Small scale sketches based on real and imagined landscapes. Each roughly 8x13cm. Gouache, pencil, ink.
the pottspost
Ideas and questions about art, design, and living.
3 Jan 2024
12 Dec 2023
Pennsylvania inspired landscapes
A few experiments in gouache and pencil during a recent stay in Schuylkill County. All images approx 20x15 cm.
5 Feb 2017
Drawing school update: week 3
03 Feb
Pencil and charcoal
76 x 55 cm
76 x 55 cm
This week we drew from the model. The focus was on the issue of creating a convincing sense of space in the image, both in front of and behind the model. Apart from a few short poses at the start, most of the day was spent on one long pose. I resisted the temptation to do several shorter drawings, opting instead to try to pull together a single image that felt coherent in terms of structure and mark making.
Perhaps this sense of ambition meant that I tried to exert some control over the process, but I struggled to maintain a degree of looseness throughout the entire image. The model feels rigid and stayed in comparison with the way the foreground objects and figures in the background are rendered. I think I became lost in my efforts to get the contours of the model correctly articulated and failed to connect the entire picture together through the mark-making. In hindsight I was far too conscious of my drawing process throughout and wasn't able to release enough of my desire to be in control to allow the image to tell me what to do. I was in charge too much, and the result is a competent, but rather dull drawing.
Detail
Warm-up sketch
28 Jan 2017
Drawing school update: week 2
Pencil and charcoal
55 x 76 cm
Last week I started on a course at The Royal Drawing School. Week two was a different sort of session from the first. Instead of just drawing from life, we started with two sources of input: a written description of a stage set from a Harold Pinter play, and a model who would take three different poses at different times throughout the day. The aim was to create a single drawing that was a combination of memory (i.e. imagination) and observation.
This drawing forced me to take on a number of unfamiliar issues. One in particular was the issue of coherence. Every image has some mechanism of coherence that is its primary concern; something that "holds" the image together. It can be a visceral emotion, a story, a viewpoint, a technique, etc. All too often in my drawings I try to place descriptive accuracy as the primary mechanism of coherence.
For this exercise however I tried to release my rigid grip on perspective and linear description and focus instead on trying to hold the image together by weaving the marks and tones like a tapestry. My goal was to stay loose and try to disengage my conscious, thinking, judging, "problem-solving approach to drawing, and try to make way for something more direct, immediate, automatic. I wanted to allow the image to bend to a different set of criteria, so I focused on my mark making. Every mark in a drawing has a job to do and I wanted the marks to do more than just describe an edge or contour. I wanted the marks to connect the different parts of the drawing together. I wanted them to act as structural, tonal, and narrative indicators -- at the same time if possible.
Here's the result. This feels like progress. But I know I'm still dealing with issues of technique. My aim is to get into a state where the drawing is telling me what it needs and the pencil is being guided by the emotion or the narrative in the piece, rather than me instructing things consciously. I want to find a way to take my ego out of the equation more, feel less in control, and make drawings that surprise me even more than this one.
Detail
Detail
Detail
22 Jan 2017
Am I destined to always draw like me?
Pencil on newsprint
20 Jan
Drawing has always played
an important part of my life. As an animator and illustrator in the early part
of my career, drawing was simply how I made my living. Although my work today as a
change and leadership development consultant is very different, drawing remains
an essential skill that I turn to frequently. Drawing is how I develop and
share ideas with others in my team, translate insights into imagery that
deepens levels of understanding with our clients, and create engaging pieces of
communication as part of change programmes within big organisations. Drawing is
still very much alive in my work even today.
But for me, drawing is more
than just a practical tool. Drawing is
deeply connected to how I think and how I engage with the world. It is a place to go
that seems to anchor me. Because of this, I have always tried to maintain some
form of a studio practice that involved drawing in one way or another. Like
many people, I have found it hard to keep my studio work flourishing over the
years given the challenges of balancing competing demands of work, family, and
other responsibilities and interests. Because of this, my studio practice has not
received a tremendous amount of my time and attention - certainly not on a sustained level - and
not enough to really progress my work.
I’ve decided to try to
address this by resetting the balance and reconnecting myself in a more dedicated way to this deeply fundamental activity. In order to make sure I build in time
into my week for drawing, I have signed up for a one-day-a-week course at the
Royal Drawing School. However I am treating this as an opportunity to do more than simply
draw the way I already draw. I want to use this course as a means to focus on
my drawing practice and to challenge and push myself outside of the comfortable
and well-worn groove of my artistic habits. I want to use the course as a chance to
experiment, make mistakes, do a lot of bad drawings, and (hopefully) create a few drawings that surprise me and don’t seem to be the usual sort of thing I would
do.
Over the next 10 weeks
I plan to document the journey I’m on as a way to track changes in both the
internal conversation in my head as well as the external evidence of the
drawings themselves. I’m not planning on anything too grand – or even coherent
– but I’ll use this blog as a place to capture things to see how they change.
Here
goes:
January 20th, week one.
It was good to get into the
studio and draw from life. The process of slowing down and really looking forces me to stop the noise in my head and take in more information. The class opened with some shorter poses,
becoming increasingly longer until a three-hour pose in the afternoon. The two images below are 45 mins each.
Charcoal
20 Jan
The work
I produced was ok, but pretty pedestrian. The drawings from the longer poses were very dull and tight, as you can see from the images below. (The one on the right below was a 2 hour pose.) When in doubt, I have a habit of leaning quite heavily on
draughtsmanship skills, but this has a tendency to kill the life of a
drawing. I find that the more time I’m given to do a drawing, the more controlled the work
becomes, and the duller it gets.
Graphite
20 Jan
So, my aim is to find a way to slow down even more, take more time to look and think, and focus my energy on translating the evidence of the subject into a drawing that is rich in information, but also full of energy, life, insight and intrigue. Slow, yet spontaneous at the same time. Is that possible?
21 Jan 2017
4 Dec 2016
20 Nov 2016
7 Jun 2014
10 Aug 2013
Goodbye Grenville Road
After 16 years of living on Grenville Road in North London, we are moving to a new house just a little further north near Alexandra Palace. This is a somewhat bitter-sweet move for us. On one hand we are all really excited about living in a different home with all the opportunities that a new place in a new neighborhood will bring. But we are also very sad to be leaving our lovely home on Grenville Road.
There are loads of wonderful things about our house that we'll miss; too many to mention, really. But here are four things we'll remember that we thought we would share.
There are loads of wonderful things about our house that we'll miss; too many to mention, really. But here are four things we'll remember that we thought we would share.
The day I was born in our sitting room
by Chloe
In the garden having a BBQ
by Gabriel
The view from my desk
by Claire
In the studio, looking up
by Steve
In the garden having a BBQ
by Gabriel
The view from my desk
by Claire
In the studio, looking up
by Steve
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