St Leonard's in Oakley

It was raining, so I sat under the lych gate to make this sketch.

Curious about the unusual name of this church (many a church is named for saintly Peters, Pauls, and Marys - although I'm not aware of any dedicated to Puff the Magic Dragon), I discovered that Leonard was a sixth century frenchman known for freeing prisoners.

Given the dedication, I was assuming that I would find a definite assertion that the church building was (underneath all the additions and alterations) of Norman origin, but there seems to be no such statement to be found online. It is, however, believed that a Norman chuch stood on the same site.

The history of the building seems vague until the 16th Century, so it seems reasonable to state that the church is medieval with distinctive Victorian additions. It is, however, charmingly quirky.

Drawing the Lock

This is a step-by-step illustration of an image made using simple collage and acrylic inks (in black and white).

I cut out the approxiate shape of the canal water in black paper and stuck it down.

I used black acrylic ink, applied with a dip pen, to start the drawing

I added some white paper shapes

I  looked at the  clouds and at the trees and realised that the trees need more "weight", so I used the eye-dropper to apply my black ink.

I added white ink to the black paper to indicate the turbulence

The  effect of the turbulent water was achieved by drawing  swirly  patterns into, over and under the  turbulence, with a dip pen. I also smudged it lightly with my finger and used a tissue to remove an excess of whte ink and then to lightly print that excess back into the rough water

I added sme white pen work to the trees to make them more interes

ting.

It isn't quite finished - there's several places where I should add defining black ink, but the white ink is still wet, and I don't want tto make a muddly grey mess.

Nib

This is a handsome pen - the barrel, which you can't see here, is made of walnut, and the gold nib has delicate scrollwork on it - but it's never really worked right. I'm changing the ink to wahable blue to see if that flows better, but in the meantime I think I have found an alternative use for the pen - as a subject.

Watercolour (with white acrylic for highlights) on paper, ~10 x 15 cm