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?

British Illustrators 36: Charles Keeping

Charles Keeping was another Greenaway Medal winner. Charles Keeping first came to prominence illustrating some of the historical novels of Rosemary Sutcliff. He actually won two Greenaway Medals, one for his own story, “Charley, Charlotte and the Golden Canary”, and one for his illustrated edition of Alfred Noyes’ poem “The Highwayman”.

Keeping served in the Royal Navy during World War II, having joined at the age of 18. After the war he studied Art part time and then full time, and from the 50s until his death in 1988 he worked for many outlets, including Punch. In 1956 he was commissioned to illustrate Rosemary Sutcliff’s “The Silver Branch”. His success saw him commissioned to illustrate others of Sutcliff’s novels and also those of Henry Treece and others.

I’ve chosen to copy an illustration Keeping made for an edition of “The Jungle Book”. The most complicated parts were the trees and foliage in the background. Two different graphite pencils – a 6B for lighter shading and a 2B for darker shading – really gave this texture – it looked nothing like as good with just the ink marks.

British Illustrators 35: Sir Frank Brangwyn

Largely self-taught Sir Frank Brangwyn produced over 12000 works during his lifetime in his career as painter, print maker, designer and illustrator between the end of the 19^th century, and his death in 1956. By the middle of the 20^th century he was one of the most popular and successful British artists of the time.

In the nearest city to where I live in Wales, Swansea, there is a large gallery and performance space named after him, the Brangwyn Hall. It is so called because it contains a number of murals he painted which were commissioned for, then rejected by the House of Lords in Westminster. Their loss was Swansea’s gain.

In 2006, when I was staying in Leeds, Yorkshire, to take part in a popular television quiz show, there was an exhibition of Brangwyn’s work in Leeds’ magnificent Town Hall. I knew next to nothing about him, but was bowled over by what I saw, not just his illustration work, and his graphic work, but also by some of his incredibly vibrant and joyous paintings. This is a copy of his painting “A Street Scene in Tangiers”. The original is an oil painting, while I used acrylics, and a canvas only about half the size of the original. It must have taken well over 10 hours for me to paint this, but I thoroughly enjoyed the process. 

British Illustrators 34: Judith Kerr

The late Judith Kerr, who passed away in 2019, will always be remembered for the ever popular “The Tiger who came to Tea”. She also created the Mog series, and wrote “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit”. She had personal experience to draw on for that book, since she was born in Weimar Germany, but her parents both knew that Nazi success in the 1933 elections could spell potential disaster for a Jewish family such as themselves, and the family moved to France before settling in Britain.

Judith Kerr became a naturalised British subject, and married Nigel Kneale. That name might not mean a great deal to you if you’re not British or of a certain age, but he wrote “Quatermass” which was the first TV science fiction serial to gain mass appeal in the UK, and led to 3 spin off films. Their son, Matthew Kneale is no mean writer himself. He wrote an excellent historical novel “English Passengers” which I can thoroughly recommend. Coming back to “The Tiger Who Came To Tea”, it was published in 1968, and has remained hugely popular ever since. Judith Kerr created the story after a visit to the zoo with her three year old daughter. It took her a year to make the book, and it has since become one of the best selling children’s books of all time. 

British Illustrators 33: Edmund Dulac and The Little Mermaid

Edmund Dulac was actually born French, but moved to England in his early 20s, and became a British citizen in 1912.

On arrival in London, Dulac was commissioned to illustrate Dent’s edition Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. He worked for the Pall Mall Gazette, and then was commissioned by Hodder and Stoughton to illustrate a number of books, including the works of Hans Christian Anderson, from which I have tried to copy an illustration he made of the Little Mermaid.

When I look at Dulac’s illustrations for this and other books I am struck that he works in a similar style to his contemporary Arthur Rackham. After the first World War there was much less demand for illustrated picture books of the style he had been producing before, and so he moved into other areas, such as newspaper caricatures, portraiture and theatre design. Like later illustrators Ralph Steadman and Gerald Scarfe, Dulac also illustrated postage stamps for the Royal Mail.

British Illustrators 32: Edward Burne Jones

Burne-Jones is associated with both the Pre Raphaelite-Brotherhood, whom he admired tremendously in his early years, and also with the Arts and Crafts Movement. He was a pre-eminent artist in the field of stained glass, and also a founder member, with William Morris, or Morris’ decorative arts firm. As well as his own paintings, and his work in the field of stained glass and of design, Burne-Jones also illustrated a number of works for Morris’ Kelmscott Press. In this illustration, copied from an illustration of the Kelmscott’s Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Burne-Jones’ distinctive almost medieval style is a perfect match for the subject matter.

Burne-Jones was very influential on the next generation of artists and illustrators in England as well. The teenage Aubrey Beardsley made a speculative visit to Burne-Jones’ home, and showed him sone of his sketches. Burne-Jones allegedly told him that he was not in the habit of advising young people to become artists, but he had no choice but to do so in Beardsley’s case. Quite right too. In the 1890s he became something of a pillar of the establishment, being made a Baronet (A baronetcy is a hereditary knighthood – an ordinary knighthood passes away on the death of the recipient.)

British Illustrators 31: Victor Ambrus

Off Prompt: British Illustrators 31: Victor Ambrus

Victor Ambrus is another two-time Greenaway Medal winner. Victor Ambrus was born and grew up in Hungary, where he was studying in the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts during the failed 1956 revolution against the Soviet backed regime. In December he and other students fled first to Austria, then to Britain, where he hoped to study in the tradition of great British illustrators such as E.H. Shepard, John Tenniel and Arthur Rackham. Hungary’s loss has indisputably been Britain’s gain.

Victor Ambrus has illustrated a great many children’s books, both fiction and non-fiction. I chose this sketch because it illustrates two really important themes in his work, horses, and the historical past. For several years Victor Ambrus’ illustrations formed an important part of the popular British Archaeology documentary series Time Team, in which a group of archaeologists, surveyors and archivists would be given three days to carry out an investigation of a historical – or in some cases pre-historical – site, and their discoveries would help inform the illustrations which Victor would make of the site in its former heyday. 

British Illustrators 30: Gerald Scarfe and The Wall

Gerald Scarfe is another great British illustrator whom I’ve chosen to include even though he’s most definitely not known for illustrations to children’s books.

Gerald Scarfe at one point studied at the same time as Ralph Steadman at East Ham Technical College. The two fell out when working for the Daily Mail. After a brief career in advertising, Gerald Scarfe became a savage political cartoonist, possibly the best known in the UK. Like Steadman, he has worked for a wide range of publications in the UK and the US, he has designed postage stamps for the Royal Mail. He famously worked with the band Pink Floyd on the album “The Wall”, and this is why I have copied one of the illustrations he produced for the album. On my 17^th birthday I saw Pink Floyd performing The Wall at Earl’s Court in London, and Scarfe’s work in the form of animations, projections, and huge inflatables, played a crucial part in the performance and the experience. If you look at the picture and the words “You, yes, you. Stand still laddie!” come into your mind, then you’re probably a Floyd fan as well. 

British Illustrators 28: Carl Giles and Grandma

I haven’t chosen Carl Giles because he illustrated children’s books. He didn’t. Carl Giles was actually a political cartoonist in the UK’s Daily Express newspaper from the early 1940s until 1989.

So why am I including him? Well, Giles’ popularity became so great that from 1946 onwards, Giles cartoons for the previous year were published in an annual. I first encountered them as a kid, when I read one in a doctor’s waiting room. I didn’t get a lot of the jokes, not knowing the context. However I was captivated by the images. In many of his cartoons, Giles used his fictionalised ‘Giles’ family, and the grandmother, “Grandma” became something of a national institution. So much so that there is actually a statue of Grandma in Ipswich, Giles’ adopted hometown. In many English households the arrival of the Giles annual became something of a Christmas institution. I learned a lot about England in the late 50s and early 60s, before I was born, from reading old Giles annuals.

I had to copy Grandma, of course, but a typical Giles cartoon has much more to it than one or two characters. There’s often a whole other level of humour going on in the background, and they’re the sort of thing you can look at two or three times, and still see something new in them.

British Illustrators 27: Ralph Steadman

Like Sir Quentin Blake and Helen Oxenbury, Ralph Steadman is still very much alive. Unlike them, he isn’t best known as an illustrator of children’s books. As early as his student days in the 60s, Ralph Steadman was contributing to satirical magazine Private Eye, and the Daily Telegraph in the UK, and the New York Times and Rolling Stone in the US.

Since then he has completed a huge body of work including satirical and political cartoons, album covers, posters for the Royal Shakespeare company, postage stamps for the Royal Mail, and also illustrations for editions of books including Treasure Island and Alice in Wonderland – two of my favourite children’s books of all time.

I agonised for a while over which illustration I wanted to copy, but in the end I decided that Ralph Steadman’s anarchic, almost explosive style lends itself more naturally to Alice in Wonderland. (Although I also love his Treasure Island illustrations too!)

British Illustrators 26: Helen Oxenbury and Alice Through the Looking Glass

Helen Oxenbury is a British illustrator of children’s books, who has twice won the Greenaway medal. Nobody has yet won it three times. She spent some of the early part of her career working in theatre design, and turned to illustrating children’s books after marrying fellow illustrator John Burningham.

I’m familiar with Helen Oxenbury mostly through books I’ve read with my children when they were young, and with my grandchildren. I’ve chosen to copy one of her illustrations from Alice through the Looking Glass. I’ve written before about my love of and fascination with the Alice books. While I will always love John Tenniel’s original illustrations, and they will always be the archetypal images of the books as far as I am concerned, Helen Oxenbury’s illustrations brought something new and interesting to the stories for me. Her Alice is a modern girl, which if anything makes her seem even more out of place amongst the strangeness of Wonderland and the Looking Glass world. Like Sir Quentin Blake, Helen Oxenbury is still going strong.

British Illustrators 25: Kate Greenaway and The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Kate Greenaway was amongst the most popular British illustrators of the Victorian period, and her popularity has never really diminished since. When, in the 1950s, the Library Association decided to inaugurate an annual prize for distinguished illustration in a book for children, it decided to name the medal after Kate Greenaway.

The daughter of an engraver, Kate Greenaway had to battle against the prejudice of the time in order to first study art, and then to make a living from it. For example, women were banned from attending life drawing classes. She first tasted commercial success designing greetings cards for printer Edmund Evans. In 1879 she wrote and illustrated a book of verses,”Under the Window” , which was a best seller, and from then until her death in 1901, aged 55, she remained one of the most poplar illustrators and designers in Britain.

This is a copy of an illustration she made to Robert Browning’s poem “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”.

British Illustrators 24:Randolph Caldecott and The House that Jack Built

It’s confession time. I hadn’t even heard of Randolph Caldecott until I was researching Kate Greenaway for a future post. Randolph Caldecott’s name came up several times, as one of Kate Greenaway’s very gifted contemporaries. Although born in England in Chester, it seems that he is more honoured in the USA, where the Caldecott medal, named in his honour, is presented for the most distinguished American picture book for children of the previous year.

Randolph Caldecott began as a clerk, but sent sketches and illustrations to many magazines and had them published. He hadn’t necessarily planned to become mainly an illustrator of children’s books, when Edmund Evans, a colour printer, having lost the services of Walter Crane engaged him to produce illustrations for two Christmas books. One of these was The House that Jack Built. So successful were they with the public that Caldecott would go on to produce two more books every Christmas until he died in 1886 at the age of 40. His health had always been poor, and he actually died in St. Augustine, Florida, where ironically he had taken a trip to help improve his health.

Contemporaries praised Caldecott for his simplicity, and I can echo this. The lack of Victorian fussiness about his work makes it seem far more timeless than some of his contemporaries.

British Illustrators 23: Hablot Knight Browne "Phiz"and "The Pickwick Papers"

Off Prompt: British Illustrators 23: Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne) and The Pickwick Papers

You might not have heard how Phiz – the pen name of Hablot Knight Browne – came to illustrate “The Pickwick Papers” and a further 9 of Charles Dickens’ books. The idea behind “The Pickwick Papers” was that it would be a series of illustrations by famous artist of the day Robert Seymour, and the young up and coming Dickens would write an accompanying text. Originally Seymour’s illustrations were supposed to be the driving force, and the story would be about the Pickwick club’s sporting misadventures, this genre being popular at the time. Seymour committed suicide after making the first 7 illustrations, before the second part was complete. Although Robert Buss produced a couple of illustrations to complete the second part, Dickens was looking for a permanent illustrator for the rest of the Pickwick Papers. On the same day he looked at work by Browne, and a certain William Makepeace Thackeray. At this point Thackeray believed he would find success with his pictures, and it was ten years before he really struck gold with his novel Vanity Fair. Coming back to Browne, Dickens instantly saw what Browne could bring to the novel, and they began a partnership and friendship. Browne adopted the pen name Phiz, because it went well with Dickens’ own early pen name, Boz.

I suspect that what attracted Dickens to Browne’s work was his great ability with character, Even if you’d never read “The Pickwick Papers” you could probably tell a lot quite accurately from the characters in this illustration. The fact that this is just a detail from the original suggest that Browne had his work cut out making the illustrations. This took literally hours, and I was using modern equipment, and just copying part of the original. The work of making the illustration, then etching it onto copper boggles the mind, especially when one thinks that Dickens, who was a workaholic, expected exacting standards of those who worked for him.