Wed 13.03.2013

Drawing Workshop

Today I attended a drawing workshop held at Woodlane by the BA Drawing tutor. The workshop focused on drawing your own personal inner landscape of the mind and this process had several stages. I decided to use some of my project time to take part in the workshop because the theme sounded interesting and I am always looking for new ways to expand / improve my drawing skills as in the past I have felt that I am not very good at drawing - particularly not in any way which challenges the set approach which I had become accustomed to. Also, when I was discussing my project and the results / issued raised in my tutorial with another student - he suggested that I take the idea of depicting different cultures and move this onto a closer or move personal level by addressing my own culture or the distinct culture here in Falmouth.

Japanse Scroll Painting



Paul Noble

    For this drawing we were working on A1 paper. Phil began by getting us to draw a grid across our page which was made up of diagonals in one direction and then the opposite to create a set of diamond shapes. He told us a little about how drawing using this isometric grid was different from drawing in normal perspective with large objects getting smaller with distance and converging towards a common vanishing point. We learnt that with this method of drawing all the objects stayed the same size regardless of their position from the eye, and that this approach is often used by architects who need to use the same scale of dimensions for lots of different buildings in a variety of positions. It is was also used by Japanese scroll artists who had less freedom in the way they drew because of the materials that they were using.

Paul Noble

     Phil also mentioned a couple contemporary artists who used this method of drawing - such as Paul Noble and David Hockney and after the workshop I did some research into these artists. I like the way that in the drawings opposite by Paul Noble the entire page is filled with dense imagery and all the elements relate and flow on from eachother. The flatness of the image achieved by this kind of perspective also lends it the look of a print or pattern design. His work lacks the use of colour and so is probably not relevant to the next stages of my project, but I have found it useful during this drawing and research stage.
      We were also shown some examples of the BA Drawing students collaboartive isometric drawings. One was a large scale plan of the studio space - but the one that really attracted me was a collection of imaginary architectural elements which together created almost a fantasy city scape on the page. Phil explained that by using the grid and exagerating the vertical elements of things the drawings were given a real sense of shape and depth.

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   After we had drawn the grid we were told to draw ten ellipses and ten crosses randomly across the page in various sizes but always within a group of cells. We then had to draw a dotted path linking up all the shapes alternately
• Where we had drawn these shapes we then had to drawn positive things about our lives where the ellipses were and negative things on the crosses. We were told that these could be meaningful or trivial, literal or symbolic.
• We then had to draw some form of enclosure around the negative things - such as fences, walls, trenches etc.
• Conversely the next step was to draw more elaborate paths between the positive elements, ignoring the negative ones
• We then had to enhance the positive features with traditional decorative elements such as embellishment with foliage, florals, trees, architectural forms etc.
• Lastly we added random objects and debris to any of the remaining spaces within the drawing.

I really enjoyed this workshop and spending a whole day drawing from the imagination was challenging but fun. It was interesting to see how everyone's drawings turned out and the approaches that different people took. Jess's finished drawing was reminiscent of the Gestalt drawings that we did early on in the course and had lots of overdrawing, rubbing out and dark tones. Zoe's was intersting becuase it took on a more symbolic and allegorical nature.
     I think that I encountered some of the problems which I useally find drawing a drawing task - I was reluctant to use dark heavy materials (such as the 6B graphite sticks that it was suggested that we use) and it also took me a long time to complete each stage of the task so that I became behind in the steps. However instead of panicking and rushing I decided to work at my own pace so that although my drawing was not finished by the end of the day it was something which I was happy with. My drawing had an illustrative quality which I think was a result of having to draw from the imagination rather from observation. I liked how as the drawing progressed it became  morew developed, busy and overlapping and some of the tasks meant that I could link different elements together to create a sense of asthetic flow or even of narrative. I also liked how the finished product was meaningful and personal to me. I think that I could have improved the overall effect by using the grid more to instead of just drawing on top of it in the way I would usually use a blank page.
     I would like to aim to fill the A1 page entirely at some point and also to attempt a more architectural isometric drawing, using the techniques and ideas which we saw in the degree student work. Phil said that  a general lesson we could all take from the day was that drawings take hours and hours of development and change - adding or substracting things, re-evaluating and persevering.