pencil – Page 4 – The Consulting Artist

Down By The Sea

We recently spent some time on the Ile D’Oleron on the Atlantic coast of France. It’s a big, flat island covered in cycle ways, mussel and oyster beds, and dotted with small towns and villages. It also has kilometre after kilometre of clean, uncrowded sandy beaches.

While enjoying the island, I experimented with a couple of ideas – first a pencil and water colour sketch of mackerel, then a canvas of acrylic paint representing the sea.

I had an idea that I might combine the two, even going as far as to experiment with painting mackerel stripes.

I shared my work as I went along, receiving useful feedback and support. I ended up adding a couple of ghost like shapes to the sea canvas, and felt this was enough.

The finished piece is available to buy from my Etsy shop.

Seagull

We recently spent a day in Brighton, seagulls everywhere!

I photographed a seagull as it flew overhead, then later at dinner, I drew this one in pen and pencil, added a water colour sky (bit of a mess), mounted the picture and handed it to Carole. Art on the move.

Nature’s Last Stand

A continuation of my experiment with a very narrow palette of colours.

My friend Tim Baker posted this photo on Facebook recently:

Alongside it he wrote: I pass by this tree many times during the week. I finally snapped a pic. About 40 feet to it’s left the sprawl of residential development is looming. To me it represents nature’s last stand. It’s all but given up; it refuses to fall. So sad to see so much of our beautiful land disappearing.

His photograph got me thinking – and I sketched a response to it which you can see here, mounted and unmounted:

I drew this using a black Staedtler fineliner and some Faber Castell Polychromos pencils. Three shades of grey, and a blue. I sneaked in a tiny hint of yellow ink too – just to give the picture a point of contrast. The mounted sketch is on its way to Tim, I’m grateful to him for the inspiration.