Catching Up . . .

Been a while, hasn't it? 

Don't worry, I haven't given up sketching. No, I just haven't got round to posting anything. Now, you know the last thing I posted - the sketch of Chester Eastgate? Took me the best part of a day to make, but then I was making these during lockdown and then the summer of 2020 so that didn't really matter, did it. 

One of the stories on the news linked to lockdown was the growth of internet shopping. So, looking at my recent beautiful Britain pictures, it occurred to me that maybe this would be a good time to reactivate my Etsy shop. Which I did. 

At the dog end of 2019 my oldest daughter, who manages our local Oxfam shop had a small line drawing of Port Talbot donated. It sold almost straightaway. He words to me were "Yours are no worse than that one, Dad. Any chance you'd make a few for the shop?" So I did, we framed them, and blow me, but the half dozen I produced then and there raised several hundred pounds for the shop. This convinced me that there was a market for original sketches and prints of Port Talbot buildings, of the kind that I've been drawing for several years. 

A selection of original sketches made for the Oxfam shop in 2019, and subsequently used for prints in my Etsy Shop

My original plan was to sell in loval craft fairs. I did quite well in the lead up to Christmas of 2019, but then lockdown came along. So when I revived my Etsy store, amongst the first prints I offered were prints of those pictures I'd sold in the shop - I'd had the good sense to make digital copies of them before framing. Then I posted them on a Port Talbot Facebook group. I didn't post a link to my shop - that sort of thing is discouraged most strongly on Facebook. However, it stimulated a number of comments with people asking me if I sold prints, and then I would message them and give them the link. 

Last year, it occurred to me that Ealing, the London Borough where I was born, has a larger population than Port Talbot. So I made a number of sketches of Ealing landmarks, drip fed them onto a couple of Ealing Facebook groups, using the same method I'd used in Port Talbot, and waited for the orders to come in. We're not talking retirement money yet, but and being as it's rude to talk money,  I will suffice it to say that it's still a nice source of income. 

Some of the first London Borough of Ealing prints available in my Etsy shop

So, the sketching and print making has taken time. An unforeseen offshoot has been a steady trickle of commissions for sketches, which can be a little bit of a burden, but pay so well that they're difficult to refuse.

Going back to the Port Talbot sketches, the originals in the Oxfam shop were seen by a member of the Friends of Margam Park, Port Talbot's own stately home, now owned by the council and open to the public. They asked me if we could exhibit my Port Talbot sketches. - Yes please! - said I. This was late in 2019. Well, time dragged on in 2020 with nothing happening, and then lockdown happened. So to the time of writing this in 2022, it has sadly not happened.

Likewise, I was invited to discuss the possibility of exhibiting some of my Ealing sketches in the Pitshanger Gallery, but this is currently on hold, maybe until I retire from teaching in a couple of years time. 

I would hate you to get the idea that everything I've done in the last couple of years has been just commercial work though. At the start of 2020 I conceived the idea of making sketches of every London Underground station, just for my own pleasure. So I did. Then in the summer, when I finished with the Underground, I drew all of the 145 odd London Overground stations. Then I decided to do the 40+ DLR stations. You'll appreciate that this all slowed down considerably between the two lockdowns and after the second, but I finished the last DLR station just after Christmas 2021.

This forced me to confront an inescapable truth. I rushed the Underground sketches. I took time and trouble over the Overground and DLR sketches and they are much, much better than the Underground ones. Compare them for yourself: - 

this is an Overground sketch

and this is a DLR sketch

while: - 

this is one of my original underground sketches.

The difference is inescapable. I could have left it as i was, but this really wasn't an option. Originally I was just going to make new drawings of the worst - so I replaced my Ruislip Manor drawing above with this new sketch: - 

In the end I produced more than 40 brand new sketches like this. However after the first 20 or so it occurred to me that with a lot of the sketches, the outlines were fine, it was just that the lacked detail and definition, and in some cases I could add these to the digital images with the simple MS Paint programme

The addition of the brickwork and roof tiling lines via ms paint greatly improved a number of sketches.

However, although quicker than making new sketches I found the process time consuming and fiddly. And while it worked to add brickwork, it wasn't really a help in adding foreground and background details to give the sketches context. Then it occurred to me that I still had the majority of the original sketches, and it would be a lot quicker and easier to improve these with a pen by hand, than it would to use the PC or to make new sketches. So a sketch like this one: - 

could be transformed into something like this:-

This is the same sketch. Looking at the Overground drawings convinced me that in order to improve the Underground one to a similar quality, I needed to add surface detail and shading to the buildings, and draw in foreground and background details to put the station buildings into context.

When I finished the project last week, I'd produced over 40 new sketches, improved about 2 dozen on the PC, left about a dozen as they were, and improved all of the rest by hand. If a job's worth doing . . . 

Not actually Urban Sketches at all . . .

 If you've recently checked out my sister blog - my main art blog, then you'll probably already know all about this. Still, just in case, what with not being able to get out and about, I'e been making a virtual tour of some of Britain's most beautiful buildings in sketches. Here's what I've done in the last fortnight or so:-

Chester - A3

Durham A4

St. Paul's A4

Tower Bridge A3

Newcastle Tyne Bridge A3

Edinburgh Cityscape A3

Iron Bridge Coalbrookdale A3

Urban Sketch - Steam Locomotive at Port Talbot Parkway

 

This was the 70000 Britannia masquerading as the 70022 Tornado, at Port Talbot Parkway on a special excursion train on Weds 29th July, 2020 

British Illustrators 40: William Hogarth and Gin Lane

To my mind, William Hogarth was quite simply one of the greatest English artists. He’s best known for several series of paintings, such as “The Rake’s Progress”, and for engravings such as this one, “Gin Lane”. Hogarth’s depictions, and implicit moral commentaries upon, the London life he saw around him have given rise to the adjective Hogarthian, descriptive of the immorality of the Georgian era of rakes and harlots.

The engraving I’ve copied, “Gin Lane” is one of Hogarth’s most famous. It’s actually one of a pair he made in 1751, the other being “Beer Street”. Taken together they are a commentary on the evils of gin drinking, compared to beer drinking. In late 17th and early -mid 18th century London huge gin consumption, caused by a variety of factors, was seen as responsible for an array of social problems, as the urban poor sought relief from poverty through the escape offered by cheap gin. In the picture itself we can see the child falling to its death, a victim of starvation, mob violence and homes falling to pieces.

I’ve always loved Hogarth anyway, but about a decade ago, while researching my family history, I found that my great, great, great, great, great grandfather was a cartoonist and engraver called Philip Dawe, who was a pupil of William Hogarth.

This took hours and hours to do, but I thoroughly enjoyed the process.

British Illustrators 39 - Robin Jacques and Gullivers Travels

Robin Jacques, a very prolific British illustrator from the 1940s until his death in the 1990s, was ironically far less well known in the UK than his sister, the actress comedienne Hattie Jacques. To most Brits in their mid 50s and older, she is one of a handful of actors well remembered for a long running series of comedy films called the Carry Ons.

Robin Jacques was self-taught, and in his teens he began working as an artist in the advertising industry. He went on to work as Art editor for magazines, and to teach art, as well as illustrating well over 100 children’s books. His signature style involved a stippling technique, which is highly effective, harking back as it does to almost a Victorian engraving style. I can vouch for the fact that it is exceptionally time consuming, though!

British Illustrators: 38 Dave Gibbons and Watchmen

Together with British writer Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons created what I feel is one of the greatest graphic novels of all time, “Watchmen”, which was later made into a film. Although the film deviated a little in script from the story, visually it was incredibly faithful to Dave Gibbons original illustrations, which pretty much says all you need to know about their effectiveness.

Dave Gibbons first came to prominence working for the seminal British comic of the 70s, 2000 AD. The best known serial of this comic was Judge Dredd, which later became a couple of lacklustre movies. I first came to know his work on the comic strips within the early issues of Doctor Who Magazine. In the early 80s Dave Gibbons went to work for DC Comics, which led to collaborations with fellow Brit Alan Moore, and eventually the masterpiece that is Watchmen.

British Illustrators 37: William Stobbs and Scottish Folk Tales

William Stobbs was a Greenaway Medal winning artist and illustrator throughout the second half of the 20^th century. During the 1950s he was the head of the design department of the London School of Printing and Kindred Trades, and later on became the principal of the Maidstone School of Art.

He won the Greenaway Medal in 1959 and unusually two of his books were cited – an edition of a short story by Chekov (the Russian writer, not the USS Enterprise’s helmsman) called Kashtanka, and a book called A Bundle of Ballads

This is actually a copy of an illustration he made for a book of Scottish Folk Tales, and it just really does it for me. Who wouldn’t want to read a story which has an illustration like this accompanying it?