| Christine | Farmer |

Dining Room Window and Chair, 2010

At least, more or less complete. There are still a few small, dark clouds I will add lower down near the chair at some point. But I thought I’d post the drawing as it is now, since a few people have asked me about it. It took months to complete, not only because of the amount of detail, but because I unfortunately suffered from a frozen shoulder, migraines and other illness during the process. It has been in a drawer for quite some time now (since my last update!), and only now am I able to look at a scan of it and think, yes, I’m almost happy with this.

This was by no means my first stipple drawing, but nevertheless I learnt quite a lot along the way, especially in the use of patterns in the stippling, which I found very effective in the skies. I will write more about the drawing at a later date, when I have a little more perspective. In the meantime, here’s a recap on the progress of the drawing in my blog.

A larger image of the drawing in full can be seen here: Dining Room Window and Chair.

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Above is the almost finished lower right hand section of the drawing Dining Room Chair and Window. As you can see there are still some pencilled-in clouds which I’m uncertain about at this moment, and there are more of them in other parts of the drawing. It will be a little while before I decide whether or not to ink in these dark clouds.

Above are some scans taken as this section of the drawing progressed. The landscape is an interpretation of the view from Clee Hill, with Malvern in the distance. As you can see, I was still changing my mind on the shape of some of the clouds quite late in the drawing. However, there is not much room for alterations, as with pen and ink once a mark is made it cannot be gone over and altered to make it lighter. Similarly, I was not sure about the foreground until quite late in the process, and had originally thought of having liverwort creeping into the picture. In the end I decided on these bare floorboards. Click on the thumbnails for a closer view.

And here above are some close-up views of the smaller clouds in this part of the drawing, and of the landscape. They give an idea of the patterns of stipples that I use to build up the image. The entire sky is made up of these stipples, which take a lot of patience and concentration to keep relatively even. It is a method of stippling the sky which I only began doing with this drawing – before this I had been stippling much more randomly. For some reason I find it immensely satisfying to make these patterns. The new drawing, which I’ll post some pictures of soon, includes stippled skies and clouds again, along with the ivy, and some new elements.

Earlier posts describing the progress of this drawing can be found here. They include a post about the photography for this drawing, when I took the dining chair to Clee Hill.

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Here is the finished sky at the very top of the drawing. And below are progress scans which show the development of the clouds. Click on thumbnails for a closer look.

I think that this drawing is almost finished now, but I will perhaps put some darker clouds lower in the sky before I’m happy with it. I’ll post some updates soon of other areas of the drawing, and when I think it’s complete I’ll post a picture of the entire drawing.

More on stipple drawing.

All earlier posts on this drawing, in which you can see how this area of sky fits into the entire drawing!

I’ve already begun my next drawing, which is considerably smaller, but is almost certain to feature clouds. More updates soon.

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A few work in progress scans of my current drawing. This time it’s the lower half of the dining room window, with the flowering ivy. If you look closely, there are some honey bees, huge numbers of which come every year to feed on the flowers. If you click the thumbnails you can see close-ups of the drawing.

And here are a few other views and a close-up on the right in which you can see the stipping, and probably also the bees:

Go here to see earlier posts about this drawing, and here to read more about my drawing technique, and stippling and here to read about the Rotring Rapidograph pens I use.

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As some of you will know, progress on the new drawing has been very slow due to my troubles with a frozen shoulder, which has made work extremely difficult. However, I thought I’d post some of the photographs I have of the most recent work on the dining room chair in the bottom right of the drawing. The picture above is a close-up of the back of the chair, to show the stipple detail of sky and chair. As you can see if you click on the thumbnail, I’m using a kind of pattern in the stipples which gives a nice texture to the sky. The chair is first stippled to give the tone, and then the woodgrain effect is added using small lines made with the Rotring pen. This can be seen in the upright on the far right of the chair back, and in the final picture at the foot of the post.

 Click on the thumbnails for a closer look:

The pencil marks behind the chair are where the clouds will be. I pencil in the parts I want to be light, and stipple around them, removing the pencil and adding ink details later. Below is a photograph of a section of the drawing on the drawing table, which gives some idea of texture and scale. There is also a clue as to what is outside the window, the detail of which will be revealed in a future post.

Follow these link to see the overall design as well as earlier updates on this drawing and reference photographs. And go here to see more drawings in my gallery.

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Above: 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.

Above: Horstmann Pluslite. Then one of the readers of this blog wrote to me and asked why I didn’t use a magnifying light. In fact I do have this Horstmann Pluslite, but unfortunately it’s not suitable for use with my current set-up as there is no space to the left of the drawing table and it needs a flat surface to mount it. Here’s the lamp, which is not only really beautiful but sits accurately in any position you care to put it in. It’s a truly lovely piece of design and 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. At the moment I’ve put a daylight bulb in it for additional lighting at the table (see below), but I don’t use the magnifier. I expect I will do later when I’m working on smaller drawings and have my table level.

Above: “Daylight” lamp: 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 Horstmann lamp are that it has a longer reach, and 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 stay in position at some angles as its head seems a touch too heavy for the rest of it. Positioning the clamp on the board is therefore important, and I have found that it is often easier to move my drawing around rather than disturb the lamp. It has taken quite a few sessions to get used to such a contraption in between me and my drawing, but having now become used to where to position everything – and the alarming size of my fingers under the magnifier – this lamp has made my closer work a lot easier. 

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Another two weeks has gone by since I last posted an update, and as you may imagine, my feelings at the moment are that the progress is slow and painful. I spend most days with a magnifying glass in my left hand as I work gradually across the paper, going back and back again over clouds, deepening the shadow each time. I haven’t kept an exact tally on the hours I’m at the drawing board, or even the weeks now. Here are scans of the progress so far (click on images for detail).

The first section of the drawing was the quickest and easiest: the sky through the window (below) was based on some evening clouds I photographed out of my bedroom window, which for some reason became twisted up and not how I’d really imagined them. I knew I wanted them to be threatening, distorted and unusual, but they came out even more surprising. They remind me of something seen through a microscope, or telescope.

I’m still not certain what I want to have through the bottom half of the window. My initial ideas were of hands pushing against the panes, and even to use real fingerprints to form clouds. I have left them blank for the time being and it will become clearer to me later in the process what needs to go there.

The skies around the window (below) are a different matter. They’re made up of clouds I photographed on several days this summer, some on Clee Hills where I took the initial photographs of the dining chair, some from my garden. The process with these clouds, as they are so detailed, is very slow and quite agonising some days. The good news is that my headaches have actually reduced over the past months, and so I’m fairly certain they’re not down to eye strain, which was a concern of mine initially. Anyway, here are some closer details of these clouds, none of which are anywhere near completion yet.

Here’s an idea of what I see when I’m drawing (below). Some days I do wonder why I’ve set myself such a task: why I don’t just pick up a pencil and do things that way. It’s quite difficult to give an impression of what it’s like sitting here and being absorbed into a world of clouds upon clouds. It’s irritating, and compulsive. And sometimes it’s even satisfying… but I haven’t got to that stage with this drawing yet. There’s still far to far to go, and what I mainly see is white paper and things that need fixing.

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A week after my previous post and the top two panes of the window are now more or less complete – I won’t know whether more inking is needed on that area until I’ve completed the skies outside the window, the early stages of which you can see in today’s pictures.

The two images on the left show the development of the summer skies: far more shading is needed at the moment, especially within the cloud which needs a lot more depth. The picture on the right shows a close-up of the stipples in this area. Click on the thumbnails for a closer look.

At this stage the early worries about whether or not I’m putting too much ink on and destroying everything are gone, and the biggest issues are different. The main thing to deal with is the eye strain, looking at something so small through a magnifying glass, and the frustration of slow progress while every stipple needs to be in almost exactly the right place. It has been a long time since I drew anything quite so detailed, and I had forgotten just how demanding it is. Still, it’s begun now and I am anxious to find out how it’s going to look.

The one thing I’m fairly pleased with at this stage is the overall composition, and I’m glad I spent so long getting that right. At the moment I’m uncertain exactly what I’m going to put in the foreground, but my early idea is to put in floorboards and perhaps mosses. I will have to take more photographs for that stage. What I’m doing at the moment is continuing across the top part of the summer skies, while darkening the clouds on the left, but not too much, as I want there to be a complete contrast between what is through the window, and what is around the window.

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As you may have seen in this earlier post on the dolls house window drawing, I’ve been working on the ideas for a new set of pen and ink drawings for some time now. I’m now at the stage where the first composition I have in mind for this project has been sketched out in pencil, and I’m beginning to ink things in. The essential thing for me at this point is to get the values right – since the appearance of everything will depend on contrast with it’s neighbour. The main issue is that with this drawing technique everything takes so long, and it is so intense a process, the fear is that I will put too much ink on and destroy everything so far. Unlike working with paint, there is no real way to remove the ink, or to lighten anything once it is inked. As time goes on, I will see whether these clouds through the window are ‘right’ or whether they’re not.

Here is a small section of the window, so that you can see some of the process (click on the images for a closer look):

I thought I’d also include a couple of shots of the studio. As you can see, I like to work in quite low lighting conditions, even closing the blinds during the day at times. I also love to ink by night. I think it is the combination of the quiet and lack of distraction, with the tiny pool of light which concentrates my mind onto the small worlds I am creating.

In the shot on the left you can also see some of the photographs I’m working from. These include those I took on Clee Hill the other week, as well as ones taken in my house, and skies from the decking outside my studio, which has proven to be a great place to photograph clouds!

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As I’ll soon be re-photographing my work for my new online pen and ink drawings gallery, today I’m beginning to touch a few of my drawings up. Just small things that I feel need darkening here and there: some clouds to make heavier, some skies to deepen. So for the first time in a while, out come the pens.

I had a little burst of buying new Rotring Rapidograph pens last year, just to make sure I had some in reserve. So I needed to check what I have, and see what needs cleaning or replacing. Sometimes it seems a nib gets a bit ‘gushy’ (developing a little globule of ink on the end if you pause too long during stippling) and I don’t know what to do other than replace it and keep the ‘gushy’ one in reserve. I also have a couple of nibs that have blocked, and I really need to buy a cleaner unit. In the past I’ve always relied on a lot of shaking and even sucking the end of the pen… but that usually gets you a mouth full of ink if you’re not careful! 

Here’s the current collection (above left): ,13 and 0,5 (which I’ve been using most often in the past couple of years), up to 1,0, which I almost never use. Today I ordered some ,25 and ,35 which I used to use more in the past and will be using for the new projects. I’m going to be recording the progress of the new work here in the blog, from first ideas to photography to drawing. So if you would like to keep up to date with my progress, please subscribe and you’ll get regular updates (one email a day on any day that I update the blog)!

So today I’ll be concentrating on sharpening up the detail in this drawing (below), and later in the week I’ll be photographing it ready to upload it into the gallery.

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