| Christine | Farmer |

Twenty years ago, when I first started doing the stipple drawings, I didn’t use a magnifier at all, and yet when I began again this year after such a long time, I found myself picking up a magnifying glass: not only had I a greater desire for finer detail, but no doubt my eyes are not what they were. So the first part of my current drawing was done using a hand-held magnifying glass in my left hand, while holding the pen in my right hand. Looking back now I wonder whether this hunching up over detail didn’t contribute to my painful frozen shoulder, but it felt comfortable enough at the time.

Then one of the readers of this blog wrote to me and asked why I didn’t use a magnifying light, and in fact I did have one, but unfortunately it wasn’t suitable for use with this drawing table and in this position in the room as there is no space to the left of the table. Although I used to use the lamp itself way back when I used to do these drawings, I could never get the magnifier into the correct position, even with a special bracket on my old drawing table. Here’s the lamp, which is not only really beautiful, but sits accurately in any position you care to put it in; truly a lovely piece of design and it’s a real shame I can’t use it at the moment. The only real downside to the lamp is that it’s terribly awkward to move around when not in use, and is quite nippy on the fingers! But despite that, I love it and have kept it for many years even when I was not drawing. These days it has a daylight bulb in it and is used for additional lighting at the table:

Recently I decided to purchase a new anglepoise lamp so that I could have my left hand free, and I decided on this one from the ‘daylight’ lamp company. The advantages over my old lamp are that it has a longer reach, which is really what I need, and has a clamp to attach it to the board, making it far more versatile in terms of positioning. The downside is that it’s not as easy to get it to actually stay in position, as it’s head seems a touch too heavy for the rest of it, and so positioning of the clamp is important, and I spend quite a bit of time moving my drawing around rather than the lamp. It did take a few sessions to get used to such a contraption in between me and my drawing, but once I got used to where to position everything, and the alarming size of my fingers under the magnifier, everything became a lot easier:

To follow the progress of this drawing, follow the tag for pen and ink drawings. 

| Home | About the Artist | Contact | Galleries | Subscribe to Blog |