Matthew - iPad sketch

No life drawing today so i did this quick sketch in the harbour. I used the Adobe Ideas app. If you look on flickr there's another version with less colour - I can't decide which is best.

Antigua

Just returned from two weeks in the sun - jolly nice it was too. So nice in fact that I didn't do half the amount of drawing I planned to do - prefering to lounge around on beaches, float in the warm turquoise water, drink rum punch...

Not making you jealous am I?..

Here's a couple from Falmouth Harbour - it was filled with the most amazing collection of super-yachts - very shiny, very expensive...

Just next to Falmouth Harbour is English Harbour and Nelson's Dockyard. Still used as a harbour and features a beautiful collection of restored buildings which were once sail lofts, workshops and stores...

I loved all the different types of palms - here's just a few of them, the second one done on the iPad...


Still battling with the watercolours - here's a couple of tries at a lobster shell...


There was a wonderful old church in the neighbouring village of Liberta. It's made of a pale green stone which can be found on the island...

Almost forgot this one. Antigua's a wonderful place but compared to where I live in the UK it can be really quite noisy at night. Tree frogs, crickets, noisy cars, distant discos, noisy neighbours and the dogs! bark, bark, bark, bark, bark.... Bark, bark, bark, bark... Bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, and on, and on...

Boatyard

Another quick lunchtime sketch. These are the boats to the left of the one I did before under the scaffold. These are all quite small - about 5x15cm. The sketches, not the boats...

Boatyard

Still experimenting with the watercolours. In the first drawing I got carried away with the shading and ended up scribbling all over the place so in the next I tried to use a lighter touch...

Matthew Watercolour

Had another go at the Matthew - a replica of John Cabot's boat in which he discovered Newfoundland (Although I have a feeling that the Native Americans knew it was there all along)...

SS Great Britain

Another quick watercolour - I drew it a bit too small so it gets rather muddled around the windows. The buildings behind are darker than I would have liked too. Still, it's a lovely ship. It sits in the dock in which it was built in the early 1840's. Designed by Brunel it was one of the first ships to be made of iron, to have a screw and was 1,000 tons larger than any other ship in existence...

Energie again

We're having beautiful weather at the moment which makes the docks a very pleasant place to sit at lunchtime. Here's the big houseboat 'Energie' again...

Avona

Here's another boat in the docks. I like all the jumbled equipment on the deck...

Energie

Quick sketch of the front of one of the house boats in the docks. Overworked it as usual - I'm finding it really hard not to do too much when it comes to watercolour.

Cardboard

At work our fancy printer cartridges come in nice sturdy cardboard boxes. I've used them to make odd things every now and again (snoots for flashes etc) but I thought it would be a fun material to draw on.

Here's a couple of tests. On the second I was trying out some different pens including an extra broad copic marker and a weird Kuretake chalk pastel pen. When you first draw with it it's invisible and then slowly the white appears as the 'ink' dries. I need to experiment a bit more but it's fun to have a few more tones to play with...

The Chieftain

Went out with a view to doing a pretty watercolour for my mum's birthday. Instead I drew a lifeboat.

It's a Liverpool class lifeboat - which came into service after the war. This was the last one to retire in 1982. More info and photos can be found here. It was beautifully constructed - particularly the cabin which had been made seamless by bending (presumably steamed) planks around from the roof to the sides. Set into this were some very nice brass fittings and portholes.

This is the original sketch...

But I think I prefer the monotone version...
(Don't worry - I did some flowers for Mum this morning)

More hanging around the docks

Some of the boats in Bristol docks...

A week away...

We drove to Freiburg in the black Forest for a week. It was great to be in the mountains and see some proper snow. Didn't get to do as much sketching as I would have liked though. Here's the view from the top of the sledge run in Schauinsland...



And here's the view from the front of the ferry as the other cars board...


A note for you stationary fans... I bought some very nice Faber-Castell PITT Artist Pens - they're like slightly firmer than usual brush pens. I did the top picture with a B size and the bottom one with a huge 'big brush'.

Ceret, France

Had a week in the South of France - if you're wondering why there's no sun in England this summer it's because it's over there. Here's a few quick pen sketches I did. This is Uncle Ollies luxury camper van - once a mobile library - our home for the week...

Croissant and pain-aux-chocolat retrieval system...
Port-Vendres...
...and the river at Ceret...

More from the Docks

Still wishing I could draw faster - the boats took about 20mins and the jeep 30 - Seems slow to me. Quite like the looseness of the first one though - I was trying to draw fast so perhaps that helped a bit.


I added a bit of colour. For an experiment I flipped the image - it looked horrendously distorted so I pulled it into shape and flipped it back again. Funny how I couldn't see the distortion in the original...


Here's a bit of colour for the boats too...

Bristol Docks

A quick lunchtime sketch. I'm not sure if this might have been better in pen. Probably should have extended it a bit more too. Ah well...A quick lunchtime sketch. I'm not sure if this might have been better in pen. Proabably should have extended it a bit more too.

wrestling

a few more lunchtime sketches from the docks and some made up wrestlers

hanging round the docks

I've managed to get out and do some more sketching during lunchtime. I'm slowly getting the hang of it again. These took about half an hour to 40 minutes each.

real replica

Here's a sketch of the replica of John Cabots boat the Matthew - which he used to sail to Newfoundland in 1497. I think he'd have a few things to say about the crows nest which I drew far too big. I need to get some more practise in.