Sketching Vejer

kathryn hockey, vejer sketchers, urban sketchers, drawing

my first outing with the Vejer Sketchers

 

Late last year (2014) I was delighted to be invited to join Arte Vejer, a community organisation which aims to promote visual arts and creativity in and around the Andalusian town of Vejer de la Frontera.

 

Vejer Sketchers is a subsidiary group of Arte Vejer and part of the worldwide Urban Sketchers movement.

 

 

vejer sketchers, vejer de la frontera, urban sketchers, pen, drawing, sketch

Calle Sagasta, Vejer, pen

sketch, vejer sketchers, urban sketchers, drawing, pen and coloured pencil, vejer de la frontera, andalusia

Vejer, pen and coloured pencil

 

kathryn hockey, vejer sketchers, urban sketchers, drawing

sketching on a roof terrace, Vejer

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sketching enthusiasts, from various walks of life, of different nationalities and ages, meet once a week; usually to draw in the streets of Vejer, sometimes joined by sketchers from other towns,

vejer sketches, concentrarte, vejer de la frontera, urban sketchers

Vejer Sketchers with sketch groups from other towns at Concentrarte, Vejer’s annual art street fair

sketch, vejer sketchers, urban sketchers, drawing, pen and water colour, vejer de la frontera, concentrarte vejer

Calles Reyes Cátolicos and Rosario, Vejer, pen and watercolour

sketch, vejer sketchers, urban sketchers, drawing, pen and water colour, vejer de la frontera, concurso de patios, patio competition, andalusia

some of the entrants in Vejer’s annual patio competition, pen and watercolour

sketch, vejer sketchers, urban sketchers, drawing, pen and water colour, baelo claudia, bolonia, andalusia, roman ruins, poppies, cadiz, ayuntamiento vejer

Ayuntamiento Vejer, Baelo Claudia Bolonia, 47th Sketchcrawl Cadiz, pen and watercolour

 

 

sometimes traveling to join sketch groups in other locations,

kathryn hockey, vejer sketchers, urban sketchers, drawing

sketching in the rain in Bolonia

 

 

 

 

 

life drawing with a model,

vejer sketchers, life drawing, charcoal, crayon, sketch

charcoal and crayon

ejer sketchers, life drawing, charcoal, sketch

charcoal

ejer sketchers, life drawing, charcoal, crayon, sketch

charcoal and crayon

or even drawing each other.

vejer sketchers, watercolour sketches, portraits, sketch

watercolour sketches

In this Arte Vejer video, which features stills of some of my pre-Sketchers artwork, I talk (in Spanish) about my New Year’s Resolution to join the Vejer Sketchers, saying that street sketching in a group is brave and interesting and a great contrast to my usual controlled method of drawing and developing images in my studio with photos for reference.

vejer sketchers, urban sketchers, drawing, pen and water colour, vejer de la frontera, chorizo

chorizo, pen and watercolour

Actually, the Vejer Sketchers experience has surpassed all my expectations; the group dynamic is incredibly friendly and supportive and diffuses the potential self-consciousness associated with drawing in public places (safety in numbers!).

sketch, vejer sketchers, urban sketchers, drawing, pen and water colour, vejer de la frontera

Vejer, pen and watercolour

I’ve enjoyed painting with watercolours since I was a child and the Vejer Sketchers have inspired me to try new techniques and different formats – my confidence, speed, motivation and skill have all improved.

sketch, vejer sketchers, urban sketchers, drawing, pen and water colour, vejer de la frontera, hibiscus

hibiscus, pen and watercolour

Come and join us if you can!

 

Book Covers for The Icarus Mendoza Sequence

icarus mendoza, sequence, three witches, book cover, novel, illustration, jackie cornwall

Last summer Jackie Cornwall commissioned me to design the cover for her latest novel ‘The Three Witches‘. It’s the first in a series of six books that will make up ‘The Icarus Mendoza Sequence’, a thrilling adventure story spanning three decades of the life of the gifted and troubled Icarus Mendoza.

Jackie told me the outline of the entire sequence, emphazising the themes for each book and the colours she associated with them.

The backdrop to all the books would be the fictional town of San Amaro de la Frontera, which Jackie based on Vejer de la Frontera the beautiful Andalusian pueblo blanco (white village) where we live.

Almost immediately it struck me that the six book covers could feature a continuous townscape, representing constancy and refuge, and that the section of townscape depicted on the front cover of the first book could appear on the back cover of the second book and so on for the entire sequence to make an interlocking set.

A symbol representing the specific adventure theme for each book could then be superimposed over the townscape.

icarus mendoza, sequence, book cover, rough, illustration, sketch

The first preparatory sketch for the six book covers; the vertical symbols looked a bit stiff

icarus mendoza, sequence, book cover, rough, illustration, sketch

I sketched the symbols ‘looming’ to liven up the composition and give them a threatening feeling.

preparatory sketch, vejer de la frontera, townscapeWorking from photos I’d taken of Vejer I sketched a montage of views.

icarus-mendoza-sequence, townscape, charcoal, drawing

I decided to experiment by drawing the townscape in charcoal so that I had a ‘negative’ image

icarus-mendoza-sequence, townscape

that I could scan into Photoshop, splicing all the sections together and inverting it to make it white. I also removed the background

This turned out to be very labour intensive, I had to draw, scan, invert and splice two extra sections of town before I had an image long enough to cover the estimated length of all six covers.

I wanted to create richly coloured backgrounds with interesting textures so I opted for watercolour paint, using the wet on wet technique on heavy weight paper with a rough grain, referring to the notes I’d made on Jackie’s colour preferences for each book.

watercolour paint, wet on wet

The ultramarine watercolour background for ‘The Three Witches’ cover

At this point Jackie clarified which symbols she thought were apt for each book and offered suggestions to replace those which weren’t.

Eiffel Tower, pencil drawing

I drew each symbol in pencil and scanned it into Photoshop.

Eiffel Tower, blue

Then I cut out the line work and coloured it to match the background

Finally I added the text.

Here are the finished covers:

The Three Witches, book cover, illustration, the icarus mendoza sequence

The Peacock Dance, book cover, illustration, the icarus mendoza sequence

The Brazilian Prince, book cover, illustration, the icarus mendoza sequence

The Tartessian Stone, book cover, illustration, the icarus mendoza sequence

the five winds, book cover, illustration, the icarus mendoza sequence

book cover, illustration, the icarus mendoza sequence

And here’s the interlocking set of six again, you can click on it to make it larger.

icarus mendoza, sequence, three witches, book cover, novel, illustration, jackie cornwall

The Three Witches is a ripping yarn; my favourite quote is

“Dance, like romance, is one of those sweet, cruel mechanisms by which little girls are enticed into a life of slavery.”

It’s available to purchase now on Amazon.

Another bombona

For this version of the ‘design classic’ gas bottle (bombona in Spanish) I put a wash of acrylic paint over the charcoal drawing and then applied a crackle glaze and stains.

Bombona15web

 

Bombon[it]as

These are variations of a charcoal drawing of the orange butane gas canister which is ubiquitous here in Spain…for me it’s a design classic. I scanned the original drawing and coloured it digitally, experimenting with different colour combinations.

In Spanish they are called bombonas, and bombonas bonitas means pretty gas bottles, hence I’ve combined the two words.

bombona11web

bombona12webbombona13web