Sixty drawings in one week…

Dimity & Other Stories (37 x 17cms ink on Farrow & Ball paint sample card 2015)

Click on image to enlarge

…but each one is only 3cms wide and 2cms deep.

The weekend before last, among the advertising inserts in my copy of the Saturday Guardian was a Farrow & Ball colour chart for their range of household paints. There are two things you need to know about Farrow & Ball: their environmentally-friendly paints have a lovely chalky quality and they give them weird names. You can paint your living room in Dead Salmon, if you wish, or Churlish Green, Elephant’s Breath, Down Pipe or Pale Hound.

These pristine little rectangles were just too tempting. At first I just drew what their names suggested – a bone for Bone, a piece of knotted string for String – but then tried to be a little more creative. Surely Cornforth White is a jovial old cove for whom the sun is always over the yardarm; Clunch is an enthusiastic hug in the middle of the day; and Blackened could only be a man with a comedy exploding cigar.

So here is part one of my Farrow & Ball colour chart drawing project, largely drawn with an old-fashioned dip pen rather than the Uniball Deluxe Fine I normally use. Part two depends on continued inspiration and, more important, stamina.