Gavin McDermott

Landscape and Portrait Artist

Back To Black

Thursday Sep 03, 2026

In a keep-my-hand-in kind of way I tried using charcoal (vine but mostly willow) on A2 cold-pressed watercolour paper (aka ‘NOT’)–the woman who sold it to me at Cass Art in Liverpool was impressed (and maybe a bit intimidated?) that I was going to fill the pages with watercolour, not realising my cunning plan was with the black stuff…

Anyway, swapping smooth cartridge for this textured paper ‘the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away’. The blacks are/were sumptuous but much harder to erase back to nothing–paper towel, putty rubber, plastic eraser only got as far as pale grey. (Especially important for the first one, which was sketched by eye–in charcoal, no measurement, no grid–and definitely a bit off = needed a few course corrections.)

For the second one I (half-heartedly) measured the eyes and a couple of other bits with a ruler, but somehow achieved a likeness, especially after I moved an eye up!

And for the final two, I tried something completely different: a simple (very approximate) transfer : I drew a few guidelines in Procreate, exported these lines into a jpeg and pasted into an A2 Affinity Publisher page. I then printed these really simple lines as four tiled A4 pages and then used a bit of charcoal on some sugar paper and traced the lines right way round (really simple, and just eye width, nose, lips and ears).

Anyway, nothing like as suffocating as grid, and worked reasonably well, and here they are.

More Procreate and a Pencil

Monday Mar 23, 2026

In a further exploration on the other side of the looking glass I’ve been using the iPad Pencil more like an actual pencil (with a bit of ‘charcoal’ and ‘ink’ thrown in with the ‘HB’ setting, too)–it’s deeply weird to be able to draw so quickly …and for it to look really quite analogue, too

Gesinki Ink

Sunday Jul 06, 2025

I’ve just taken a little exploration back to the other side of the looking glass, after being curious to see some of the new-fangled tools back in the ‘digital’ world: iPad, iPad Pencil Pro and Procreate.

Anselm Kiefer

Wednesday Feb 26, 2025

This was ostensibly a collection of his early work at the Ashmolean in Oxford. However, it was the big, literally heavy metal ‘paintings’ which really grabbed me, and I’ve been thinking about metal ever since…

Memento Mori

Monday Feb 10, 2025

Listening to Mathew Syed’s Radio 4 Sideways show about the passage of time and inevitable decay got me thinking about (amongst other things) my ‘fondness’ for the pastoral ruins of paintings by Claude. Obviously, there’s the incredible light and the ‘pastoral’ nature–these aren’t untamed wildernesses, and people never feel too far away. Instead, there’s a lovely sensation of nature being close, and of the possibility of things reverting to a more natural state if simply ‘left’, wood and stone, rather than plastic and concrete.

Gavin McDermott

Landscape and Portrait Artist

Back To Black

More Procreate and a Pencil

Gesinki Ink

Anselm Kiefer

Memento Mori

Mod Podge Mania

Higgins, Bedford

People On My Mind

Trusty Pencil

Murals

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