Trying something different today. Normally I work directly from life but I started drawing intuitively, using tiny fragments of lovely papers. Most of them had been prints that hadn’t worked out so I am recycling them. I don’t know where it will lead but that’s what doing art is about, constantly pushing and trying to do new things. I’ve made a start on these little papers and I will carry on working on them tomorrow. If they don’t work out, I can gesso over them and start again.
Just back from life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop. I concentrated on portraiture this week. I used my Samsung Galaxy Tablet Note 8 with a free Markers app to draw our model. I like working with older models as the faces have more texture and contours which, to be honest, is easier.
These long evenings are great for late walks and sketching. Husb and I strolled down to the beach an hour or so ago and I stopped for a quick scribble. I’ve done very little drawing en plein air recently as I’ve been so busy on other art projects but I have missed my daily sketch, I think it ‘s good practice, like a musician doing their scales or chords.
When I’m doing quick drawings in public, I’ve noticed that the people often end up looking a bit like figures by Lowry, the distant bodies, drawn at speed, easily resemble stick figures. When I’m working fast, there’s not enough time to focus on details, rather I concentrate on the mark making, to try and produce something that’s a bit different. I drew this with a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen into my A5 black bound sketchbook.
Here’s an interesting blog about how an artist works, their creative process.
I’m continuing to work with the paper I marbled earlier in the week, squinting and staring at the random shapes and letting them form into something that makes some sort of sense. I read recently that artists may see patterns in things more readily than other people. It didn’t take me long to see the broad shoulders emerging near the top of the paper and the rest of the male body developed very quickly.
I’m resisting the temptation to overwork it. I’m trying to keep the drawings of Egon Schiele in mind as I develop these works on marbling, keeping the line simple and flowing and not working in a lot of detail; making the figures spontaneous and minimal. The Fabriano paper has been ‘distressed’ by snails because I left it out overnight and they’ve nibbled some interesting patterns into the surface. The drawing has been done with willow charcoal, Bideford Black and white conte crayon.
I carried on doing some intuitive drawing today, using some of the Fabriano paper I marbled last week; the ones I left outside to dry and then forgot about and left out overnight. The papers have been chewed and roughened by snails and it makes the surface more interesting. I stood across the room and squinted a bit and gradually some human shapes started to form. I tentatively drew them with willow charcoal and then, when I was happy with the line, I went over it with carbon and Bideford Black. I darkened some of the areas of marbling with the Biddy Black and finally used a white conte crayon to put in some very small highlights.
I have always worked from life, strictly observational drawings, even if I embellish them later. This process today is far more like watching clouds and seeing what patterns form in them. I remembered that when I was a small child, I used to do just that, gaze at the clouds for ages and then draw the things I saw on whatever paper was at hand. More often than not it was cut-up brown paper bags from the grocer. My mother couldn’t afford to buy me sketchpads so she’d keep all the brown bags from shopping for me to scribble on. Kids these days would find it hard to scribble on plastic grocery bags.
I’ve had a rough few days with a stomach bug and not felt up to doing anything creative, not even some sketching, but today Husb and I treated ourselves to a visit to the cinema to see Avengers: Age Of Ultron. Loved it! I did a quick scribble before the main feature started. Looking along the row, the angle compressed the figures into a clump so I quickly drew them, concentrating on trying to get the proportions between the figures right. It was pretty dark, but that’s good practice. I drew into my A5 hardbacked sketchbook with a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen, size F.
I’m going into a phase of experimentation for a while. I have been marbling some Fabriano Accademica paper with black oil pigment and turpentine and I left it out in the garden to dry out; it was quite smelly because of the turps. I forgot about it and it was out overnight and when I looked at it today, snails had attacked it, chewing out some small holes but also munching away at the surface, making it textured in places. Interesting.
I’ve been rooting through old sketchbooks, looking for drawings to work from and I quite like this simple one, done in an olive pastel at a life drawing session. I’ll use it as the basis for drawing onto the marbled paper, with different black and white media; graphite, willow charcoal, carbon, Bideford Black and oil pastel. And see how it goes…….
I’ve been so busy with the series of silkscreen prints over the past few weeks that I haven’t been to life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop for ages. So back to normal this evening and I did this head study using my Samsung Galaxy Tablet Note 8 with the free Markers app.
I saved the drawing frequently so that I could put together a slideshow of the different stages of development. I got really scribbly.
Brilliant artblog, so funny with excellent illustrations
scribblah 