The task for this assignment was to make two large drawings, one focusing on line, and the other focusing on tonality. Based on my experience with drawing myself and in view of a definite lack of persons whom I might ask to be my model, I thought I’d approach this task using photographs.
Basically, I wanted to overcome the limitations of drawing myself in the mirror, for example the restricted possibilities where I could draw and in what positions. With a mirror, I always had to look into the mirror and place myself to have a good view. In the earlier exercise, I felt I constantly got in my own way. I found most positions quite uncomfortable and this negatively affected my concentration.
Selecting the arrangement
I began on an evening with taking some photos in my study, using the 10-second self-shot feature of my camera. The initial idea was making a picture of myself while sitting at the drawing desk and working at the computer, which is a very typical pose for me. But arranging a nice photo in the tiny studio didn’t work out. I then made several pictures of me with my cat Gina on the sofa. I tried strong directional light, but none of the photos really pleased me nor seemed to work. The angle at which the picture was taken seemed to compresse the figure in the middle, in a similar way as some of my sitting figure drawings were distorted.
The next day, I re-approached the task. I wanted to find a meaningful motif which was worth the effort of making a larger drawing. This may actually be a shortcoming of many of my earlier drawings – they lack personal importance because I focused on task instructions, not on meaning. Of course I put much effort in finding suitable arrangements for each task, but this was rather a technical approach. Going outside this morning I thought I might draw myself taking the morning coffee on the terrace, which has become a pleasant habit. It’s already October but when the sun shines, the temperatures are mild enough to sit outside. So this was the second setting I explored and it seemed to work out.
I tried various positions, like different angles of the chair, different angles of myself on the chair, and different seating and looking positions. I experimented with zooming in and out to see how much space I wanted to give the figure, compared to the background. Every 4 or 5 pictures, I transferred them to the computer to compare and analyse what was ok and how I might improve the composition. The main problem was that I looked as if I was sitting uncomfortable, which was not the main message I wanted to convey. But it was difficult to arrange the small camera on the table and trigger the autoshot, with only 10 seconds to quickly walk over to the chair and place myself and relax to sit as comfortable as I normally would.
I also managed to throw down my coffee mug and pour some warm coffee over my leg, which caused brief irritation, some cleaning and changing clothes, before I continued without coffee mug.
When I had around 20 pictures, I felt that there were some I might use and wanted to select among these. I looked through all of them several times, then made a selection of 5 or 6 which all had something I liked, and then finally chose the one which I thought would work best for my drawing.
I found it showed enough of the figure and the placement of my arms and legs was characteristic for how I usually sit, and looked like not too much clutter. I also liked that my cat Gina was sitting behind my head, and the combination of myself looking to the side and Gina looking into the camera. It was also nice to have some blue sky in the background and the apartment buildings to give an idea of the entire setting. I preferred this to closer-up views with more zoom, where the figure was larger but looked a bit encaged and decontextualized.
Once the decision for this picture was made, I did some follow up work on the computer to produce an outprint which I could use as the basis for my drawing.
Developing the picture: Selecting a section and making the printout
First step was to define the section that I wanted to include in my drawing. I thought about just selecting “on the fly”, possibly differently for each study and thus working my way to the section that worked best. But then I preferred to cut out the outer areas which I found less interesting. I thought that this initial decision would improve the focus of the subsequent studies and the final drawing, and I could enlarge the section and thus it would be easier to work with details, if necessary. I made the section as a rectangle of 1:1.4, which corresponds to the DIN format, because I wanted to use an A2 format for the final drawing. I was aware that restricting myself to a selection and use a defined format for it might reduce my flexibility to modify the initial idea as the studies would develop. On the other hand, I felt quite sure about my decisions and thought I might give it a try and if it didn’t work, I could always go back to the original picture.
Image 1: Original picture
Image 2: My chosen section of the original image
The first printouts were of the original image and the section I had chosen. These were with default printer settings. My aim was to produce an outprint to use as the basis for my studies and the final drawing, because I did not want to have the computer screen in front of me while drawing. It may be practical and generally I prefer a paperless office, but for my artwork I try to reduce my every day reliance on the computer. Which of course doesn’t really work… where would I be with this task if I couldn’t use the computer to solve the problem of drawing myself?
The printouts had modified the colour impression and I did not like that. The sky was too intensely coloured and had a green tone, compared to the image on screen which I perceived as correct. Most tones were also too dark, which made it difficult to distinguish important elements, for example the coffee mug before my black t-tshirt, or one leg before the other.
I then tried out several variations in printer settings and the paper, and also the output size. In total, I produced 10 printouts, from which I could use one in A4 and maybe a second enlarged to A3.
Conclusions
For my purposes, I need to adapt the image and printout settings. This printout needed increased brightness, and I had to switch off any colour matching between computer and printer. Enlarging to A3 would have been desirable but the printouts didn’t work for me because of the colour mismatch at the cutting lines. My printout number 7 on white heavy paper was supposed to be the basis for the next steps in this assignment: Making preliminary studies
I’m documenting this process to make visible the amount of work behind something as simple as “using a photograph as source for a drawing”.