Celebrating Heritage Crafts through Drawing

Being creative myself, I've always wanted to support traditional crafts and skills. Both in making things from scratch, or using traditional skills to restore or repair. Beautifully made goods are worth maintaining. Increasingly so, such skills and effort also enable the reduction of waste.

I've had a few opportunities to create artwork based on this theme; there is a wide variety here from Christmas decorations to aircraft.

The Watch Repair Workshop

My interest in drawing people repairing items started when I was 16; I painted my uncle at work in his Horologist workshop. It was a way of drawing people but putting the focus on interesting objects. Surrounded by some of his tools, I tried to capture the feeling of detail and precision in his work.

Looking at it now - knowing how organised his workshop is - it seems strange to have tools and parts hanging around! However it adds to the fascination.

The intricate scale of horology equipment means there is lots of fascinating small details to look at. I always enjoy painting metal as it gives endless opportunities for adding tiny patches of colour in the reflections.

The exactness of tiny parts gives an opportunity for more technical drawing, though I still try to keep the style sketchy in some areas.

Many years later, and perhaps inspired by the BBC's Repair Shop, I began to explore ways to pick up on this theme of drawing people at work.

Handmade Christmas decorations at Avebury Manor National Trust

At Avebury I drew people installing decorations; sewing and flower arranging.

Taking time to install decorations the volunteers and staff followed bought a scheme to life that took the whole year to plan.

I watched the installation of colour in an already colourful room, seeing it all come to life and make the historical venue feel alive.

I took time to look closely at the hands doing the work. There is such an effort that goes into craftwork of any kind. Dexterity, using skills that are long practised and second nature.

I find looking closely at detail in handmade items is fascinating when it is homemade.

The imprint of the human touch leaves a trace that is always missing on factory production lines. These items have soul.

Aircraft

I was at our local gliding field when a group of de Haviland Tiger Moth aircraft flew past. One of the pilots landed to call into the airfield. I took some photos at the time and used them to create a very detailed drawing of routine maintenance and cleaning.

As wih the mechanics of older cars, this World War two aircraft without the involvement of laptops or sensors. It is highly tuned engineering that is designed to be fixed and maintained.

Repair Cafe

Recently I visited a 'Repair Cafe' in Swindon, and did sketches which I've recently added colour to. This was the first time sketching here and I think it will be a good source of inspiration.

Repair of electronics isn't something that I'd previously considered, as I was probably more focused on vintage objects. At this event I discovered a new fascination, drawing complex parts and trailing wires. If these items can be given a new life and reduce waste, then it requires skills that are worth illustrating.

One of the comments at this event was that it would be 'quicker to take a photo'! Which is absolutely correct. Maybe this gives sketching and repairing a common element as it would also be quicker to buy a new item. Photography is amazing and always useful but by drawing I notice detail and feel more connected to the experience.

If you are involved in a heritage craft, or repair something that could be inspiration for sketching, please let me know! My current interests are wide but include repair of stringed instruments, blacksmithing, and watch / clock repair, bicycles, boat building, shoe repair.

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