Kathryn Pinker

We’ve been staying in a little – well actually quite big – cabana (cabin) in El Chalten (see last post).  We’ve only got a couple more days in it before we’re cast back into backpacking world.. here is Rich working on his blog at the kitchen table.

Well it’s taken me ages but have finally uploaded some sketches from my travels on here.  I didn’t really have my drawing mojo on for weeks, but we’ve stopped in a Patagonian town called El Chalten for a while and with a bit of a relax, it’s come back.   Obviously I’m not travelling with a scanner, so what follows are rather poor attempts to photograph the pics with my boyfriend holding the sketchbook in direct sunlight.  Nor do I have Photoshop out here, so can only adjust the brightness a bit with the fairly basic editing page on Picasa! 

In chronological order… the balcony of our first hostel in Buenos Aires.  This was the first time I’d used my new Artist’s Grade watercolours so it was all a bit haphazard.

The beach at Puerto Madryn on the east coast.  Was being blown by a very strong wind and a lot of sand.

Random bits and bobs, including one of the long-distance buses everyone uses to get around here, and various people as they came and went on the Puerto Madryn prom.

My boy Rich with a rather long face, and the Andean mountain range overlooking El Chalten..

Striated mountains seen from the Los Condores viewpoint in El Chalten, if you look in the opposite direction to Monte Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre.  I loved these mountains.

Experiments with my new dip pen.

A tree characteristic of the lower levels of the Andes around here.  They seem half dead, though still lovely.  When hiking you come across whole fields of their blanched spidery skeletons.. I must find out why.

While in Ludlow I visited the remains of Wenlock Priory, in Much Wenlock.  Over the road there was a field of these beautiful orange, shaggy cows – possibly Highland cows?

The front room of our funny little wood-beamed house in Ludlow, Shropshire.  We are now pro fire-builders.

And a doodle of Tony Benn, who we went to see answering audience questions while there.  The crazy dog on the left is by my secretly artistic boyfriend.

Sketch with my new Pentel brush pen of our friend Garret’s flat in Barcelona.

A self-portrait.. not a lot for the blog at the moment as have a bit of work on.

I’m on a path of self-education at the moment with my art.  I have several books I’m using (see the About section to the right), and right now I’m splitting my time between anatomy/the human form and watercolours.  Having some knowledge from previous studies, I began my current investigation of the head with magazines – it’s helpful to see the 3D forms frozen on a 2D plane – and a mirror.  I drew and drew each part of the face, making notes, until I had got to grips with their general forms (admittedly the perfect kind as seen on magazine pages!).  I’ve posted some of my sheets of paper from this exercise below.

You can click to enlarge them if you like.

I’ve now moved onto the wonderful book Artistic Anatomy, by Dr Paul Richer, first published in 1889.  Through this I’m learning about the skeleton (again I’ve begun with the head); there’s so much you don’t realise you’re registering when you view a person.  I’ve decided, as per the beliefs of Da Vinci and the great figure-drawers of the past, that to really portray the human form you need to understand how it’s constructed, which muscles move when, etc.  So the plan is to get through the whole book, alongside others such as the brilliant Robert B. Hale books on learning to draw from the great masters.  Not a short exercise but better than using corpses like back in the day.

A birthday card for a friend…

A sketch of the most random thing I’ve seen in a long time.  I left our building – which is in the heart of Manchester – at about 9am on Wednesday morning, just as this guy skateboarded past.  He was completely nonchalant, like he was just getting from A to B.  I can’t remember if he was wearing shoes or not.. to clarify, the rabbit was real, looking very content in his arms, and that’s a pink clip in his hair.  People who are different or eccentric, who mess with the boundaries without caring what others think, are life-affirming to me.  It was a great city moment.