Personal Works
The Thinning Sketchbook
I like the moment the tip of an ink pen first touches the paper. Kraft paper is slightly rough, and the nib meets a little resistance as it moves. A thin line runs on, then stops; a few short strokes set side by side become the shadow under the hair, under the chin. Black ink stands out against the yellow paper, and the colour of the paper becomes part of the picture too.
These small figures were drawn fairly quickly, in about fifteen minutes. I paid attention to the shape of a hairstyle, a pair of glasses, a glance or a bird's beak. In some places the line is pressed darker; in others a single thin stroke is enough.
When I bought the sketchbook, it had a great many clean pages. With each drawing, there were a few less. Leafing back, some pages still carry pencil marks, and on some the ink has soaked through to the other side. The drawings I was not happy with are there too, tucked between the few I wanted to keep. I like the feeling of a sketchbook slowly being used up like that.
Watercolour gives me washes that bleed and patches of white paper. Oil paint has the weight of its layers, places I can paint over and start again. With an ink pen, I pay more attention to the line: where it runs on, where it breaks, where it needs one more stroke.
On these pages, the figures are built from black lines and a little grey shading. The rest, I leave to the colour of the paper.
