I've got a story that I've been writing for ages about Edward Martyr, local boy and King of England, who was done in by his younger brother at Corfe, and dumped here in Wareham for a bit, till he was taken to Shaftesbury. Then through various hoopla he ended up in a cutlery drawer in a bank vault, then eventually in a Russian Orthodox church.
So
Relic in a cutlery drawer
Apple
not apple on a bed
I bought some new pens a while back after seeing someone use them. Rotring Tikky. They are horrible and I managed to smear some lines instantly. I reverted to microns.
Unfortunately I couldn't find a pencil, except for a Screwfix free pencil, which is actually not bad.
Well, right on track with feeling terribly old and feeling time is zipping past at a terrifying pace its Inktober again.
Just for variety i might follow the prompt list.
So I guess I have to draw an apple.
I was going to try and build a game for the game jam about getting cut off by the tide, but instead opted for a corny joke and an excuse to draw lots of Count Draclias.
I might even get round to putting the game on Itchio
or not
I was trying to get a fawning hands up style vampire, but couldn't get it right.
I thought exercise 6 followed the approach previously used, and the outlining of tree branches was to get the idea of the spaces around objects, but reading again Ruskin wants the overlap of the branches to be described by the outline.
Exercise 7 is about getting the hang of brushing tone evenly. He suggests visiting any ordinary water colour painter to see how this is done by a workman... I think if I was the workman I'd be pretty hacked off by Ruskin's condescending attitude, but anyway I didn't have any paste board, or Bristol board, or Prussian Blue, or in fact a camel hair brush of three quarters of an inch.
I did try using a 1/2" red sable brush and some Dr Martin's 'Easy Spill' Phthalo Blue on a bit of cardboard, but lost heart and skipped to the next exercise.
Exercise 8 is the one that prompted me to do a Phd, the text I remember hearing was"...Now if you can draw that stone, you can draw anything"
The bit I didn't remember was the caveats that followed immediately "; I mean anything that isdrawable. Many things (sea foam, for instance) cannot be drawn at all, only the idea of the them more or less suggested ...."
Interesting at the time Ruskin wrote the book no-one had been able to see foam except in motion, the capability of photography to capture such things was decades in the future.
Strangely this exercise drops the instructions about what type of pencil or pen should be used and dwells on the direction of light. So I dropped the nasty H pencil and switched to a 2B.
I've stuck the book in my work bag, and will try and carry on withe the exercises over lunch at work.
Exercise 4 switches to using a pencil to create a smooth tone gradient, but with the pencil point... and a nasty H pencil.
Ruskin is aware this is odd behaviour, and that the silvery grey results will feel wrong, and the student's arty friends will tease them, but it's all about control. It would be interesting to see some examples of Ruskin's exercise attempts, the ones reproduced in the book are compromised by the print requirements of the day. I've had a search and can find examples of some botanical sketches but no cubes of tone ribbons.
Exercise 5 gets the student to construct a shape by filling the space with pencil tone. I'm not sure I was getting the value from the exercise, it's very difficult not to outline the shape as part of the process, which you aren't to do. Even though the shapes are very simple, just letters I found I could see my hand in the work... although I could be imagining it, and actually not be able to pick out my shapes from those of others. It does make me wonder at what point that emerges. There's probably studies on how far things can be abstracted.
I tried the exercises on an iPad using Autodesk Sketchbook. This is the tool I use for almost everything these days, it's got a simple interface, and I'm familiar with the way the pen behaves.
It's different from doing real drawing with a dip pen, the sensitivity is set by the pen model as much as the delicacy of the user. I don't have to worry about ink gumming up the nib, or getting my hands covered. Strangely the setup I use is probably considered as obsolete as the dip pen, my iPad is 10 years old, ancient in technology terms, the battery is not great, and the 'pencil' stylus doesn't hold charge long.
The dip pen nibs I have were given to me 40 years ago and were probably 60 years old at the time... 100 year old nibs, no batteries required.
