In the business of daily life and dealing with its’ never ending surprises! I forgot to write more about my attempts in drawing and how the workshop ended. Seemed less important at the time but today I came across one of my life drawing sketches and it felt so alien. I feel I’ve been just rushing through my life in the last few years trying to find some stability, I have missed on so many other things, and when you discover that stability is just a mirage, things come in focus; You must either choose to make peace with the chaos and continue or, well give up! Nevertheless, even giving up is a choice. Life is such a bizarre experience, there are really no words to describe it.
The last day of the workshop, everyone was gathering their drawings to take with them, I didn’t see the point. I wasn’t impressed with my body of the work, and those I thought I was able to capture something interesting were recorded on my digital companion, so I threw them all in the rubbish bin. Just before leaving and to my surprise, someone asked if she could have one of my drawings, I had to go back and take everything out of the rubbish bin and find it for her, it felt strange, as if I was going through the days of my life that I had no care for, to find something that someone else thought it meant something, did it?
Charcoal is such an amazing medium! Sure it has its limitations but the fluidity it provides just makes the drawing very relax and loose. Last couple of session I’ve been doing life drawing; very difficult but quiet an amazing study of the body. I still find it difficult to get proportion right, but there’s something developing in me which I like, I know I have the potential do it now, could take a while or a more than a few attempts, but I can feel it’s getting better.
Using the negative space to define the shape is still seems to be a very effective method, letting the shape emerge and then redefine and redefine it, the result is always interesting even when not very accurate, makes it looks very believable.
Understanding the relationship between the objects is not as easy as you would think! To be able to accurately estimate their size and distance form each other and reflect that in your drawing, takes a lot of practise. What I’ve learned from these two classes is you need to continually improve and correct your work, erase it, and redo it, as many times as it takes to get it right.
An interesting thing I noticed while drawing an object was the shape around them; the negative space. We had a very interesting training with the focus on those shapes and trying to isolate the objects using the space in between them and what I got in result was a much more accurate representation of those objects and their relationships.
When drawing something you need to look at all the cues available, and keeping your eyes on what you are drawing not the paper, constantly revisit your work and correct your mistakes. Now I know why sometimes you see a trace of a blur colour when looking at some drawings, blue is used for the initial sketch and then warmer colours define the stronger lines and form the final drawing.. It really is a process.
Although I’m very interested in drawing, despite my nonexistence skills, I’ve never made any serious attempt in learning, not sure why!
Today, that changed as I’ve joined a workshop in Kingston University (Knights Park Campus) where I did my bachelor a few years ago. The name of the course is “You Can Draw”. It’s fairly a small group; people with different range of skills, and we have a very good tutor.
First lesson was just a loose drawing of the view from the window using charcoal, trying to understand the perspective. I enjoyed it very much and the 3 hours flew by! The next 5 lessons are going to be a mixture of different forms of drawing which I’m looking forward to very much!
I don’t think this workshop can actually teach me how to draw, 6 weeks doesn’t seem long enough to make an artist out of you! But I hope it will train my eyes to see better and understand the relationship between the objects so I can practice on my own, and it gives me the chance to try different materials for drawing… and of course, the joy of drawing!
My first attempt
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