go for it this year, and have posted each day on Instagram. I’ve also collected all 31 drawings in a little flipbook for your amusement.

I’ve been quite pleased with the results, and its been an opportunity to try different pens and brushes and various styles/techniques. It has also coincided with a class where we’ve been looking at Rembrandt. So this has also been an opportunity to explore his chiaroscuro approach to etching through pen-and-ink drawing.

The making of… Guy of Warwick

Okay. Warwickshire. I’m so not a landscape painter. So my response to Warwickshire had to be… human. So I wanted something peopleish that says Warwickshire to me. Had to be Guy of Warwick, really. The clue’s in the name. And slaying the Dun Cow. On Dunsmore Heath. Where I live. 

You may object that its a Mediaeval story. Where’s the relevance? But relief printing is a Mediaeval craft. So it fits. And as I suggested in the previous post, there’s plenty for today if you think about it. It’s not just for dead people. 

This is the first version of the picture as it came into my mind. 

 Man and horse and cow as one combined shape. When I was a kid the Daily Mirror carried a comic strip called Andy Capp. It was the misadventures of a gambling, hard-drinking, brawling working-class bloke. It spoke of the environment I grew up in, and seemed perfectly normal to me. Anyway, the periodic fights outside the pub were shown as a grey cloud with fists and boots sticking out at random places. That’s how I saw this battle. Very cartoon-like, which seemed to me to fit with an overall chap-book vibe. 

I started trying out what the different “characters” would be like: Guy, the Dun Cow and the horse.

 

Then other things started creeping in. I thought about placing the battle on Knightlow Hill with a view of Coventry in the distance. And an audience. The audience ended up being a monk and a naked woman caught in flagrante delicto behind a wayside cross. 

 

I’d got some way in cutting the block before I decided this was all just a bit much and reverted to the original idea. Hence the two printed fragments of the naked woman and the cross. 

My wife suggested printing it in brown, “so it would be a dun cow.” It also has that sepia/faded look that hints at age. I always try to cut “meaningfully”, even if I’m clearing largish areas. I cut the sky horizontally, the sloping ground at an angle, the long grass in clumps. Then I see if and when any of it shows up in the proof prints, I can decide whether it adds anything to the design and cut away or let stand as I see fit. 

I’ve enjoyed this foray into “historic Warwickshire” so much, I feel fired up to do another similar scale picture as a companion. Lady Godiva, I think. A different kind of heroism, but heroism nonetheless. Let’s see if I manage it.

 

Artist and Model

A glimpse into life at our house. It’s what you always suspected, isn’t it?

However. My wife would have me point out that:
a) she didn’t know I was drawing her and
b) she WAS NOT NAKED.

Well. Ingres’ advice to the young Degas was to draw “many lines. From memory and from nature.” So that’s what I did here. My wife is an incorrigible multitasker. So you often see her sitting in one of these awkward twisted poses so that she can instantly uncoil and attack some project she had left to one side a few minutes before. When I saw her sitting like that, I knew that this was what I was looking for. So I scribbled down a quick drawing. Naked. Because we’ve been together long enough that I know what that looks like. It’s in my head somewhere.

That was just one part of making this picture, so I thought I’d take some time here to walk you through the whole process.

Lockdown has brought some serious tidying and decluttering to our house. In the process we rediscovered a bundle of plain calico shopping bags. Ideal for printing something on, we thought. That’s where this started. I wanted something to convey the idea of “Art” to go on a bag. Something maybe quite logo-like. But as often happens with these things, it spiralled beyond its original motivation.

Here are the original ideas for composition. Dating from mid-October.

I felt the first was too horizontal, so I went for a more elevated viewpoint like you get sometimes in Schiele or Degas. At this stage I was thinking of using the wee figures for the composition and producing something fairly anonymous. But then I thought maybe I could try and make it into a self portrait. I’d got in my mind that painting by Kirchner where he’s stood in a garish dressing gown and the model is sat behind him in her underwear thinking, “Hey. I thought this was supposed to be a painting of me!” Anyway. I began thinking of putting myself in the picture as the artist.

These ideas had been swirling round in my head for maybe two or three weeks when I saw my wife sitting like that. This is the quick drawing I did.

Things then started to move quite quickly. I’ve only noticed this recently, but thinking back, its always been there, though maybe suppressed by the world of work. When the ideas begin to flow, I get quite fidgety. I pace up and down, fiddle with things, wave my arms around. It’s kinda like being possessed. Over the next couple days the drawings started coming fast.

Here are some early-morning drawings of my face and hand, and then my body in dressing gown as a nod to Kirchner.

Here are some drawings of the “hardware”. The Chair and Easel. It wasn’t the easel I originally had in mind, but it was in the house, so I didn’t have to go out in the cold and dark to get the big one.

I also began working up the drawing for the nude model. You will notice that I gave her two left feet in this drawing. People insist on moving about, especially if they don’t know you’re drawing them. Anyway. I fixed that before it was too late.

Also my wife’s hair is pretty distinctive. It’s still quite dark on top, but the underneath has gone quite grey. She often pushes her hair back behind her ear, revealing a shock of white at the side. This is my quick drawing trying to capture the shape of that.

It was then a case of bringing all these parts together. Scaling the different elements, cutting them up and reassembling them. Here’s the version I traced on to the block. It was only at this stage that I noticed I’d got the feet wrong, so I corrected that on the block.

I always had in my mind that mirror image you get as the final print. As this was me as the artist, I wanted to ensure I’d be right-handed in the final print. So I made sure I drew my right hand in the mirror, switching between posing and drawing. Hence it’s a pencil in my hand in that original drawing, not a brush. Compositionally, everything else followed from that hand.

I’m pleased with the result. It is quite tense and awkward. not an easy, relaxed picture. Kinda like the process of making it.

Inktober: Part 3

 

This is the final eleven.

21. Sleep. This owes a little to an Erich Heckel print I’ve got in my mind. But I used the girl action figure as model. Did a drawing. Decided to crop it and focus in closer. Then closer again. There is pencil under this one.

22. Chef. I worked in a kitchen once. Washing up. The chef was an enormously fat man who sat on a wheeled stool and scooted himself from stove to stove. Slight homage to him, here. Did a rough sketch elsewhere and then did this one straight to ink.

23. Rip. Almost a meditation. Maybe it will be. I never use a shredder. Once you know how the grain in the paper goes, you can tear it into quite thin strips. I did 2 drawings of my hands trying to do this. A right handed drawing of my left and a left handed drawing of the right. Then I selotaped them together. I used that as the basis for the under-pencilling here. Quite a roundabout process.

24. Dig. Y’dig? Whatever it is, this cat’s diggin’ it. Some groove goin’ down. Yeah. Did it all, man. Did it all.

25. Buddy. Our great-nephew has a plush dog he calls, “Buddy”. So that got me thinking a child’s special relationship with a doll. I’ve seen a number of “Kind mit Puppe” (they’re nearly always German) prints and paintings recently and been reflecting on how these pictures are a version of Madonna and Child. So this. Did a very rough sketch and similar pencil under the ink. I was tempted to leave it at the grey stage. Maybe I should have.

26. Hide. A kind of Self-Portrait as Claudius here. There were all kinds of things that could have been the subject for this one. Even thought of a cow hide on the ground. But the great tradition of not hiding very well won out. So the great Ur-hider himself. Did some sketches of me messing with a towel in the mirror, then straight to ink.

27. Music. Can’t really separate the music from the musician, I think. These are based on Bob Downes’ hands. He has long fingers. I did a quick scribble while watching a video of Bob playing. It was a bass flute, so I shortened it somewhat to get the hands in. But that’s what art does, doesn’t it?

28. Float. Lots of things this could have been. So a touch of gone fishing. Felt like that this morning. Put a sign up on my door. Just went for this one, no pencil.

29. Shoes. Now we’ve been here before. Went for the obvious here. Just took out a pair of my wife’s shoes and drew them. Some pencilling under the ink.

30. Ominous. The rain is coming and there’s no escaping it. Sometimes you get a glimpse of how big clouds are. Wanted to convey something of that. Not sure how successfully. Straight to ink with the picture in my head.

31. Crawl. Used the female action figure with a dusting of Egon Schiele I think. Did a number of preliminary drawings. Crawling is not something I’d tried to convey before. Maybe she’s looking for a contact lens. There is pencil under, as you might expect. 

I really quite enjoyed this month. A good excuse to do some drawing before breakfast. Maybe I'll do it again next year.

Inktober: Part 2

 

Here comes the second batch.

11. Disgusting. One person’s disgusting is another’s mildly unpleasant… So more that lip-pursing, nose wrinkling thing than any object or event. I did a rough drawing elsewhere and went straight to ink here.

12. Slippery. Did some drawings of the wee figure to try and get the angle and action. Then straight to ink here.

13. Dune. There are dunes near where I grew up. They had engulfed and buried a thriving town in mediaeval times. Then the Americans camped there in WW2 and left various concrete structures behind to be undermined and filled with sand. Straight to ink here.

14. Armour. Thought of Renaissance armour for some reason. And decided to put a woman in it. Like Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. Did a drawing elsewhere. Can’t remember if I did any under pencilling here. Probably a rough structure.

15. Outpost. Thought of Kasr Ibrim on the Nile, where Bosnians were sent to watch the edge of the Ottoman Empire. They were sent and forgotten about. Took up with local girls. Their descendants are still there and think themselves a cut above the other Nubians. Anyway. There you are, watching the people watching you. Pencil structure here.

16. Rocket. Stephenson’s of course. My vague memory of it. Emerging from clouds of smoke and steam. Pencil structure.

17. Storm. The coolest of the X-Men. Building up thin layers of ink in this one. Did a pencil drawing elsewhere, then some pencil structuring below the ink here

18. Trap. Pony and Trap. Excuse to try and draw a horse, really. Quick drawing elsewhere, some under pencil here and then ink.

19. Dizzy. Gillespie. The bent trumpet. The glasses. Those cheeks. The trumpet’s not right but there you go. 15 minutes is too long for one of these. Some pencil under drawing.

20. Coral. Joe Coral. I really didn’t want to draw the underwater gnarly things, so I’ve revisited the Fancy. This time more 20^th century. Quick pencil sketch under.