Category: People

Pictures of people I know, strangers on trains, other people, invented people…

New Year 2023

Happy New Year!

I make New Year cards most years to send to friends and family. In recent years they have been prints: woodcuts or linocuts. This year it was a collage. My card this year is made of marbled paper and a kinetic band of people. The people are printed from carved rubber stamps. The concept was to show “through it all together”: people going under and over and through.

New Year Card 2023

Here is a short video to show how the centre band moves:

Here are the rubber stamps which made the people and the dogs. I cut them from a large pencil eraser.

Rubber stamps made from pencil eraser. They are each about 1cm high.

Here are some snaps of work in progress.

The marbled paper is from a pack of offcuts from the Wyvern Bindery. There are several different designs. The white card is watercolour paper from Jackson Art, cut down, with the offcuts used to make the moving band of people. I made about 45.

Here are cards from some previous years.

Happy New Year 2023!

Two boys

Here’s a print I made at East London Printmakers last week.

Two boys, etching, image size about 5inches by 3inches

I wanted to show how concentrated these people were, immersed in what they were doing, sitting on the wall.

It is printed on Fabriano Unica paper, using Charbonnel F66 traditional etching ink. Here is the copper plate:

The plate is made with hard ground lines, soft ground patterns, and three aquatint sessions.

I made some variations of this print. Here is one, using chine-collé.

Two boys, warm brown chine-collé

Sometimes in the printing process, magic happens. As I was packing for this print session, searching for paper, tissues, gloves, and other printing essentials, I encountered a thick envelope labelled “Old Prints”. I pulled out one of those, a street scene, with a vague idea of overprinting it. It is a drypoint I made years ago. The vague idea turned into a plan, and then a print. Here it is. I was really pleased with how it came out. The chine-collé is also a leftover from another project.

Two boys and street, combined image size about A5. Etching, drypoint and chine-collé.

Sketching on the journey to Orkney

We travelled to Orkney by train via Edinburgh and Aberdeen.

I carried a long thin sketchbook and made drawings along the way.

  • Aberdeen airport, print made with food wrapper
  • Aberdeen airport, print made with food wrapper
  • View from “The Silver Darling” restaurant
  • The Torrey Battery, from “the Silver Darling”
  • A pilot boat went past, very fast, on the River Dee
  • View from the train at Leukers
  • The Royal Society of Edinburgh, from the Wellington Coffee Café
  • View from Wellington Coffee, Australians in the street

Here is my very long sketchbook, 12″ x 5″ made by Khadi Paper, and bought at Atlantis in Hackney, London.

“An Afternoon in January”

I made a book for a young friend. It describes one of our recent adventures: a circular run we completed together, before lockdown. Here are some of the pages:

Here is the book under construction. The binding was made from the stiff cardboard from the back of drawing pads, strengthened at the spine with scrim, and covered in brown paper. In the absence of a bookbinding press I used two 12kg weights, and the breadboard. There were 32 useable sides (16 leaves), 4 signatures of 2 sheets and 1 signature of 1 sheet. The paper is Khadi smooth watercolour paper.

Work in progress on the book.

#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.

Online Life drawing – Andrea

Yesterday I participated in another online life drawing session with London Drawing. The model was Andrea: @andrea.morani_lifemodel on Instagram. Andrea was in his studio in Italy. The 200 or so people drawing him were distributed across the world.

monoprints @andrea.morani_lifemodel on London Drawing on online session 9th June 202

More online Life Drawing sessions:

Online life drawing – Laetitia

Here are some monoprint sketches of Laetitia, a ballerina with the Opera de Paris. This was a life drawing session , 9th May 2020, organised by @londondrawing. 200 people took part, from all over the world.

Laetitia @laetitia_channel_model

Online Life Drawing – David Wan

London Drawing (@LondonDrawing) organised another online life drawing session, this time with the model David Wan (@DavidWanLondon).

These pictures are monoprints, made by drawing or pressing on the paper which is placed on top of an inky sheet. What you see is the reverse of the sketch. The places where I pressed took up the ink. It’s like drawing or pressing on top of carbon paper, if you remember carbon paper. I like the technique because I can’t see what I’m drawing, so the lines tend to be more free, and I worry less about “getting it right”. The dark patches are made by pressing in the paper with fingers or an object, so it’s possible to get very dark tones quickly, which I like. It’s also a bit unpredictable, at least for a beginner like me, I have, so that the picture is a bit of a surprise. It helps that the picture is a mirror image, so when it appears, it’s different from what I drew.

If you’d like to see examples of a master of this technique, see the website or instagram account of John Carbery, @johncarbery.

Online life drawing – Adrian

“London Drawing” run Life Drawing sessions in libraries and various other locations in London. Right now, they can’t. So in an imaginative and entrepreneurial move, they are running life drawing session online. Yesterday I mastered the technology and had a go.

Here’s the result. The model is Adrian (@modbodadrian).

Monoprints: Life Model Adrian @modbodadrian, London Drawing live online session 14 April 2020

How is drawing a life model online different from just copying a photo?

Well, there’s the time factor. The model can only hold the pose for a limited time, and so I have to draw quickly. The shortest pose was 2 minutes and the longest about 20 mins.

Then there’s the fact that the model is making an effort: he’s there and he’s doing his best to create a striking pose and keep still. So I want to honour his effort and do my best also. That creates a useful dynamic to concentrate.

And there’s the fact that each of these pictures records a moment in time: the person was there, in their space, and the rest of us were dispersed about the country (and some in the USA!) all drawing the same model at the same time. So this is my record of the event.

It was a good experience and I am grateful to London Drawing for organising this and to the model for his good humour, experience and professionalism.

The session was conducted over “Zoom”, with about 20 people drawing, and two online organisers and the model.

Connection to friends in another city

Here is a postcard collage I sent to my friends in another city.

It is inspired by the website: sendmeapostcart.com, and shows the connections we make, the lines which bind us, the distances which separate us, and the pleasure I found in meeting this family again after many years.

  • Work in progress.
  • On the way to the post office
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