| Christine | Farmer |

I’ve recently started on the photography for my new pen and ink drawing projects. Last week I began photographing some of the chairs around my house, and yesterday the clouds were fantastic, so I put one of the dining chairs in the back of the car and took it up the Clee Hills in Shropshire for some location shots. The conditions were clear, and in some of the photographs you can see the Malvern Hills in the distance — click on the thumbnails to see larger images.

I’m really looking forward to getting started on drawing the details of the wood-grain on these chairs, as well as some dramatic, cloudy skies. But first, I need to take more photographs both at home and out on location, so that’s what I’m working on for the time being.

Visit my galleries to see more photography

If you’re a fan of clouds, you might enjoy the Cloud Appreciation Society website.

All images and text ©Christine Farmer Please contact me if you wish to use any of the images.

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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.

All images and text ©Christine Farmer Please contact me if you wish to use any of the images.

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Born in Birmingham, I live and work in Stourbridge, England. As an artist, I work primarily in pen and ink, in a realist drawing style, and the themes of my work are memory, remains, and place. My drawings are composed of many thousands of dots of ink or stipples, and other small marks, and can take hundreds of hours to complete.

You can view a selection of my drawings in the galleries section, or read more about me and the way I work in the about the artist section, which covers the stippling technique. You can also keep up to date with what I’m working on in my art blog, which you can subscribe to by clicking on the “Subscribe” button on the navigation on the right, or via the subscribe page. Please visit the contact page to get in touch.

All images and text ©Christine Farmer Please contact me if you wish to use any of the images.

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