One Sketch 280) Bryant and May Matchbox

A little light
Can be a dangerous thing.
Not as much
As darkness, though.

The prompt for today's Sketching Every Day is matchboxes. Now, the thing is that I did once upon a time collect matchboxes, when I was a boy over 40 years ago. I've been told that the collector gene is more prevalent among males than females. I don't know about that, but I have at different times in my life collected different things. As a kid I was more serious about collecting matchboxes than I was about stamp collecting, although I tried that for a while as well.

As an adult, it's funny the things that can spark you off on collecting. A good 15 years or so ago I had a hankering for a 1960s Roberts transistor radio, and my wife bought me one. Well, this snowballed. It didn't help that I discovered eBay and car boot sales at much the same time. At one time I had well over 50 radios of the same period, but I haven't bought a new radio for years, and a few years back I did start selling the collection off. I still have a lot though.

Smaller current collections I have are memorabilia from London Bridge, and from the TV quiz show Mastermind. Actually they're both linked. You see in 2007 I appeared in the grand final of the show, taking London Bridge as my specialist subject, and I won.

Coming back to Bryant and May though, I did some reading up on them this morning. Messrs Bryant and May were a pair of Victorian quaker gentlemen who set up their business in London importing matches from Sweden and repackaging. After successfully starting this business they set up their own factory in London, employing mostly women to manufacture their matches. Many women working or them developed a horrific condition nicknamed phossy jaw, where the vapour from the white phosphorous they were working with would eat away the bones of the jaw, and in many cases cause madness as well.

Phossy jaw, and other poor working conditions in their factory in Bow, such as 14 hour days, poor pay and ridiculously harsh fines for a range of so called misdemeanours, led to the Bryant and May matchgirls strike in 1888. Basically the social reformer Annie Besant published an expose of the terrible conditions inside the factory in a newspaper she published. Bryant and May tried to force all of their employees to sign a piece of paper stating that the allegations were false. The girls refused to sign it, and when the management sacked a worker in retaliation, the girls went on strike. Eventually the management were forced to accept the girls' terms, following the bad publicity and the dent in their profits caused by the strike. However it's worth noting that the company continued to use white phosphorous until 1901.

The same Bow factory continued to produce matches until 1979, since which listed buildings which were part of the complex have been converted into luxury flats. About this time British Match, which Bryant and May had evolved into through various acquisitions and mergers, was acquired by US company Allegheny, and when they went bankrupt it was acquired by Swedish Match. The Bryant and May trademark is still used by Swedish Match in the UK.

One Sketch 279) (Saturday 29th December) St. Mungo's Cathedral Glasgow

An oasis of calm and peace
In a city
of
energy

I hope that you can see the influence of Ian Fennelly in this one. I'm not sure that I really like the façade in this one. If you look at Ian Fennelly's work you'll see that although he is playing with form, he does still manage to keep elements of his buildings in proportion with each other, whereas the façade in this just isn't. Live and learn - it's all part of the learning curve. Not totally unhappy with the colours though, although it might have been more effective just to have the colours bleeding and washing out towards the bottom of the façade.

One Sketch 278) Urban sketch Swansea Marina and Dylan Thomas Statue

Do not go gentle into that good night
- if the grim reaper wants you,
Then make the bugger fight.

Apologies to Dylan Thomas, there. Making the Ian Fennelly copy yesterday inspired me to get today and have another go at line and wash for myself. I mean, you'd never mistake this for the work of the great man himself, but I can at least point out a couple of things which show the influence at least. If you look at the buildings on the right, I've been playing with the geometric forms a bit, which is something I've noticed in Ian Fennelly's work. I've also been freer with the colour - and this really works on the statue, in as much as I'm actually happy with the way that I've used colour on it. Also I've accepted that I don't need to fill every inch of white space with colour - although I've still got a long way to go on this one, I think.

Ian Fennelly

This is a bit of a long and not all that interesting story, but I'm going to tell it anyway. You know about Sketching Every Day, yes? Well, one of the things that I do tend to do is to check out the prompts which are coming up for the next few days. Four times a month of so we have a different featured artist. You can take the prompt however you like. You can copy one of their works, or make your own work in the same style, or make a portrait of the artist, whatever. Coming up on the 29th December we have Ian Fennelly. I didn't know his work before, but he is simply the most brilliant urban sketcher.

Now, you may recall in the past I have explained how unhappy I am with my lack of ability to use watercolour effectively when making an urban sketch. So it came to mind that, since I'm going to be making an Ian Fennelly copy, or at the very least an Ian Fennelly inspired sketch, I could try to copy what he did in an urban sketch which I love, and hope to learn something in the process. Have I learned anything? Well, maybe, although I think it's the sort of thing which is going to take more than just the one lesson before it is going to sink in. Still, I'm very pleased with what I've made today. This is a copy of one of Ian Fennelly's pictures of the Eastgate in the city of Chester. And no, it is NOWHERE near as good as the original. The main thing is it's miles better than anything I would have come up with by myself. Looking dispassionately, I think you can see that I'm still being too timid with colour, and this is something to take forward into the next attempt.

One Sketch 277) Continuous line Love Bug

One thing I'd like to ask my friends -
Can you see where this one line starts
Or where it ends?

Yes, something different today. This is a challenge which recurs relatively often on Sketching Every Day - the continuous line. Basically it does exactly what it says on the tin - you draw whatever it is you are drawing without taking your pen off the paper in one continuous line. So I'm quite pleased with this, even if it is a little bit out of proportion, with the back about right but the front too squashed up.

One Sketch 276) (Weds 26th December) Ledger Art

Big chief sits so silently, wow
While the sun beats unmercifully now
His horse bows his head
While the only thing said
A one syllable question - how?

OK, up to a couple of days ago I knew nothing about ledger art. Then it was given as the Boxing Day prompt on Sketching Every Day. To quote Wikipedia -"Ledger art is a term for Plains Indian narrative drawing or painting on paper or cloth. Ledger art flourished primarily from the 1860s to the 1920s. A revival of ledger art began in the 1960s and 1970s. The term comes from the accounting ledger books that were a common source of paper for Plains Indians during the late 19th century." I rather enjoyed the challenge of making this one. First I found a page from a vintage manuscript, copied it, and printed out a page. Onto this I used a 0.5mm ink sketching pen to copy elements from two very modern ledger art designs which I found. The painting in was done using watercolour pencils. 

One Sketch 275) Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Man (3/4 of a year completed!)

Angels on Christmas Day
That's plain to see
Expecting originality?
Not from me.

Yes, yesterday by the way I hadn't quite worked out that I was just over 3/4 of the way through the year, which is why I've made the point today. If you've joined me at any time during the previous 9 months, can I wiash you a very merry Christmas, and thank you for your company.