Above, I created a A2 poster of an event I would have been taking part in this past weekend had it not been cancelled due to the pandemic. I was inspired by the old Railway and Holiday posters from the 30s. Drawn as a black & white pen drawing, scanned into the computer and converted into a 'vector' drawing in Adobe illustrator. The old Roman fort at Richborough, Kent is a lovely self-contained site managed by English Heritage. As a group we were last there in 2008.
Over this 'Lockdown' period that we have all been experiencing I was trawling through my art archive, usually looking for something else, and I chanced upon this A2 size line drawing I drew with Rotring technical pens back in 1990.
I'd used these pens from College days into my professional work in the 80s-90s. I chose to do this drawing at A2 to give me space to depict a cityscape in the background. While colouring this drawing I have been quite amazed at the details I put into it (shown above). 'A Mid-Summer Night's Dream', Pen & ink drawing digitally coloured. I started this one last Friday with the idea it would be finished and posted on Sunday!! Oh dear, colouring of the layers took a bit longer than I thought! However, I did learn a bit more about distorting the images (some of which I had forgotten how to, from years ago) and mirroring. Drawing inspiration from artists like W. Heath Robinson Charles Robinson and Moebius. #penandink #shakespeare#amidsummernightsdream
The same artwork -but two different colour methodsThe artwork above has been coloured in two different ways. The one on the left was coloured with watercolours on a separate sheet laid on top of the original line art over a lightbox. When finished, the watercolored sheet was scanned into the computer and inserted into the Photoshop file below the line art as a layer. This method was done as an experiment. I was curious as to how the final page would like compared to the digital colouring of the page on the right. At the start of 'Lockdown' in England I was thinking about a graphic vehicle to help express ideas and revisit my pen & ink drawing technique I hadn't used since the late 90s. The photos above show my working method for the watercolour version. This page was begun in late April. I have been trying out new drawing pen dip nibs (like the dip pen in the left hand photo) during this period, first to recapture the inking style I had back then and improve my technique for future projects.
I've started this Journal in these very strange world wide times. There's been nothing like this in my lifetime. Just before Britain went into 'Lockdown' I was given two projects to work, this helped at the start. These will be revealed in the near future. We are now in Week 9, during this past period I've written an article on my Linkedin page https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/expanding-re-learning-your-drawing-skills-while-lockdown-simon-barnes/ Above is a pen & ink drawing from my sketchbook, I wanted to try out some new dip pen nibs. I haven't used this style of drawing for 20 years or more!!! I call this one '60s Office tower' This drawing was scanned into my computer a coloured digitally in Photoshop. Other drawings have since followed this one (saved for another days post).
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