Category: Pen and ink

Inner Hebrides: Sketch and Sail – October 2024

On board Lady of Avenel, October 2024

I’m just back from an invigorating week on “Sketch and Sail”with fellow artist Alice Angus and a group of guests, all sketching and learning. We were hosted by the marvellous crew of the Lady of Avenel, who managed the ship and provided all our meals. Our voyage was around the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides, see maps below. We had amazing fun, laughed a lot, got wet, got dry again, got blown about, and enthusiastically sketched the experience. Everyone was very productive: lots of pictures were made, sketchbooks were filled, postcards were painted and sent.

Alice and I ran workshops on brushstrokes, rapid sketching, outline drawing, sketching kit, painting sea and sky and many other exercises. We all shared thoughts and ideas on tools and techniques, and everyone learned a lot, including me. We also did an experimental workshop on sketching in the dark.

Here is a map of where we went.

Maps showing our route [map (c) Open Street Map contributors]

On this post is a selection of my work from this voyage. For more about the ship, and future plans, see the Lady of Avenel website.

I travelled North on the Caledonian Sleeper, and did some sketching on the train.

Scottish highlands, sketched in the sleeping cabin on the train.
Waiting for the bus from Fort William to Oban
Quick sketch in a café in Oban
Sketching on the journey to Oban

The guests came on board in Oban, and we set off in the evening for the week’s voyage.

Leaving Oban, 6th October 2024. There was fine rain, some of which landed on the picture.
Sketch map

Here is a selection of my sketches from the voyage.

At Sanna Bay there is a large sandy beach, and a settlement of a dozen or so cottages. Here is a sketch made as we approached Sanna Bay:

I walked into that scene, through the sand-dunes, in search of a post box. Against all expectations, I found one.

Here is the post box at Sanna Bay. Collections 9am Monday to Friday, and 7am on Saturday.
Here is the card I posted, which reached London in two days.

At Eigg there was a spectacular sunrise.

Sunrise over the Isle of Eigg, watercolour and collage.

With a strong wind in our sails we reached 8 knots on the journey south from Eigg to Iona.

The sails are full on the journey from Eigg to Iona.

On the island of Iona, I sketched a boat on the beach.

On the way back to Oban from Iona we landed at a vast sandy beach called Tràigh Gheal. There were showers of rain.

Here’s a photo, showing the Lady of Avenel at the anchorage at Tràigh Gheal. We reached the beach by rubber dinghy.

Lady of Avenel at Tràigh Gheal

I used a JP Purcell sketchbook. Here’s a quick flick-through:

Sketchbook flick-through

All of this was powered by a strong North Westerly wind, and Tom’s cooking. Tom continued cooking even as the North Westerly gusted Force 7, and produced a hot meal for hungry sailors every evening, soup for lunch and cooked breakfasts. He made the sour dough bread every day in the ship’s galley. I found this hugely impressive.

Tom’s cooking on the ship: cake for hungry sailing sketchers: and sourdough!

In case you are curious, here are night sketches. The lights are done using wax crayon.

Here are some snapshots from the voyage.

The art gallery on Gometra
Approaching Staffa, Fingal’s Cave
The abbey on Iona
Lady of Avenel off Sanna Bay
Workshops done and crossed off the list!

We’ll be running Sketch and Sail twice in 2025.

  • Trip 1: 25th of May to the 31st of May 2025, and
  • Trip 2: 31st August to the 6th of September 2025.

If you are interested or would like more information, please contact me or register your interest via the Lady of Avenel Website.

Map for 4G wines

This was a fun project!

Vanessa from 4G wines saw one of my maps online, and contacted me to ask if I could do a special one for them – for a wine label! I was thrilled at the idea of having my artwork on a wine label, and set to work.

Vanessa was somewhat mysterious about how the map was to be used. I was curious. She invited me to the London launch of their vintage so I could see it in person, when the bottle design was to be unveiled.

The event was at the Banksy gallery on the Charing Cross Road. On display was the 2018 vintage named “Going, going, gone”. The name is a reference to a 2018 event at an auction house. A Banksy painting, “Girl with a Balloon”, apparently started to self-destruct by feeding itself through a shredder embedded in the picture frame. The shredding process started immediately the auctioneer’s hammer came down to mark the sale of the work, hence “Going, going, gone”.

4G make their bottles into intriguing works of art. The label on the bottle is a beautiful design by the artist Sebastian Blinde, showing elements of South African nature.

label design by Sebastian Blinde

The secret in this vintage is the map – my map! – made visible by shining ultra-violet light onto the label.

Secret map behind the label

It was such fun to see it. There is an X on the map to mark the position of an original Banksy mural “Girl with a Balloon”.

The inscription below the map reads:
“EN WAT MET LIEFDE GEDAAN WORDT, DAT WORDT GOED GEDAAN”

This is another subtle artistic reference. It is a quote from a letter of Vincent van Gogh written on 3 April 1878, according to the website of the Vincent Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam on this page of his letters.

“And what is done with love, is done well.”

An excellent motto, for both wine and art.

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:

Preliminary sketch
Pencil underdrawing
Pen on Arches Watercolour block
Pen (Safari Lamy, shown in my hand)
Pen complete

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.

I have also sketched The Eagle, 2 Shepherdess Walk. See this post:

The Eagle, 2 Shepherdess Walk
Click the above link to jump to my post about The Eagle Shepherdess Walk.

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.
View from my room in Fraser House
Inverness Castle From the other side of the river.
Sketching inverness Castle
Sketching in Inverness

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

Lady of Avenel
Inside Muirtown Locks
Seaport, and Muirtown Locks

Here is the view as we entered Loch Ness:

Entering 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.

Sketching Inverness Castle
Postcards from the voyage

It’s a challenge to draw the rigging.

Rigging sketches

We had some shore leave.

From the Community Arts Centre, An Tobar, in Tobermory
Tobermory, from the Lady of Avenel
Urquhart Castle
Sketching at Urquhart Castle
Sketching on shore leave

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.
Urquart Bay, Loch Ness, 9am
Duart Bay, returning to Oban
Pine trees on a promontery, Duart Bay, Isle of Mull
Port An Eathair, Duart Bay, Isle of Mull
Loch Linnhe, 6pm
Views of the Highlands

It was an adventure.

Me sketching on board. Picture Credit: Andy
Custom stamp by “stampit.co.uk”

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:

Burrastow – interiors, July 2022

A glass of wine:

A glass of wine – 12 July 2022

An evening on the terrace….

An evening on the terrace, Burrastow, July 2022

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:

Sketching on a paper plate.

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

Near Sainte-Croix, Vaud.

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 with experimental print overlay
  • Printing plate from cut cardboard

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:

Inktober 2020 prompt list

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:

2019promptlist.png

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.

 

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:

  1. I could do it. It was fun to do, and an achievement.
  2. The drawings are mostly small, 2½” square. “15” and “16” are 8″ square. If I do it again, I’ll use a bigger sketchbook.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. It was a good idea to write “#inktober” and the day on the drawing.