Beautiful Britain - Looking Across the Thames at St. Paul's - A4 fineliner

 

This is my latest Beautiful Britain Sketch. Unlike the previous sketches, this one is only A4 sized. I don't possess an A3 scanner, you see. 

If you'd like a copy of this sketch, it's available in my Etsy shop. For a ridiculously low price you'll receive a digital, printable copy of your very own, to print off and enjoy.

(We're all friends here, so I'm sure you won't mind me reminding you that all the images on this blog are copyright, nd any unauthorised reproduction or use is forbidden. )

There's a link to my Etsy Shop on the right, but in case you're that desperate to get there this instant, here's the link as well: - 

DaveClarkPortTalbot Etsy shop

As with other recent pictures, I did take a few photographs while I was sketching it. This was A4 rather than A3. I don’t possess a large enough scanner to accommodate A3, but my scanner will accommodate A4. Scanning gives me the option of selling my art digitally on Etsy.

This sketch is all about two things – the dome of St. Paul’s gives a vertical focus, and the bridge across the Thames gives a horizontal focus. I eye-judged where I wanted the dome to be, and then sketched it in to start. The rest of the background above the bridge is all about how it relates to the dome, and so once the dome was sketched in, then I reckoned that it should be relatively simple to sketch the rest of the background in. 

I could quote you chapter and verse about the history of St. Paul’s, but you’ll probably be glad that I won’t. But as a Londoner myself, and a proud one at that, the sight of St. Paul’s is one of those things which just makes me feel good – Tower Bridge, the Palace of Westminster and the BT Tower all have the same effect as well. 

Once the Dome was in I put in some of the first lines of the bridge, extending it to over halfway across the page. Then I drew the background buildings between the left hand edge and the dome. 

If you read my previous post about the Newcastle sketch, you might recall that I mentioned that there is usually a point in a sketch where you start to think that the sketch is looking as if it will turn out to be a LOOR (load of old rubbish). This was that point. I wasn’t happy with any part of this sketch, but I’m experienced enough with my own work to know that if you just push on and keep working steadily through, the end results usually turn out alright.

 As I got more involved in making the sketch, I forgot to take any more photographs, so this is the last one. The sketch here looks better than the previous one, because the little over half that has been completed gives a good idea of what the whole will be like. Actually, although the sketch at this point only extends a little over halfway across the page, well over half of the hard work has been done. If you look at the finished sketch at the top of this post, you’ll see that most of what’s left is the bridge, so while it had taken maybe 2 and a half hours to get this far, what was left required a little less than an hour. 

Beautiful Britain - Newcastle Upon Tyne - Tyne Bridge

 

People who see my drawings often make comments like – I don’t know how you can do this – or – I wish I knew how to make something like this. So I thought it might be interesting to try to take you through the process. This isn’t a tutorial – I don’t feel qualified to teach anyone how to draw. Apart from anything else, I don’t want to encourage anyone else to pick up any of my bad habits.

So, this latest sketch is of Newcastle Upon Tyne, and the Tyne Bridge, one of my favourite bridges. Since this is a detailed sketch which I wanted to spend time over, I used photographic references. When using photographic references, I know that a lot of artists would use a grid . This is especially effective if you are looking at your photograph online, as it's very easy to superimpose a grid upon it. I’m afraid that the big kid in me just wants to get started committing ink to paper, and so I try to do the work of the grid with my eye. I try to judge the proportions with my eye. 

Here’s the first photo I took during the sketch.You can see that the bridge towers on the left have been more fully sketched in than any other feature at this point. This is because I made the conscious choice to start with the closest tower. I took some time to judge just how far from either side of the photograph the tower was, and how far from the top and bottom it extended. The next step was to draw in the roadway on the bridge, and the opposite tower.

You might notice the large roofs at the bottom left hand corner. I didn’t want to sketch them in completely at this stage, until I had more details around the bridge sketched in to help me judge angles and distances.

If this had been an A5 sketch, or even an A4 sketch I probably wouldn’t have sketched in the outline of the arch of the bridge this early. However, I thought it would e a good idea to do it now, because the arch of the bridge would give me a good marker against which to place various background and foreground features. This required nerve and confidence, though, because at this stage, the arch is always going to look awful.

By the time I took this second photo, having the bridge roadway and the arch sketched in gave me the markers I needed to begin to sketch out the roof line at the bottom of the page a little further. Then I wanted to take on the next big feature, the undulating, almost hump backed silver building behind the arch of the bridge. Once I had the outline of this building it enabled me to sketch in the background to its left. Once I’d added detail to this building, then this encouraged me to draw in some of the cross beams of the arch. Now, I have to be honest, I was never happy with the arch of the bridge, and I did try minor surgery while I was filling these parts in, but at the end of the day once you’ve committed you really have to make the best job of it that you can. I also put in some of the stays, tying the roadway to the arch. It made sense to put these in, to make sure they look like they are in front of the background buildings.

Another big feature that I wanted to place onto the paper was the ship. I believe that this is the famous Tuxedo Princess nightclub. I’m not in the habit of making complete outlines of specific features of a drawing before I start to add in the detail, but I did in this case. I just thought that it was such a complex scene that I really needed to see how a big feature like this fitted into the scene, and the best way to do this was by putting in a basic outline.

By this third photo you can probably see how I’ve added detail working from left to right. What does surprise me looking at the photograph is at this point I still hadn’t put in all of the stays holding the roadway to the arch. In all honesty it would have made a lot more sense to have sketched all of them in now. I’m afraid that this highlights one of those bad habits I mentioned earlier. I’m a real butterfly. I lose a bit on interest in the bit I’m working on, so flit away to work on something else for a little while. What can I say – I don’t even realise I’m doing it while I’m doing it. I’ve added more detail and definition to Tuxedo Princess by this photograph.

I’ve also by this stage started the construction of the far end of the bridge. I haven’t started sketching in the towers yet, but the part where the arch finishes beneath the roadway is there, and this is vital for my eye measuring of the towers, which would follow. At this stage, though, I didn’t want to start filling in detail this far right in the picture until I’d added more detail working from the left towards the centre. That would all have to wait though, since this was the photo I took before putting away the sketch for the rest of the evening.

I took this photograph after maybe half an hour’s work this morning. You can see how I’d sketched in more of the details behind the bridge, and, at last, all of the supports holding the roadway. There’s a lot of serious hatching and cross hatching been put into the roofs at the bottom of the page as well.

I’d extended some of the detail of the girders and the lattice work further around the arch of the bridge. I find that whenever I am constructing a piece of art, there’s a point where you have to really hold your nerve, and tell yourself that however bad it may look now, it will come good in the end. That’s as true for my acrylic paintings as for my sketches – with the difference being that my sketches usually come good (to an extent) whereas my acrylic paintings – not so much. Well, with this sketch it was that arch, but by this stage I was feeling happier. It’s not that it’s technically any better than it was by this stage, but that the arch is blending in more with the background.

So, once I’d added more detail to the background behind the bridge, then I worked on the detail of the back ground between the bridge roadway and the ship. You might not haver noticed straightaway, but I did at this point also sketch in a suggestion of the reflection of the ship upon the waters of the Tyne.

As I said, I worked to complete the rooftop complex at the bottom of the page, and also sketched in a rather lovely curving parade of buildings. I was in two minds at this point whether to complete all of the lattice work on the bridge, but I felt that I would be better off sketching in the towers at this point. They would give me helpful markers for areas of the background which would be visible from the lattice work.

If you look at this fifth photograph it really doesn’t look as if I’ve added hardly anything to the sketch. Yet what I had done was important. I’d continued work on the background underneath the arch of the bridge, and everything has been outlined, it’s just some shading of foliage which needs doing.

In addition, I’ve sketched in the main parts of the lattice work for the whole of the arch. There’s still shading and detail to add, but the more details you add to a specific part of the picture, the easier it is to add further necessary details to it. I’ve also started some of the necessary detailed work on the underside of the arch.

Looking forward to working on the background above the bridge roadway on the right hand side of the picture, I also sketched in the outline of the largest building in this part of the scene. This would provide a valuable marker. In all honesty I wasn’t really worried about this part of the picture, to much as with what was going on by the waterline, which was far less clear in my reference photograph, and it was the time give it some serious though about how I was going to make sense of it, and convey this in the picture.

 

This is the last photograph I took before completing the sketch. You can see that I’ve sketched and shaded the detail into the block on the left, and also extended the bridge roadway to help me divide up the areas of background left to do here.

As for the waterline, well the solution I came up with was a combination of darkness, shaded walls the deck just above the waterline, and areas of foliage of differing amounts of shading.

I’ve also sketched in the last large feature of the scene, the jetty at the bottom to the right. You may have noticed by now that we’re not looking like we’re going to get as far as the right hand edge of the page. Quite right. Accident or design? Well, it was just the way that it was working out, if that’s what accident means. Oh, that is what it means, fair enough. Which is another good example of why I said at the start that I don’t want you picking up any of my bad habits.

What remained to do after this was to finish suggesting the buildings and features of the background to the far right. Darkness, shading and foliage largely took care of what was underneath the bridge roadway as far as the waterline. Some graduated shading  underneath the jetty and the hint of a bridge linking it to the bank, and we were done.

 

Beautiful Britain Drawings

 Right then, there’s urban sketches, and then there are other sketches. Putting it in basic terms, if you don’t make the sketch there and then on the spot, then it’s really not an urban sketch. I love urban sketching. However, with the best will in the world, who has 10 hours to sit in situ making a detailed sketch of a particular scene? So there is a marked difference in quality between my urban sketches, and other more detailed sketches. I’ll try to give you an example.

This is what you might get from me in terms of an urban sketch, There’s nothing wrong with that either. It’s clearly recognisable as Iron Bridge, but being a sketch, it is of necessity sketchy. Compare it with this.

Now, let’s acknowledge that the first sketch was made on A5 paper, while the second drawing was made on A3. The sketch on A5 wouldn’t have taken an hour, while the drawing on A3 took somewhere between 6 and 8 hours. Yet I enjoyed it so much that I decided to make it the first of a series of scenes of the UK which I particularly like, each carried out on A3 with the same attention to detail. So here’s the rest of them so far

London – Looking from the South bank across the Thames at Tower Bridge and the City of London

Chester – Eastgate, including the 1897 Diamond Jubilee Clock Tower

Edinburgh – Looking across the city from Calton Hill

Oxfam Project

If you've been reading the blog for over a year, then you'll  possibly remember how I made a series of sketches for Oxfam last year. If not, well, don't worry, I'm quite happy to recap.

My oldest daughter is the manager of the Oxfam shop in Port Talbot. One day in the Autumn, she received a donation of a sketch of the steelworks in Port Talbot, and she was surprised that it sold immediately. What she said to me were words to the effect of - "Your pictures aren't any worse than that!" Thanks a lot for that. 

The upshot was, then, that I made a number of sketches of Port Talbot places, past and present, and using frames from the shop mostly, we framed them up and stuck them in the window. In fact, we sold one even before it got as far as the shop - so I did another version of it fairly sharpish. Here's a selection of the pictures: - 

I'm very proud of the fact that these and a couple of others raised several hundred pounds for the shop. 

Well, only a few weeks ago now the shop opened again after lockdown. "How about some more pictures, Dad?" asked my daughter.  So we put three on sale - with each one, while it's a subject I've already used , it's from a different viewpoint: - 

Each sketch sold within 2 days of being placed within the window. The Plaza Cinema building still stands although it hasn't shown an y films for over 20 years, and is currently being redeveloped behind the original facade. The Ore cranes are iconic features of the Port Talbot landscape, and the steelworks dominates the town. 

Edinburgh A3 Sketch

 

Ok, so I will admit that I did take a break yesterday. The Chester sketch took me about 15 hours over 4 days. Today I just concentrated on this sketch. I did it in 3 sessions today - 3 hours this morning - and then another 2 sessions of two hours each this afternoon. This time, though, I took a few more pictures while I was making it than I did with the Chester sketch.

Now, maybe you remember that with the Chester sketch I started in the middle, then worked to the right, then came back to the middle and worked to the left? Well, I did. This time I started with the wee circular classical temple thingy on the left.

After this, I felt that I ought to break with my usual slapdash habits, and sketch out an outline of the skyline at least. At this stage I didn't exactly have a hard and fast plan of action, but then I never do for that matter. The buildings to the left have been sketched in, and it also seemed to me that the bridge would be a useful reference point from which to proceed. I was leaving most of the foliage for the time being. 

Here you can see that by and large I was working inexorably left to right. Well, it looks that way, but actually there was still work to do on the base of the temple at this point. By the point I took this next photo I was already well into the first afternoon session.

I kept on plugging away this afternoon. I do always find that when I'm working on a project like this I do flit from one part to another, rather than working methodically. By the time I took this 4th photo I was a good two hours away from finishing, but I was starting to believe that I would actually finish it today The left hand side of the picture is complete by this stage, and of what's left I was pretty sure it would be the buildings at the op which were going to take the most time. 

Getting there by this point. The foliage and the nearer buildings at the bottom of the picture are all done now. There's just the castle in the background and the buildings and little bits of foliage below it. 

This is the last 'in progress' photo I took. It probably illustrates my slapdash method as much as any. I carried on working, hopping from bit to bit, then found that I was left with just this negative space in the middle. 

I mean, I suppose there was some method in this - I really wanted to make sure that the tower and the castle were done as well as I could, whereas the stuff to go into the space was less important, and to an extent I could busk it to make it fit in So here's the finished sketch in the book.

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

Best Laid Plans . . .

 Hello there. How are you keeping? Well, after the last 6 months or so, in which nothing has been like anything I can ever remember, it kind of puts everything else into perspective. It's been a time when I've actually been grateful that I've kept going with the day job. 

At such a time it's difficult to make out a case for the importance of Art. So I haven't been moaning about the exhibition of my sketches not going ahead. To be honest, I'd become just a little disillusioned by the time lockdown began. The date of the proposed exhibition at the Castle kept getting put back and put back. The organisers are lovely people, but I found them frustrating to deal with as it was difficult to pin them down at all. I was commissioned to design a Christmas Card for them, which they didn't even bother to collect and sign off on until after Christmas, and then I found that they planned to use the design for other purposes as well as the card. We had never discussed this, so I was a little put out. Then I had several promises of the account being settled, and in the end needed to get more forceful than comes naturally t me. 

Well, there we are, these things happen. I'm not stupid, so if they do eventually contact me after lockdown and want to go ahead with an exhibition, then I'm up for it. However I do also have another contact I will explore once things have become as normal as they are going to get. 

On the positive side of things, my daughter's shop is now open again, and so I've started making some more sketches for her to sell. We've already sold the first, this sketch of the Plaza Cinema in Port Talbot. I've already made more than a dozen sketches  - all of which are, I think, quality pieces - for my 2021 Port Talbot Calendar. Each sketch is different from the 12 I used for the 2020 Calendar.  You can see all of my newest sketches in my ink sketch gallery - just click on the top link on the right.