MERRY CHRISTMAS 2011!

Merry Christmas everyone x

PETER FALK as COLUMBO

Peter Falk who sadly passed away earlier this month was a bit of a hero of mine during my teenage years; I often pretended I was Columbo whenever I deceptively bumbled about solving murders. I'm currently selling this portrait on ebay with a percentage of proceeds going towards Alzheimer's research.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE...

...and have a peaceful New Year x

A SKETCH REFOUND

I stumbled across this little ink drawing today whilst flicking through an old sketchbook and realised it's better than a load of drawings I've spent hours labouring over. It's fairly bold and loose and would only have taken a short minute to do.

Like most everyone else who keeps one, my sketchbook is a sanctuary for small drawings like this. Sketches that would perhaps otherwise become lost and forgotten.

SKETCH OF A LADIES' MAN

This is a Leonard Cohen drawing I did today that was required as a quick commission. Anyone who ever knew me, I don't know anyone anymore, knows that I spend a lot of my time messing things up. And this drawing is a top example of that as I had his face all wrong after making the marks around the eyes, mouth and nose far too heavy. To be fair though, I'm a bit poorly today and I can't concentrate very well with a headache. And my nose was running and kept dripping on my work.

Frankly my friends, Lenny deserves better than that.

I'm quite resourceful in a tight spot so I took my drawing and popped it onto my computer where I gently over-layed bits and bobs of the original photo I used as reference. I haven't done this before but I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out. The main problem was to try and make sure the parts I corrected still looked as though I was clever enough to have drawn them. But I'm not clever, not today. Today I'm a fraud.

Everybody knows.

TWO HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE

The picture on the left is just a quick pen drawing of an elderly man which took around 10 minutes. I used waterproof Indian ink and my trusty dip pen to quickly get some marks down on some 300gsm water colour paper. Usually I wouldn't use this type of paper for a pen and ink drawing but I planned to pop a wash over it and needed paper that would stand up to some harsh treatment later on. The fine hairs of this type of paper constantly clog my dip pen which is a major disadvantage as it slows the flow of the drawing.

I applied the wash with a mix of water colour paint and ink and drew back into it again with my dip pen and non-waterproof Indian ink which dries lighter than the waterproof version and is more subtle. But not wanting to be too subtle, I flicked paint and ink over the drawing and sprayed it with bleach.

I've always really liked the contrasts of light and dark in drawings so I try and make something of that when I get the chance. I'll have to look at these drawings in a few days time and decide if they need any further work. Or maybe I've gone too far as it is eh, chums?

LEONARD COHEN

Last week I saw Leonard Cohen at the O2 Arena in London and found him such an inspiring figure that I had to draw the genius within hours of getting back home.

I started by quickly drawing the key shapes in black Indian ink before painting in some basic facial tones. I try to work as quickly as possible most of the time which keeps the drawing fresh but also means that a lot of the time I'm making it up as I go along. This drawing took around 30 minutes from start to finish.

His clothes and background were done almost at the same time and when I felt the drawing was slipping away from me I whipped out my faithful pot of non-waterproof Indian ink to re-establish shapes and forms that were close to being lost. I'm disappointed that one of his shoulders looks so sharp but I'll correct that in time.

I use dark blue Quink a lot of the time for areas of shadow. Quink is also useful because it doesn't stand up to being sprayed with bleach which I tend to do when I use it. I enjoy roughing up quick drawings like this by spraying on bleach and water and flicking it with paint and ink before drawing back into it again. This process might often be repeated several times over before I relent and stop bullying it.