Category: Ink

Delusions of Grandeur

9/5/2013

The latest piece I'm working on takes its cue from Antoine de Favray's fabulous but incredibly pompous portrait of Grand Master Pinto which hangs at St. John's in Valletta.

Favray probably set out to adhere to the unwritten rules of the standard commissioned work - that is to portray the Grand Master in all his worldly glory and surrounded by a plethora of symbols of grandeur: crown, shield, sword, drapery..you name it and it's all crammed in Favray's portrait.

But I tend to see this portrait more with the eyes of Goya when he set out to paint the Spanish royal family. Goya probably did not intend to caricature the family of Charles IV when he executed that particular painting but the unflattering depictions surely approach caricature...

Pinto died in 1773 and twenty five years later the Knights of St.John were unceremoniously bundled out of Malta by the cunning Napoleon Bonaparte.

On the right is Favray's portrait for comparison - and yes I am fully aware that comparisons are odious....

I am in no way attempting a lookalike or trying to add all the paraphernalia in the original work. I tend to cut down on the fireworks and keep to the straight and narrow road. My aim is pure and innocent mockery....

The frivolity of Man has no limits and I reckon this great painting (unintentionally?) brings that out completely.

Starting out with some rather tedious coloring in ...I love taking pictures of my left hand

Cautious start on the Grand Master's face

The face completed...

Finally the image is completed two months after starting out.

Altogether I used about nine colors out of the possible range of eleven colored inks I have, combining three or four colors for the curtains and carmine and black for the cape.

For the face I also combined colors: sepia, burnt sienna, yellow and a hint of vermilion.

I am now ready to start on something else...whatever and whenever that will be.

I hope it will be soon!

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Drawing again...stroke by stroke

10/3/2013

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Starting out on a new drawing. Trying my best to keep things simple. Do not feel like tackling complicated stuff. Have no idea how this will end up and have not yet thought what the background will be. Playing it by ear...

And this is what it's looking like some two weeks later....two weeks in which I was busy doing other work but also dedicating a couple of hours two to three days a week working up the cross-hatching. Up to now using only one pen - the Faber Castell TGIS 0.13. Will have to start thinking of colors soon....

A digital camera and Photoshop come in handy to try out a couple of color schemes and I rather like this one - so freeze here and let's start the drawing proper...which might turn out somewhat different as I go along...

A couple of days later and the color scheme is slowly being put into place...stroke by stroke.

A detail of the man's face as the drawing progresses...

A more marked yellow to the background and now it's about done... I used just colored inks this time with a variety of nib sizes and I did not feel the need to enhance and enrich tones by colored pencils. Started sketching this early in March and managed to complete it in about 20 days in between other deadline-dependent work.

I humbly present.. Cecilia and Herbert

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Start to Finish

25/11/2012

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Away from the mostly digital work I do there is nothing I enjoy more than picking up pen and paper and working on something I will do purely for myself, something that is driven by the simple need to draw - drawing as a relaxing and (yes) therapeutic activity.

A few weeks back I started mulling over the theme of the mother and child - a theme repeated oh so often in religious as well as secular art. So I played around with a couple of sketches until I had a working drawing I could use to take off with. When it came to putting in a background it just had to be a Maltese themed landscape - and it was then I hit upon the Gozo Citadel (ic-Cittadella in Maltese) as possibly the ideal backdrop.

I have always loved the view of this ancient redoubt sitting atop its rounded hilltop as you are coming down the road from Zebbug so I chose that particular angle . The rest of the landscape I left as simplified as possible.

By my normally very slow working rate this one was completed pretty fast... I started the pencil sketch on 3rd November and a day later started working with ink. I completed this on the 25th November - less than a month. Good job I never got the Sistine Chapel commission.

I used Faber Castell TGI-S technical pens with nibs ranging from 0.13 to 0.35 and Pelikan permanent inks in various colors: black (naturally), vermillion, cobalt blue, yellow, green, sepia and burnt sienna. I rounded off with a light dusting of Faber Castell Polychromos colored pencils.

I took shots of the drawing as it developed and here they are...
The Citadel Madonna - a blow-by-blow account!

Working drawing. Baby Jesus needs to be altered...

...and off we go. Work in progress.

Introducing cobalt, vermilion and burnt sienna inks...

Sketching in a background with a couple of pics for reference

Giving the background wall, fields and citadel some color: using green, cobalt, yellow, burnt sienna and sepia

Almost done with the ink...now a few touches with colored pencils...

...and I reckon "The Citadel Madonna" is ready!

Madonna face detail

Citadel detail

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The Big Hug

14/9/2012

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Finally completed The Big Hug! I spent way too long on this one - considering that the note on the back of the drawing says I started doing the preliminary pencil sketch at the end of....May!

But then again... in the intervening period I have slaved at the day job for forty hours a week, and completed about 25 cartoons for publication. I have added a few blog posts here as well and have tried my hand at freelance writing for the first time. More on that later hopefully...

Add to that it has been one of the hottest summers I ever remember too - that has sapped my energy big time and not made working any easier.

The worst bit was giving the final coloring push last Monday after a long weekend abroad (see previous post) and very nearly ruining everything. Thankfully that did not quite happen.

Oh well, I am pleased with the finished item so that is good enough for me. I hope I will start on something new soon. What that might be remains to be seen.

Small irrelevant detail - in The Big Hug I did not draw the clouds of course and only drew the sky around them. This provided an idea for my cartoon strip (pictured below).

Waste not, want not!

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Work in Progress number the Nth

1/7/2012

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After labouring so much on my last drawing I thought a simpler design would perhaps tax me slightly less... so here is the happy pneumatic couple on their wobblesome dance of life.

There will be color in this one and I am reckoning on bright and lively coloring. Bright blue sky and for the "dance floor", it will probably be a grassy hilltop.

Only problem is I am frequently quarreling with my pen (!) as the response I get is not altogether in synch with the pressure (or lack of it) I apply.

I thread cautiously with non-reversible pen work - and in 30 degrees plus heat ever more so.

Excuses excuses....

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Saint Francis ...completed

26/5/2012

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Saint Francis finally appears completed...

Well at least I decided that I should now stop working on it. Since taking a week's break from it I took time to look at it closely and try to see what was missing. What I did was try to define the colors a bit better - so now the dog, the cat and the saint's clothing have taken on different hues. The minimalist background landscape also had its hues and shadows tuned up a tad. Perhaps more important, the columns have been given a greenish tinge and this color was also added to the triangular spaces in which the angels float. This has helped to give some "weight" to the architectural elements around the main image.

I am still in some doubt about this work...to me it seems like it sits slightly uncomfortably between several stools....

I prefer to think of it as a reasonably decent specimen of naive art at best.

I will probably try my hand at something a bit simpler next.

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Time out

6/5/2012

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It is now nearly two months that I have labored (heavy word that) on this drawing and I feel it has drained me out. Labored as in making progress with difficulty. I will probably take a break from it and try to start working on a new drawing in the meantime. Admittedly I have done some decent work on this one but there is still this feeling that something is somehow missing and I suspect it has to do with color most of all. So I will hang it on my easel and let it talk to me for a while until such time as the proverbial light bulb moment strikes.

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Precocious Drawings of Youth – Part One

21/2/2012

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I have not always drawn the funny, ridiculous or absurd…in fact I think I was a very serious minded lad in my younger days... an angry young so and so fed constantly on a diet of Pink Floyd, Joy Division, The Cure, The Smiths…I think you get the post teenage angst thingy!

I have quite a collection of drawings I did in my early twenties and I will be uploading a few here from time to time…. I will also try to arrange them by theme, or stylistically if that fails.

So here’s a tentative first batch of drawings … all between twenty-five and thirty years old and practically antiques in their own right! What that says about the artist is another thing altogether…

A short description of each is in order I guess, n’est ce-pas?

Edinburgh Castle 1981 – I remember my first trip abroad in 1981. I took my first ever flight to London on the afternoon of Princess’s Diana’s wedding. The three-week trip took us up to Scotland and I did a thumbnail sketch of Edinburgh Castle which I later drew again in this sketch.

Wied Liemu 1981 – I was always carrying a miniscule sketchbook around in those days and the formula here is exactly as above – rough sketch on site and drawing at home. Still love this one.

Battersea Power Station 1984 – I actually drew this one on site on one of my frequent visits to London in those early Air Malta seriously-discounted-tickets days (long, long gone…). I was of course familiar with this now famous edifice from Pink Floyd’s Animals album. Always considered this building as a temple to energy and I guess it was in fact designed with something like that in mind…

Addolorata Cemetery 1984 – Also drawn on site from the edge of Garibaldi Road. I also remember clearly I was in the company of Raymond Azzopardi (now an accomplished and respected wood sculptor) when I did this.

Wied Liemu 1984 – A reworking of the 1981 drawing. I was here using a technique involving non-permanent ink and wax. The wax (not melted!) was actually a candle with which I treated the paper before giving the paper itself a wash. I like the effect created – but for the life of me I cannot remember who taught me this….

Beirut 1984 – Same technique as in the previous drawing but with a totally different subject. The civil war in Lebanon was raging at the time and this drawing may have been inspired by a news photo, but again too much time has passed and I do not quite remember how the image originated.

Self Portrait 1985 – Talk about precocious drawings. Enough said!

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Color Cautiously

3/2/2012

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It is a week since my colored inks arrived from Cult Pens http://www.cultpens.com (very reliable people and a quick dispatch) but in spite of my clear enthusiasm to get my hands dirty and try one or two colors out, I really have not found the time to do so until now.

This was no ordinary week for me… it was the week I finally severed my 30 year long employment at Air Malta and decided to take up the early retirement scheme which was on offer. Which does not mean I will not need to work of course ….economic realities dictated I find a new job (until such time collectors are stampeding over each other to buy my work) and I will jump into my new job on Monday. Would really have loved a short sabbatical – two days of it is simply not enough to catch up on so many loose ends.

Anyway back to those inks. Pelikan inks are supposed to work well with the technical pens I use…this is a rarity as most colored inks will invariably damage the somewhat expensive techies… not an option in these economically dark days.

So I am initially filling just two new pens (so kindly donated by a dear, dear friend – thanks Anne!) – the 0.18 with sepia and the 0.25 with burnt sienna - and see how it goes.

I am still a bit wary that the inks will damage the pens beyond resuscitation so I will monitor the pen behavior closely over the weekend…before I put a third color into another pen. However... Pelikan is a German product and the Germans are usually as good as their word.

If they say it won’t clog, they normally mean just that.

The drawing will be uploaded in the Drawings and Graphics section as soon as it's done.

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Work In Progress

22/1/2012

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Three weeks into this new version of Blind Man's Buff and the going is typically slow but... I am also waiting for some colored inks to arrive from the UK so that I can introduce color in ink rather than colored pencils.

Colored inks that work with technical pens are not easy to find and I am still not too sure they will work well with mine, but I am ready to sacrifice a pen to try this out anyway.

In the past I have worked with colored inks but with different pens - and the death rate of the pens was somewhat on the high side.

Next bit to tackle on this drawing is the fishnet stockings (some internet searches required for reference!) and I also have to decide where and what sort of shading will go on the walls.

I normally keep thinking how best to solve such dilemmas while continuing with the easy cross hatching bits.

The solution/s will come eventually...

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Delusions of Grandeur

Drawing again...stroke by stroke

Start to Finish

The Big Hug

Work in Progress number the Nth

Saint Francis ...completed

Time out

Precocious Drawings of Youth – Part One

Color Cautiously

Work In Progress

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