Developmental Drawings

Week 2 at Art School - p.2

Today was our second drawing session. I haven't got a brief for this so I'm going to try and explain it as I go along. Firstly the media - we were given black waterproof indian ink, and some pointy sticks to dip and draw with. I actually found this very difficult and struggled with the stick for quite a while before I began to get to grips with how to make marks without the stick dripping ink all over the place. So I appologise beforehand as I'm not very happy with the results (although both the tutor and Sunshine were!). Here's the final result anyways so you don't have to scroll all the way down to the end of the entry to see it:
Right, Chris, the tutor, came in with two sets of printed sheets with about 8 black and white pictures each (one sheet was horizontal pictures, the other vertical). We had to pick two of the pictures and draw them (either the whole picture or some part of it). I felt uninspired by any of the pictures, so picked the LEAST-inspiring ones (I'm such a sucker for punishment - and a challenge!). Here are my first two drawings (1st and 2nd above):



The the idea is to evolve from each of those to two new pictures. You were free to choose what inspired you - the actual subjects, the style of marks, whatever. I found that with the first picture I really liked the stripy bits on the hills, so worked mainly on that; and from the second picture I liked the effect of the shadows on the wall and how they look different when they interacted with different bits of wall, so I expanded on that. Here now are the 3rd (based on the 1st) and 4th (based on the 2nd) drawings:



Finally, the idea was to start integrating the two images - I only managed to do one drawing by the end of the day, which was mostly like my landscape one, with abit of the shadows one influencing it. If you look carefully you can make out some shadow shapes at the bottom of the hills. So here is the 5th integrated drawing:


Eventually I'd like to do a few more drawings with different levels of integration (the tutor said we could do as many intermediate drawings as we wanted). I was one of the few that actually got to picture 5. Most people spent a lot of time on the first two drawings - which is great because that gave them lots of material from which to expand into their next set of pictures. I probably spent the least amount of time on pictures 1 and 2 and the most amount of time on picture 5. The other thing I noticed was that several people had opted to zoom into bits of their drawings to get the next drawing. I quite liked that idea and may give it a go - will of course post my experimentation here.

Note:
I asked Chris what the purpose of the exercise was, and according to him it was
1) To get the students to try new tools for mark making (he knew most people hadn't tried using a stick before),
2) To get the students to discover new types of mark making - lines, dots, cross hatching, and variations on those and others, and
3) To get used to the idea of expanding our work. ie To not just do a picture of something and finish there, but to try and use that drawing to bring on further ideas and projects.

Project extension - to make another drawing based on these and try and make somekind of 3D thing with it - for example get the drawings on the sides of a box, or the drawing folded up in a fan shape so it would stand upright.