Preparing to go charcoal location sketching

September 9, 2017Leave a comment

I'm preparing to go into the Lake District again and try sketching with charcoal instead of watercolours. Limiting myself to just figuring out composition and tonal values will be good practice for me! The forecast is clouds, sunshine and rain so there should be some dramatic lighting for the day as the sun comes out and it's something the Lake District captures really nicely!
My main concern is that I rarely use charcoal as a medium and I tend to over to it and get muddy values as I try to building up textures…
So as it's the night before, I'm going to get some practice in and then just give it a go tomorrow. The worst case scenario is I don't like my pictures but it'll still be a good learning experience! Plus, messy techniques are always really satisfying!!

I used charcoal pencils, a range of rubbers and some blue pastel for these sketches. I also put a wash on a couple of pieces of cartridge paper and tried a few scenes on them which worked nice but I found it kill some of the highlights that would have made the pictures come alive.

Getting out there

August 17, 2017Leave a comment

Turns out that working with Charcoal on large pieces of paper makes a lot of mess, which can be frowned upon when living with others.

So, my experiments didn’t last long but it was still good get my hand moving again and once I have a studio space set up again, I will continue my experimental mark making. In the meantime I have been getting out for walks in the Lake District and Northumberland.

I have included just a few sketches here. I mainly fell back to take photos as I explored new areas which was a lot quicker as I walked and gawped at things but didn’t help my practice that much. Plus my cameras pretty naff so the photos never do it justice.

Still I have managed a few blobby paintings as my first shaky steps back into things.

Deep breath. Drawing again.

April 16, 2017August 17, 2017Leave a comment

As I breathe deeply, I can smell the clear Cumbrian air.

It’s been’s perhaps 6 months or even longer since I sat down to explore drawing. I have moved and feel inspired to try again to recapture my creative practice. I am going to work through ‘ Drawing space, form and expression’ by Wayne Enstice to get my hand moving again. There’s a lot of good grounding for the practice to take root in again and help grow my skills to where they used to be.

I will be documenting my experiments on this site under the appropriately titled page ‘Experiments’.

To begin, I will be exploring the basics of mark-making and the tensions they create within the picture frame. I’ll be using charcoal to begin with as it’s easy to vary the tone and texture, allowing me to freely play and explore.

I’m taking inspiration from the following artists:

Gerhard Richter
Claude Monets drawing
Georges Seurat
Norman Ackroyd

Illustrators:

Starting Running

December 3, 2016Leave a comment

It is a crisp cold day outside and i’ve delayered myself into a hoodie and running trousers to get out there and run. Everyone I pass has layers and wooly hats and gloves and i’m bizzarely happy that I look so different. I see the smiles that play on their faces, wondering that someones actually going running in the cold like this and I remember my own thoughts when I saw people doing what i’m planning, something along the lines of “I could never do that!”

I met up with my friend and we managed a simple run around the park. I want to share this with you readers, as I want to explore it in more detail; namely the ways how it helps other aspects of my life like the drawing and mindfulness i’m trying to cultivate into my routine.

I’ve read before that many runners go into a meditative state, where they’re only mindful of their run and their body. It’s just them and the road. It always reminded me of the artist, it’s just them and their canvas. Both have to focus their mind and energies into achieving something that takes skill, patience, and focus.

As we start to run and my lungs begin to feel uncomfortable, it feels the same as when I get to the first stage of drawing when i’m not sure what to do next. It’s an uncomfortable tight feeling for me and my instinct is to stop what i’m doing to releave it. When you’re running, your mind has to stay focused to keep yourself moving, to look at the bigger picture and see that this will pass, you will get to the next stage which becomes easier once you’re warmed up. Breath, move, don’t over think things. Breath some more. Keep your focus. Keep your running pattern going. Breath.

For me, the artists actions would be something like breath, relax your thoughts, step back and look, breath and close your eyes, breath and take a look, breath and make a mark, breath and carry that mark forward, breath and look again. For me it doesn’t have to be a flurry of movement and energy although that is fun as well if you’re not feeling stuck and inspiration is racing through you. Trying to stay focused and allow your minds instinct to have the room to direct your vision and marks is something i’m struggling with allowing myself at the moment. I will continue to try different techniques to help quieten my over-thinking when i’m creating. I’ll keep you all posted with how it goes!

Watercolour Architecture – Using digital software to plan a traditional painting

July 31, 2016October 11, 2016Leave a comment

As an artist, i’m happy to use any tools that help me create my artistic vision. Over the centuries artists have been pretty amazing at creating simple tools to translate the incredibly complex world around them. The viewfinder is a perfect example of this, as is the plumbline: a rectangle with a hole in it and a piece of string with a weight on the end. Awesome.

But, the user still needs to understand the proces of using these simplistic tools. If you don’t understand the idea of negative shapes or how to find a good composition, a viewfinder is not going to make you an artist. It’ll make you into someone looking at the world through the hole in a rectangle.

Digital tools come under this same class for me, although I appreciate they are more complicated to work at times then the trusty viewfinder. For my most recent paintings of Kedleston Hall I wanted to focus on the architecture and how light plays off the different planes of the building. I didn’t want to just draw a fancy house, I wanted to add my own creative flair and vision to what I saw.
So, I kept my colour palette simple. Like, really simple. Three colours in total to create each painting, which would keep things nice and harmonious so I could concentrate on the interesting compositions instead.

In photoshop I adjusted a reference photo to play with tonal contrast and composition, the best way I find to do this is when it’s in black and white. Then I go back to the original photo and play around with colour. This helps me visualise lots of different combinations. Doing it digitally like this is a lot faster then trying to do it with traditional mediums, plus I can tweak them cleanly. The last image above has been pixelated so its easier to focus purely on the range of colours and no the compositions details.

Once I have my colours sorted, I can then choose which colours to have in my palette. From there I do a small mock up to help me figure out the best way to apply them and to get me used to mixing the colours. Then, when I come to create the final painting, i’ve already done all my prep so a lot of the stress has been taken away and I can relax and enjoy the painting process.

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On Being scared to sketch

July 24, 2016July 24, 2016Leave a comment

I think this predicament is common and that it’s something that many professional and hobby artists deal with and that yes, it does get easier in time but not with age (as we know when watching children sketch…They’re so darn carefree!). Something I have been dealing with for a long time is why, even though I love art and get inspired by nature and constantly look at other artworks and read various art books, I don’t draw and paint half as much as I should. Why all the procrastination? Why all the anxiety and fear at the beginning? What’s the deal brain, I thought this was what you wanted to do!

Silly brain…I think it’s just overwhlemed. By inadvertantly putting pressure on what i’m about to produce, my vision and thoughts that i’m going to capture by drawing, by judging it before i’ve even made a mark….I create a dream artwork before the real artwork even has a chance to begin to create itself and it will never match up to all the half formed ideas that are in my head, merging together.

I think the best thing to do when you’re scared to even start to sketch is to stop thinking of it as a finished piece of artwork and think of it as an exploratory journey. What am I looking at? What an interesting leaf! The way there is a rhythm going through all the branches is relaxing to look at, how does it look if I try to capture it with these kind of marks. Hm, not so good, i’ll make a note of that and remember it for the next sketch I do. How big are these leaves compared to the ones in the background? How will my mark-making change? How much space do they take up compared to the foreground leaves?

Knowing different drawing techniques is still a must, but sometimes we forget that they’re just advice to help us, things people have learnt in the past through trial and error and have passed along as a good way of achieving a particular task. As an artist, you’re allowed to have your own trial and errors and to find your own way of capturing things that you’ve discovered on your own exploratory journeys. The creative jumps and experiments that you make based on your own tastes and judgements help to create new processes.

So don’t be scared to start sketching, there isn’t a need for fear or anxiety here, just curiousity and a desire for discovery. Plus, you don’t have to show anyone if you don’t want to but it can fun to chat about your discoveries and errors with other artists. Share the journey you’re both on and laugh at things that didn’t go quite right but look kinda funny now…

Walk Draw Explore

Tag: Drawing