Pen and ink – Jane Sketching

The Eagle, Farringdon Road, EC1

Here is “The Eagle” 159 Farringdon Road, London, EC1.

The Eagle, Farringdon Road, October 2022, 12″ x 9″ [sold]

I painted this as a commission. My client liked the pub and asked for a picture which showed the liveliness of the place. I sketched it from the other side of the Farringdon Road.

There was certainly a lot of activity in the pub. As you see in the picture, people arrived and occupied at the tables in the street, even though this was October, and quite chilly. The lamppost by the door was soon adorned with a collection of bikes.

Here are some details from the picture:

Here is work in progress:

I completed the pen drawing on location and added the colour later:

Thank you to my client for this commission, and for allowing me to post the picture here.

St Martin-in-the-Fields, WC2

On the way back from a visit to the West End, I passed St-Martin-in-the-Fields, standing out against the cold sky.

St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square. Sketched 2nd Dec 2022, in sketchbook 12

The statue in the foreground, left, is the Edith Cavell Memorial, seen from the back. Edith Cavell (1865-1915) was a British nurse. In German-occupied Belgium, guided by her principles of humanity and her Christian faith, she provided medical care to soldiers irrespective of which side they were on. She was executed by a German firing squad 1915, because she had helped Belgian, British and French soldiers to escape the German occupation and reach Britain. Her grave is in Norwich Cathedral.

I sketched standing on a corner of the Charing Cross road, see map above. This turned out to be a very noisy location. The National Portrait Gallery is being refurbished and there was continuous drilling and banging. Buses and cars ground their gears, and thundered past, rushing through the traffic lights to shriek to a halt at the next junction.

But St-Martin-in-the-Fields rose above it all. The inscriptions which faced me on the Edith Cavell Memorial were: “Determination”, “Fortitude”.

Lady of Avenel delivery passage, October 2022, Caledonian Canal

The Lady of Avenel is an 102ft square rigged brigantine. She was on the East coast of Scotland, and needed to be on the West Coast. So a group of us assembled to take her through the Caledonian Canal, from the North Sea to the Atlantic. This whole journey was about 190km or 120miles.

Route of The Lady of Avenel: Inverness to Oban, via Tobermory. 1st Oct to 8th Oct 2022

I joined the boat at Inverness. Travel to Scotland was disrupted by rail strikes. To be sure of arriving on time I arrived a day early. This gave me a chance to look around Inverness. There’s a huge river, the River Ness, and a castle and an Art Gallery. I stayed in a lovely hotel, Fraser House, on the river: recommended.

In the Art Gallery, Bronze Sculpture by Gerald Laing 1978 “An American Girl” – his wife Galina.

The Lady of Avenel was on the Canal at Seaport. The first Locks were Muirtown Locks, taking us uphill from the North Sea.

Here is the view as we entered Loch Ness:

I was making these sketches very quickly. The boat kept moving, the light kept changing, and then it rained.

The sketchbook I was using was a Seawhite A5 Travel journal.

The patterns on some of the drawings were made before the trip. They are relief prints, using the corrugated paper from a coffee cup, corrugated cardboard, bubblewrap, and the net from some oranges. Sometimes these prints really enhanced the drawing, sometimes not. Here’s one where it worked:

Duart castle, printed background from a takeaway coffee cup

I also made sketches on small pieces of watercolour paper, which I sent as postcards.

It’s a challenge to draw the rigging.

We had some shore leave.

From the Community Arts Centre, An Tobar, in Tobermory

The scenery of the Highlands, seen from the boat, was stunning. I tried to capture the light. All these sketches were made from the boat, which was moving, even when anchored.

Loch Linnhe, near Fort WIlliam. Ben Nevis in cloud on the left.

It was an adventure.

Me sketching on board. Picture Credit: Andy

I’ve sketched before on the Lady of Avenel, in the Outer Hebrides in 2016, and again in 2017, in Oban on a refit, and in Heybridge. I also made a series of postcards for the boat:

Shetland 2022 – Burrastow

Here is a drawing I made after breakfast:

After Breakfast, Burrastow, 9th July 2022

I drew some pictures indoors:

A glass of wine:

An evening on the terrace….

Sketches in Switzerland – Spring 2022

Waiting in London City airport…

Breakfast…

Looking out of the window…

Walking around…

A rich cultural spectacle:

Photographs absolutely not allowed, but sketching was OK. It was very crowded, and great fun to hear the expert yodleurs. They sung in French.

Sketching on the journey back to London. Passports were checked four times: at check-in, at border passport control, and again at the gate in Geneva (shown below), and again on arrival in the UK.

The friendly passport officer at Gate B32 kindly agreed to add his stamp to my picture. You see his blue rectangular contribution in the top right.

Sketching on the plane:

In between all this sketching I did some work…..and went walking in the snow.

Monument EC3, on a hot day

Le Pain Quotidien at Monument was open on Sunday. I found a table in the shade and sketched.

Back at home I added tone and an experimental print background. What do you think?

Drawing: waterproof ink and watercolour Neutral Tint.

Print: Plate made from cut cardboard. Printed using Schmincke relief ink: “Aqua Linodruck #19210 permanent yellow”. Printed directly into the sketchbook.

#Inktober2020

Here are my Inktober drawings for 2020:

What is inktober? It’s a drawing challenge. There are prompts each day in October. The challenge I set myself is to do a drawing for each prompt, in ink, square. You can see the prompts here and on Inktober.com
Why do I do it? It’s different from my “normal” work. My urban sketches and other art generally take several hours, and are from life (non-fiction).
I do the inktober drawings quickly, in less than half an hour normally, and from imagination (fiction). Inktober jolts me into other worlds. It’s also a challenge, and enjoyable. I also like to see what other people draw, from the same prompt. The drawings are posted on instagram with the tag #inktober2020.

I did it last year for the first time. It surprises me that I can do it.

#Inktober 2019

I did Inktober for the first time this year. This is a drawing challenge, described on the Inktober web page. The idea is to draw a picture, in ink, each day of October.

“Inktober is about the constraint of medium. You must draw with ink. When you sit down to do the challenge you don’t have to decide what colors you’re going to use, whether you’ll be rendering in pencil or watercolor. The challenge has stripped away all of these variables that can get you sidetracked or frustrated, allowing your creative energy to be focused straight into your drawing.” Jake Parker

I followed the official prompts:

Here are my pictures. They are all done in black ink on white paper. The reason they appear in different tints and tones is that they were photographed in different light, depending on where I was at the time.

“Mindless”. I’m not quite sure what this picture means. Sadness, lack of thought.

“Bait”. Here are people digging for bait on the Isle of Grain.

“Freeze”. This is a scene from an action movie.

This is inspired by a young person I know.

In this strange forest, you need a dog companion.

All the people are left handed, I noticed, after I drew it.

In the October rain, I wish for a dragon to warm my hands.

A former bank building on the Goswell Road.

One person digging and three people issuing instructions.

Who is the real person and who is the ghost?

“Tasty” means “skilled” in the context of martial arts such as boxing.

I used De Atramentis document ink (waterproof) and a Sailor Fountain pen with EF nib. For the tones, I diluted the ink with water.

Here’s what I learned from Inktober:

I could do it. It was fun to do, and an achievement.
The drawings are mostly small, 2½” square. “15” and “16” are 8″ square. If I do it again, I’ll use a bigger sketchbook.
I used a sketchbook with quite soft, low quality paper. Next time: use smooth watercolour-quality paper, which will take the ink better and not buckle.
I started doing drawings of any size. These get cut to a square when posted on Instagram. If I do it again, I’ll do all square drawings.
It was a good idea to write “#inktober” and the day on the drawing.