The first project of part 3 is concerned with landscape drawing. Now the difference to parts 1 and 2 is that it’s about drawing outdoors, which means that I’m looking for good or at least “interesting” weather conditions. I had intended to begin part 3 much earlier and benefit from nice summer weather. But part 2 took much longer than expected and so it was October when I finally started work on part 3.
Exercise 1: A sketchbook walk
Sunday 7 October 2012
The task was to go out for a walk in a familiar location, and make four sketches during that walk, using a viewfinder to focus on some point of interest like trees, a gate or a road.
I began the exercise with some preparations: Making myself a viewfinder, selecting a sketchbook which was light enough to take outside, choosing equipment which wouldn’t require me to take a bag but would fit into the pockets of my jacket. I decided to walk along my regular route through the local park and chose an A4 sketchbook, plus a 2B pencil. I also took black ball pens with me, just in case, because it creates more contrast than pencil.
Wheather conditions were not so good – a bit cold, windy and quite unstable with rain to be expected now and then. I tried to dress warm enough to be comfortable during an hour or so even when I paused for a drawing for some time.
The first drawing was a view over a lawn with some trees scattered around. I took place on a bench and experimented with the viewfinder. I realized that only a small part of what I actually saw in the scene would fit on the paper, unless I grossly distorted the proportions and distances. I did not want to draw while holding the viewfinder because I found this disturbing. So I decided to begin with a central tree and develop the drawing around this tree, and see how much of the scene fitted on the paper.
Again I felt disheartened after short time by the amount of detail that I saw and wasn’t able to capture in a naturalistic way. Instead, I scribbled “some greenery” where I saw leaves, and some quick strokes for the trees. I got quite annoyed and felt very unsatisfied and stopped soon. Upon reflection I realized that there was no real point of interest in my drawing, it was just a nice view.
I resumed my walk and reflected on the task, and became quite negative in thinking that again I was at odds with the tasks given. I knew that there are many things in this park which had already captured my interest visually, but these were rather some details on the way, like the interesting shape or bark of a single tree. I hadn’t paid too much attention on views and since the route was so familiar, I couldn’t think of anything particularly interesting along the way.
On the other hand, I could have stopped everywhere because I am able to find something visually attractive everywhere I look at. But the task was “landscape drawing”, and therefore I didn’t permit myself to get distracted. Walking and looking around, I stopped at the crossing of two paths through the wood where I liked the view in front of me.
This was the second drawing. It shows the main path leading into a lighter area, and a big stone to the right marking the crossing. I roughly sketched the trees and some of the foliage and again got quite annoyed because I felt entirely incapable of drawing them realistically. Instead, I just scribbled curly marks in different sizes where I saw different types of foliage. This time, I tried to capture some tonal values, like the darker ground next to myself in the foreground which got lighter towards the background. There were also some darker areas in the foliage of the background. I stopped drawing when the paper was full, again dissatisfied and even more at odds with what I was doing.
I continued walking and thought that the small garden house village at which I would arrive soon might be interesting to draw. While walking, I looked forth and back to check whether there was a view that I liked, and finally when I had already passed the village and was walking up some steps, the look back onto the main path through the village with the houses on both sides looked nice. This became the third drawing. I included a group of three men walking along the path. Again I wasn’t able to draw realistically, it’s just some sort of scribbling to quickly sketch how I perceived the visual patterns. This may have to do with my myopia and it may also be an effect of age-related impatience with minor detail coming in too large quantities.
Maybe it would be better if I constructed my drawings, to have a better orientation on the page. In the third drawing for example, there were several garden house roofs to the right side, but I did not get the distances and proportions right and so I couldn’t include all those which were there, and those I included are not at the correct position. All the time I felt that I didn’t like drawing, and didn’t like the linear approach of using a pencil, because I would have preferred to use colour and tone for the different areas of the image, and to create structures with an instrument like a brush.
During the walk, I was intensely reflecting about my coursework and how I could arrive at doing something I like and feel good with, rather than constantly having inner debates and not getting to grips with the task at hand. One possibility would be to double up the work – try to do the exercises as good as possible, and then do the same in my own way, departing from instructions and do things in a way which I felt good with. Another possibility would be to try to integrate “my personal way of doing things” right into the first attempts. This would save time, but I fear I’m not able to do this because I don’t have enough drawing experience and practice.
For the fourth drawing, I selected the stone bridge marking the main entrance of the park. I drew it when I was just about to leave the park. Unfortunately it began to rain so I had to finish the drawing quickly. I got a bit wet, but captured the main elements of the scene, the bridge, the trees around it and the path leading through it.
On the positive side, it was good that I went outside and actually made the drawings, despite all my objections and personal difficulties. I think it would be good if I took the time to repeat the exercise, but taking more freedom. Firstly, I wouldn’t want to be restricted to landscape, but let myself be attracted by anything that I like. Then, I wouldn’t want to be restricted to pencil or black and white or line, but would like to take more media with me and decide on the place which one to use. It is autumn now and the leaves are beginning to get coloured, and it would be a shame not to try and draw something in colour.
I also had the idea of taking a lockable jar with water with me and employ watersoluble media. Experience from the watercolour course has shown that the water gets dirty quickly when several colours are involved, and this wouldn’t be very practical when I’m outside. But I thought that I could restrict watersoluble media to one or two darker colours and focus on tone and texture, then the “dirty” water would represent less of a problem.
The instructions for this exercise were to include notes “where appropriate” on all sorts of different aspects of the drawing, like time of day and weather conditions, the main point of interest, the division of space into foreground, middle ground and background, but I didn’t do that because I didn’t want to write across my drawings. They are precious to me even if they are very humble beginnings. I also found it a bit difficult to focus on so much at the same time, it would actually amount to writing a mini-essay on each of the drawings.
I had printed out the instructions and taken them with me. Maybe I will get back on these aspects when I repeat the task, they are certainly worth reflecting about. But this time I was already overwhelmed by the difficulty and complexity of the drawing task.
Tuesday 9 October: Another sketchbook walk
I did another sketchbook walk. Initially I hesitated whether I could afford the time to do an exercise twice, but then I thought that I was so dissatisfied with the first attempt that it would be well invested time to give it another try.
This time, I improved my equipment: a warmer Jacket and softer pencils. I took a different walk from the first one, which is a route I take rarely and this made it more interesting for me. It passes along a little lake which I thought would be nice to draw. I was a bit unfortunate because the late afternoon sun blended so that I had to take another view for the first drawing. Later when the sun had vanished, I drew the lake but I was already exhausted and felt pressurized by the reduction of available light, so this second and the next two drawings were unsatisfying like those from the first walk.
The first drawing depicts an open space next to the lake, with a view into some trees. I like this drawing, maybe because I just took some more time for details and patterns. The second drawing is a view on the lake, depicting the flat water surfaces and a tree close by to the right and some trees further away at the opposite side of the lake.
The third and fourth drawing were on the way back home. It had been late afternoon and daylight was disappearing quickly, so I tried to draw quickly before it would get too dark. Drawing three was the pathway with some trees in the background, and drawing four a view along the pathway with trees on both sides.
My conclusion from this sketchbook walk is that I need to take time to produce something which I like. This means time not in terms of a certain number of minutes, but in terms of taking the time it needs for the drawing, rather than trying to produce a quick hasty sketch. Maybe the hasty sketches will work for townscapes, or maybe they work if the tempo comes natural, but for now I think it would be better to take all the time I need for my quasi first attempts at landscape drawing.
I also thought that my approach might work well with oil pastels, because they’d permit to quickly cover an area with a colour or tone. So overall I liked this second sketchbook walk much better than the first, and especially with the first drawing I had the feeling to have learnt something. With the remaining three, I’m a bit skeptical. They were drawn very quickly and I attempted to capture the structure of the scene and some tonal values. But the results are not very recognizable.
I’m not sure how to proceed. A third sketchbook walk would certainly do me good, especially if I reformulate the task a bit to suit me better. Maybe for me instructions should have read: Take a day off when the weather is good and make a nice walk through a park. Make 4 drawings in pencil or some other medium and take the time you need.
I just wonder whether instructions deliberately talk about ‘sketches’ and not ‘drawings’. Also, the instructions are to take notes about various aspects of the scene, as if the task were not to focus on the drawing but on analytical observation. But would I learn to draw by just analysing and observing instead of trying to depict the aspects in question?