OK, so before I get into this, you might have noticed a significant drop off in the frequency of these logs. I’ll give you all one guess why………….that’s right, it’s a pandemic, people. For the first few weeks of lockdown I was still going to work. Due to colleagues’ situations I was left alone in the office running things single handed. This left me a physical and mental wreck, coupled with the anxiety I’m sure everybody is feeling, I had nothing left at the end of the day. Creativity for me isn’t a tap I can just turn on. I’m the most productive when I’m constantly engaged. Doing stuff little and often leads to my best results, and in that situation, I just couldn’t get the juices to flow. Then everything changed. Furloughed!!! Down tools, don’t do anything, we’ll be in touch when anything changes. Great, I think, finally, a bit of relief from the pressure and unlimited time to get on with the course. This was two weeks ago. What I didn’t expect was how difficult it would be to get going again. The break in activity has made it really challenging to regain my flow and enthusiasm. So how to unclog the creative tubes and get going became the first thing I needed to tackle.
Job one, find somewhere to work. Unfortunately, because my partner is having to work from home, I’ve had to hand over use of our shared office space to her. The box room of our Edwardian terrace isn’t large, but in the before times, before the pandemic, it served perfectly well. At one end, I had all my stuff neatly arranged around my drawing table and computer desk. At the other, Dawn has her desk along with all her assorted stuff. I spent a day or two thinking this through and resolved that my only option was to commandeer part of the kitchen. With the addition of a folding camping table I was ready to get to work.
From reading other student logs I know I’m not alone in finding the written part of the course the most challenging to tackle. So I resolved to get on with as much of the practical work as I could until my brain caught up and I was ready to get some words down on paper. So the last 2 weeks have been spent working through this section of the course, doing all the practical parts, apart from the final assignment, that still needs a little more thought and prep.
Now we go back in time, to a simpler time, a time when nipping out for dinner was still allowed and popping to the shops wasn’t an anxiety filled dash to battle in the aisles for the last four rolls of toilet paper.
I began this exercise by seeking a subject for the drawings. The season was just beginning to change and the supermarkets were forcing daffodils on us with every purchase. Perfect, I thought, a flower. A classic subject for still life and something that would give me the opportunity to study each day. To reflect on the changes that time has on an object while also allowing me to draw something I haven’t really attempted before.
I began my studies with this drawing, I used graphite pencil on Bristol board, building up layers of tone on the really smooth surface. I used a proportional divider to help me block in the relative sizes of the objects. This is a tool I haven’t really used before and only had one to hand after picking it up in the gift shop while visiting the Hockney collection at Salts Mill, Saltaire. Once I had built up my desired level of tone, I used a Tomboy Mono Zero eraser to pick out the highlights. Because of the relatively small scale of this drawing and the marks I’d made with the pencil, I preferred to use the Tombow over a classic kneaded eraser. Because of it’s size and pen-like design, I felt I could better match the pencil marks by hatching my highlights, rather than the more subtle, softer marks a knead eraser creates. Although I was reasonably happy with the outcome, I felt I could push this style of mark making further, so the next day I did another version.
I followed a very similar working method but tried to produce more interesting marks, both with the pencil and the eraser. Although not wholly successful, I was happy with the outcome. I liked the heavier contrasts in tone and enjoyed the free, scratchy marks I managed to create. At this point I had spent a couple of days looking at daffodils in various stages of life. This made me think about time and the cyclical ways of nature. I decided that I would continue sketching the flower as it slowly withered. The following drawings were all made of the same flower over the next few days. I continued to try and make interesting marks and tried to avoid resorting to my fall back position of more tight refined drawing.
All the previous drawing had been done in pencil on Bristol board, I felt tackling the same subject in a different medium on a different surface might offer some more insight. Here is a study I did of a very limp looking flower on toned paper in coloured pencil. I’m relatively new to coloured pencils but they were on offer and could resist buying them. Boy, I’m glad I did. I enjoyed doing this drawing immensely. Looking not just at the tones of the flower, but also the subtle colour shifts, gave me a new perspective on daffs (they are most certainly not YELLOW).
To conclude my weeks study of the Spring bloom, I wanted to produce a drawing that brought together everything I’d learned and thought about. The following image this what I ended up with.
I returned to using Bristol board but used both graphite and coloured pencil to complete the work. I selected three flowers at various stages of the life cycle: a bud just beginning to bloom; a fully opened specimen, and finally a flower that well past its best. I chose to depict the bud at it’s zenith in colour, and the other stages in greyscale. This to me somehow helps demonstrate how short the flowers day in the sun is.
Although I’m happy with the final drawing, I feel I need to up my compositional game in the future. I don’t have anything dynamic compositionally and will need to aim for more interesting images in the coming exercises.
Happy Scribbling...
Comments