Weeks 1 and 2

Of all the work in my sketchbook from over the summer, some of the most successful was drawings, gouache and watercolour paintings I did of cacti and succulents on my bedroom windowsill. They weren’t the most exciting of subject matter, but I enjoyed representing them in a more detailed and illustrative way, and I think my enjoyment came across in the outcome of my drawing. Compared to the rest of my sketchbook, which was filled with larger, more abstract and blocky designs, the two pages filled with windowsill plant drawings were more labour-intensive and intricate.

Illustrative drawings from the summer.

Although I am naturally more drawn to bold shapes, when it comes to my own making process, I enjoy doing things which might take a long time, but can give a really striking overall effect. This is one reason why I enjoyed the exhibition of work by Waqas Khan, an artist who focuses on fine line drawing, so much. Working in fine liner and also paper cutting are some of my favourite techniques for drawing development.

With this in mind, I began my work at the start of term by expanding on my illustrative drawing work. One thing which came up in my first one-to-one tutorial was that all my drawings were of a very similar scale. To challenge my drawing, I started working on A2 sheets, rather than in a sketchbook. I do generally find that I prefer to work on sheets. Starting off in sketchbook to gather ideas is fine, but very soon into a project I find that I want to work more freely and sheets help me to be more experimental and bolder. I also find that it is easier to see the development of my work when they are all laid out, rather than having to turn the pages of a sketchbook.

The first thing I did therefore, was to take the illustrations and motifs from my sketchbook and rework them on A2, including more detail, focusing on filling one sheet with just one motif, and making the drawings much bigger. I enjoyed doing this, but I found it took way too long, and this was decreasing my motivation to be more experimental, because I felt I had to dedicate all my time to finishing pages of line drawings. Whilst the overall effects were certainly striking, I also didn’t feel like they worked very well compositionally.

taking the motifs from my sketchbook and re-working the scale.

To overcome this, I tried scanning in the drawings, changing the size to add more variation and focus even more closely on specific details. Then, I cut out the shapes and motifs and tried re-arranging them to create new compositions. I found it hard to make these work – I wasn’t sure if it was because of the drawings themselves, the mismatch of scales, the colours, or something else, but I knew that I didn’t really like the way the images were working together.

chaning the scale and cutting out the motifs to rearrange.

I decided to change technique altogether to stimulate something new. Instead of cutting out the drawings to arrange on a blank sheet of paper, I made a grid of masking tape on a new A2 sheet and re-drew some of the motifs I’d been working on within the tape boundaries. Then, when I removed the tape there was an interesting set of lines running all over the page. This introduced a sense of structure and separation between the images which I much preferred to the layered effect which came from cutting up and collaging (although I do really like collage).

using tape to introduce lines.

I got some really good feedback from this work in the tutorial session, which spurred ideas including looking at maps, aerial views of mazes, and cutting out grids to layer on-top of sheets of motifs. Ideas about changing the shape and width of lines were also helpful.

I found it hard to get going with my project over the last two weeks. Despite being really inspired by my summer drawing work, I quickly felt like I had reached a dead-end and wasn’t producing anything I wanted to develop further. However, I think the most important thing I’ve realised over the last fortnight is that it can be important to explore an idea, even if you end up reaching a dead-end, because you then begin to retrace your ideas and go off in other directions which might be more fruitful. I feel like this is what has happened with my work, and this has been a valuable lesson to learn. I also want to be a lot more experimental in the coming works, and bring in more personality to my work by using maps from my home in the Lake District to explore new line patterns.