| Christine | Farmer |

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.

| Home | Contact | Galleries | Subscribe to Blog |

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.

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

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.

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