Artist review - 40 days with the Wacom Cintiq Companion - Part 4: A drawing for sale

Update: New revised version - that's more me!

"Is there honey still for tea?" : Digital drawing : 40 x 30 cm : Limited edition of 10
Copyright © 2014 by Martin Herbert

Due to the hardware problems, I'm about ten days behind where I wanted to be in evaluating the Cintiq Companion, but I finally had time to do a drawing using the excellent ArtRage package. I'll be writing an evaluation of ArtRage on the Cintiq shortly, but in the meantime, here's the finished result.

For sale as a signed & numbered limited edition of 10 copies on eBay here -> http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/111451328062. By purchasing you'll be helping pay for my MA in Fine Art at Aberystwyth, which I'm starting next month.

"Is there honey still for tea (detail) : Copyright © 2014 by Martin Herbert

My contribution to the 1914-18 war commemorations I guess - it didn't actually start out that way, I was experimenting with shapes and stencils to see what happened and it just sort of fell out. The title "Is there honey still for tea?" is of course from the last line of Rupert Brooke's poem The old Vicarage, Grantchester. It was written in Berlin in 1912 when Brooke was recovering from an illness, and it is widely held to reflect the idyllic England for which his generation would be fighting only two years later, and which was ironically to all but disappear as a result of that conflict, even though Britain actually 'won' in that struggle.

Edition of 10, individually numbered & signed by the artist

Two years later, in 1914, Brooke wrote what are undoubtedly his most famous lines "If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England." He died on St. Georges day 1915 en-route to Gallipoli.

"God! I will pack, and take a train,

And get me to England once again!

For England's the one land, I know,

Where men with Splendid Hearts may go"

Today's "Stream of Consciousness" Drawing

This week's new drawing - now up for sale on etsy.com.

"Finally Say cherish the Present Life" (detail) : Original drawing in sepia ink and clay pencil on handmade Khadi paper : 27" x 20.5" (69 x 52 cm) : Copyright © 2011 by Martin Herbert

"Finally Say Cherish the Present Life"

A unique original drawing in sepia ink and clay pencil with white gouache highlights, on handmade Khadi paper.

The latest in a series of symbolic 'stream of consciousness' drawings. I'm never sure what they mean until they're finished and titled. Sometimes, as in this case, the title comes before the meaning. The message here is "Use your heart now - we are all connected with the tree of life, and our physical bodies will return to the earth and nourish new growth, but learn to embrace the physical reality we are in now and use this life to its greatest potential".

Khadi paper is handmade sheet by sheet in India from 100% recycled cotton rag (they use offcuts from the T-shirt industry). It is acid-free (pH-neutral) and therefore of archive quality. I think it has a superb rough texture for this kind of Renaissance-inspired drawing. I painted a sheet with a wash of English Red egg-tempera, which I prepare myself by making the egg-based medium and grinding it with dry powdered pigment. The drawing is done with sepia ink, Derwent clay-based drawing pencils, and white gouache. I used a vintage anatomical engraving as reference for the heart - the rest is made up as I go along.... It's about as handmade as I can make it, short of making the paper myself (guess that will be coming sooner or later!)

For more photos and full details, click here.

"Finally Say cherish the Present Life" : Original drawing in sepia ink and clay pencil on handmade Khadi paper : 27" x 20.5" (69 x 52 cm) : Copyright © 2011 by Martin Herbert