A series of ink drawings on paper for a series of illustrations for a book of ‘nonsense’ poems and riddles about food.

This time the drawing experiments with Saunders Waterford 300gsm hot pressed paper. It is very good.

It is difficult to capture the colour, light and detail of the pencil work with the very basic lighting and camera set up I have at home. Looking at the image now there are things that need further work but I am pleased with both the likeness of Yasmin and the connecting spaces within the picture. It is hard to know how bold to go with the contrasts of the shadowed spaces and walls but next time I will try and push these further.

This was a quick drawing exercise to test out a new surface with ink washes – Arches Aquarelle’s hot pressed 300gms water colour paper. However, I tried using chalk pastels as a base colour along with the washes, something I’d not tried before to help capture the warmth of the winter light.

The washes on the paper worked okay but were best applied in repeating thin layers because if too dark and wet they would easily pool and become uneven. On the main panelled wall you can see where this has happened. Another test would be to pre-wet the areas for the washes to see if they would spread the ink more evenly across the surface of the paper. The chalk pastel was difficult to give an even edge to so experiments with masking will need to follow.