The Open Meeting

Cheltenham's second big race meeting of the season was the Open meeting on 15th, 16th and 17th November:

This was the first drawing I did - using my excellent new marker fluid pen which puts gummy green lines down on the page which take an age to dry BUT which protect the paper from whatever you are drawing with - so has the nice effect of enabling me to 'draw white' in advance, which I used here for the white rails in the background and the bookie's lettering.

Three old boys planning their next move.

I'm quite pleased with these two old girls, drawn in the break between races in the parade ring.

This is actually Mick Fitzgerald waiting to do his piece on camera.

Spectators watching the race on the big screen and with binoculars.

Punters loitering on the lawn in front of the Grandstand in between races.

I drew this more or less during one race again using my marker fluid pen and my brush pens. I used a lot more colour during this meeting with my new tools. I tried to get the bright orange of the bookie's pitches in the dying evening light.

Drinkers loitering at one of the bars under the Grandstand on Saturday evening.

Sunday morning - a group of 'lads' in the Best Mate enclosure.

Guy Fraser - 'bet with the jacket, win a packet!' I did, and I didn't.

Cor blimey - it's David Hockney, at the races.

The criss-cross rails marking out the different courses on the track, and the hills in the background.

Bookies packing up their pitches at the end of Sunday's racing.

Pretty much my entire sketchbook from the three days has gone up here bar a few aborted drawings. I was feeling fairly grotty for the duration with the lurgy so am pleased I managed to get a fair bit done.

I will return and pick some things out to assess and develop over the next few days. But now I need to get the --- away from this computer at which I have been scanning and formatting for an age!

stencil colour experiment

A couple of experiments using paper stencils and gouache colour - applied with paper tissue in absence of a sponge! Might be a useful technique for applying colour to drawings in future.

Carnet de Lettonie - Christophe Blain

Carnet de Lettonie (Latvia Book) is a 2005 book by the French Bande dessinée artist Christophe Blain and published by Casterman. It is a document of a journey Blain made to Latvia, told using a mixture of comic sketches and watercolour and line drawings. The drawings are charming and Blain strikes a nice balance between careful observation of a scene or landscape and a more fluent, spontaneous approach: 

My copy of the book is in French and, being under 35 and English, I therefore understood very little of the story until I ran a google translator over it to write this post (I had been happily enjoying the drawings knowing only that it was about a car journey somewhere in eastern Europe.) Blain was invited to a festival in Riga aimed at promoting the image of Latvia abroad and so decided to drive there with his sketchbook - he was accompanied by a guide and translator from the festival - and use the images to make a book. He made two trips in summer and winter, documenting the Baltic landscape of snow-covered forests and wildernesses and the Stalinist architecture of Riga, the port capital. His watercolours are not those of the amateur artist but rather of the comic-book colourist; direct and bold: 

Blain's artwork demonstrates that drawn reportage is often best attempted by comic artists or cartoonists (Searle, Steadman etc) - or at the very least experienced graphic artists whose drawing hand is well-practised. Drawing on location requires being able to express things quickly in shorthand while drawing on a wide-ranging graphic knowledge and technique:

Taking this a stage further, Blain brings his comic-book persona into the book directly, often annotating his drawings with small comic sketches of events (usually depicting himself with red nose streaming in the cold):

Blain's approach - a mix of full sketchbook pages, colour paintings and annotations and notes - might be worth considering in regards to my own work for this project. His book is in large part simply a published sketchbook of an experience of a place - and succeeds largely on these terms. I enjoyed it with no knowledge of what it was about or where and without being able to read the language. The balance of the book, however - the fact that there is more to it than the sketchbook - prevents it at times from becoming monotonous. All these things will be worth considering should I choose to make a small book myself.