OK, so before we begin, I’ve got some big news. Hold the front page; the world needs to know. Are you sitting down? Good, then I begin. I’ve bought a bike! That’s right, like every other person in the post Covid UK, I am now the proud owner of a push iron. Lockdown made me realise a couple of things: firstly, just how much money I was spending on petrol each week to make the 10-minute commute to work; and secondly just how quickly my waist could expand while doing little but sitting drinking tea and having an existential crisis. Something had to be done, and so I am now a full time (well so long as it’s not pissing down) bicycle commuter. Why you may ask, is Ian blathering on about how he gets to work in a BA Drawing learning log? A good question, and one I have an excellent answer for, stay with me! The 15-minute ride to work takes me along the Barnsley branch of the Trans Pennine trail. The TPT is a long distance path that runs coast to coast across the North of England; you can ride from Southport on the West coast, all the way over the Pennines, to Hornsea on the East coast. My particular section takes me alongside the railway leading out of Barnsley and over the old slag heaps of the former Barnsley main colliery. This former industrial wasteland has been extensively re-planted with trees, and on a sunny morning it’s a beautiful way to begin your day. As I have been making my way along this route, day in, day out, one particular tree kept catching my attention. Now after my extensive Arboretum 101 course, I should be able to tell you what species it is, but my knowledge in this department is still somewhat lacking, safe to say it's a large deciduous tree, sitting a little way apart from any others. This fine specimen would be the perfect subject for a drawing, I can't really explain why, something about the way it's leaning and the patterns on the bark caught my eye. Finally, we get on with the exercise at hand. Now this tree isn’t in an ideal location for me to decamp for an hour and draw. The route is narrow and the trail is pretty busy with all those new bikes and cyclists. I needed to come up with a plan of attack; I didn’t want to solely rely on photographic reference. The lessons learned from the previous exercise have taught me that this doesn’t produce work I am totally satisfied with. So what to do? In my work bag I generally carry a small A6 sketch book and a trusty old mechanical pencil. Each day on the way home (there is never time in the morning, I’m not that organised) I made sure to stop at the tree and do a quick 1 or 2-minute sketch.
These drawings would serve as reference for when I sat down at my drawing board, with more time to focus, to tackle a more detailed drawing of the tree. In the quick daily drawings, the time constraints made me focus on the abstract shapes in front of me, the patterns drawn by the the light, in contrast to the shadows. After doing a good few days sketching, I needed to make a decision. Should I take a photograph of the tree or should I rely solely on my sketches and my memory of the tree? I resolved not to use photography. I felt using only what I had observed with my eyes would be the best approach; I would be free to interpret my sketches however I liked. I wouldn’t feel bound to produce a drawing of ‘the’ tree, but would hopefully be able to create a drawing of what the tree was to me. I used a dip pen and ink for the drawing as I felt the fluidity of the medium and the subtle variation in line weight would work out well for the subject. For full disclosure, after some failed experiment with diluted ink, I settled on black watercolour. It was free enough in application to allude to the complexity of nature but yet controllable enough to allow me to render the forms. My first pass at the drawing was done on a piece of A4 watercolour paper. The textured surface assisting in bringing the bark textures to life.
I was really happy with how this image came out, if it was a portrait I be saying that I really caught something of the person. It feels like my arboreal buddy, who I now nod hello to on my way past (that right, I say good morning to a tree. What are you going to do about it?). I would have stopped here had I not re read the exercise brief- always a useful idea! It’s there in the title — larger study of a tree. I would need to go again but bigger. This is becoming something of a pattern for me: I do a small drawing I’m relatively happy with, but need to see what happens if I scale it up. So away went the A4 and out came the A3 paper. This drawing was done with a brush pen rather than a dip pen, I needed to be able to create bigger bolder marks to give them more presence on the larger canvas. I also tried to create a bit more context around the subject. I wanted to see if I could put the tree in situ while retaining the good things I’d done in the previous iteration.
I have to be honest, this drawing is a failure. If it wasn’t for the course and the learning experience afforded by talking about it, I’d put it in the bin. The mark making in the trunk feels clumsy and rushed. The sense of space I was aiming for just doesn’t work, it’s flat and nondescript. And let’s not even start on my compositional choices. What was I thinking? It just doesn’t work, the image has no flow or cohesion. It’s jarring and has a mechanical feeling, not my best work by a long way. But hey ho, you can’t produce something great every time you step up to the gate. So I’ll dust myself down, pump some more air into my tires, and move on.
So, here endth the lesson, tune in next time for more exciting bicycle based anecdotes, and ever expanding drawings of trees.
Happy scribbling.
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