Chester Ink Setch (A3)

 

Chester Eastgate - A3

I've just finished this sketch of Chester's famous Eastgate Clock. The clock was built on the city wall at the Eastgate to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria (God Bless 'Er!). I've been working on it, off and on, for four days. I don't recall spending so much time on a single sketch before, but it's a very intricate. detailed sketch. I'm pleased with the results, I shan't lie about it. 

My oldest daughter made a comment the other day, basically asking how I knew where to start in order to fit everything onto the paper. It made me think a bit. Truth of the matter is, I don't really have a 'method' as such. I'm a really slapdash kind of fellow, when you get right down to it. For example, I know loads of artists who will sketch out very basic outlines to get 'feel' for where the different parts of the composition will work on the paper/ canvas. Now, that makes sense to me, but I just can't do it myself. I just want to get started, and there isn't a lot of rhyme or reason to where I begin. I just dive in. Even with portraits, I start with the eyes. I've tried doin very faint outlines of the face, to get it the right size and the right position on the paper, and there's not doubt that it works. . . but where's the enjoyment in that? 

Anyway, coming back to the Chester sketch, can you guess where I started? Well, actually it was with the clock tower itself. From there I work towards the right, gradually working my way across to the edge of the paper. I didn't take any photos before I got to the edge, but this is the photo I took when I finished for the day yesterday.

When she looked at this last night, my wife made the observation that I was working the way a computer printer works. Well, not quite. But I could see what she meant in the way that I was working from the centre to the extreme right - only in my case I'd do a whole figure at a time, or a whole side of a building at the time.Even then, though, you can stull see a bare patch above the figure in the centre. See what I mean? Slapdash. 

After about an hour this morning this was where I was: -

When you're making any sketch which is much more than a quick scribble, there's always a point at which you stop worrying about whether it's going to work out or not, or whether you're going to spoil it,  and you can see that it's going to work out okay, and you can really start to enjoy it. The background beneath and behind the arch was tricky - you're working in an increasingly smaller space, and there's only so much detail you can include, but you still have to give the eye something to suggest what you want it to see. The blank space at the far left of the underneath of the arch was one of those problematical areas that you just have to worry away at, adding a line here - looking, checking, then a line there, looking, checking, and as I said, keep worrying away at it until it's good enough. 

I needed to nip to the bank and the barber's this morning, but with a solid couple of hours' work when I got back I reached this point:-

There's still a lot of blank space to the left, but I was really on the home stretch here. Most of the figures had been added, meaning that most of what was left was buildings I always feel that I'm on home ground with buildings. From here a couple more hours' work, adding up to a total of perhaps 15 hours over 4 days, and the picture was finished