My journey through the drawing course at the Open College of the Arts

It took me hours of thinking which objects I might choose for this task. I had ideas but found none of them really adequate:
–    drawing the two scratching trees of my cats: they had rough and varied textures, but they are so tall that they wouldn’t give me “an arrangement of objects”. Instead, I’d be drawing a part of my room, an interior scene.
–    I did not want to draw again the objects from the first exercise, but wanted to try out different objects. Unfortunately I seem to have already collected all the interesting objects for that task, there’s hardly anything left with a texture that would interest me!
–    I considered fruit, but apart from the kiwis I bought yesterday, I had only fruit with very smooth surfaces which wouldn’t be interesting for this study.
–    I thought about drawing some dried sunflowers which I had grown on my balkony last summer and had kept them after they had dried out in their pots. These were really interesting textures, very varied in character, and many of them on a single object. The only problem was that I understood the task to select several different objects to bring variety into the drawing, not using more exemplars of the same type. Hmmm.

After feeling entirely blocked and having made several rounds through my appartment, the weather being too cold and unfriendly to look outside for more interesting objects, I remembered a statement made by Robert Kaupelis in his book “Experimental Drawing” which I have just begun to read. It is about “divergent artist behaviour”:

“In my own classes a few students become quite upset in the beginning when, after having presented a problem to the class, I select examples of their work which has taken wide liberties – have deviated in significant ways from the problem – to discuss and often to praise! The suggested problems and processes are simply means to get you thinking and working; they’re a hook to hang your “creative coat” on and it’s not really crucial if the coat is hung on the hook next to it, across the room, or even next door.” (p. 15)

Believing in this freedom to hang my coat onto the hook across the room, I selected the sunflowers for this drawing. My interest is in studying the variety of textures on these objects. Maybe I won’t even do a still life but draw just sections to get a feeling for the forms and lines. And I think I will not start with free experimenting, but with a restriction to dip pen and line, as in the previous exercise. For now, I don’t feel confident enough to apply experimental techniques to a complex object.

For me the dried sunflowers are a very complicated object, I’m almost a bit scared, but they meet a crucial criterion: I find them interesting to draw, and I have a sense of beauty when I look at them.

Page 1: the sunflower

Here I used line to depict the natural textures of the dried sunflower. I like the drawing a lot. I finished it with a real sense of accomplishment, in contrast to earlier drawings. I didn’t want to risk spoiling the drawing by doing more on the sunflowers on the same page, so I just left it at that.

Page 2: study of peanuts, walnut and kiwi

I still felt not ready to approach a still life with textured objects, so did another preparatory study with natural objects and using line to depict the textures. The peanuts were horribly difficult, and I constantly had to smile about the double meaning of ‘peanuts’. These peanuts were not at all peanuts to me… I did five single peanuts and simply saw no improvements. I drew a group of three peanuts next to each other, no improvement. I simply wasn’t able to adequately draw the structure.

I think the reason for this problem was that the peanuts have an almost geometrical texture with a high grid and tiny holes in it. In colour, I would have drawn light lines to depict the grid, and then would have added some shading to indicate the holes. This did not at all work with the medium dip pen. I drew black lines to indicate the grid, and tried to delineate the tiny holes, but I didn’t achieve three-dimensionality. The technique might have worked better using light crayon on dark paper.

By contrast, my technique worked much better with the walnut and the kiwi. With the first walnut, I used lines to characterize the texture and then added shady areas with cross-hatching, but again I found this destroyed the drawing a bit. I deliberately left the second walnut without hatching and I like the result better, even if the distribution of light and dark doesn’t follow the lighter and darker areas of the object.

The kiwi was a pleasure to draw, I simply loved this “hairy” object and how I could use curly lines to draw the texture. Even the shade had a curly outline…

Some reflections.

I drew both studies in the A3 sketchbook on rather light paper. Again I had problems with the technique – really difficult to know how deep I must hold the pen into the ink bottle, because I couldn’t see the ink surface, it’s was black. This resulted in some irritation and sometimes too much, at other times not enough ink. Also, after a while paper fibers stuck to the nib and spoiled the fine line. I will try to improve the light situation and take care to regularly wash out the nib, hopefully these problems will alleviate then.

I took away from the drawings that dip pen is not the best tool for all things. Maybe I’ll try the same objects with more experimental techniques next to see where this gets me. Then hopefully I’ve gained enough confidence to do a still life with textured objects.

Page 3: Study of a vase (Charcoal)

With the newly arisen interest in objects with textured surfaces, I bought a small ceramic vase which was on sale, because I thought it would be nice for drawing… The first drawing was a study in charcoal. I thought that I could make use of both the rather rough marks and the ease with which very smooth areas can be created.

I began with a light outline of my arrangement – just the vase on a table – and then tried to capture the texture of the vase with charcoal strokes. The background was simply dark and the table was simply white, with a cast shadow and some reflected light. At one stage of the drawing, I was at a similar point where I was with the charcoal study of a mug: A tonal study with exaggerated contrasts. I wasn’t satisfied and made a break.

Then I had a majour point of insight regarding the background: Rather than exaggerating the contrast around the vase, I needed to even out the background and give it its own life, with some darker and some lighter areas. This was a huge step forward and it immediately improved the whole drawing. I think this was the big achievement of the day and will probably be influential for any subsequent drawing I make.

I also reworked the table, by giving it a light grey tone rather than having paper white, and made the cast shadow much lighter and more even, with less contrast at the contours. I used a brush to work a bit over the marks of the vase’s texture. It’s a very simple drawing, but I’m satisfied with it.

Page 4: Further studying the texture of the vase

I wanted to do some more work on the texture of the vase. Firstly, I did two frottages on small pieces of paper left over from the earlier experiments, using graphite stick and pressed charcoal. I did not find them very convincing nor interesting, so I left it at that. What I had liked about the vases texture was a kind of zigzag relief with rough borders, but this wasn’t really captured in the frottage.

I thought that the vase’s somwhat jagged texture might work well with dip pen and the technique of gnarly lines which I had employed for the sunflower. I drew a first version of the vase in this style and used hatching to indicate shaded areas and the cast shadow. Again the straight hatching lines seemed to destroy the otherwise delicate texture of the lines on the vase. I think I will rather avoid hatching in this context in the future.

Thinking about the zigzag properties of the texture, I discovered the similarity to the peanuts, where lighter, higher structures were contrasted by darker, deeper areas. A drawing might work better if done on coloured paper, using white colour to work out hightlights. I also had the idea of combining a grayscale medium like charcoal with a linear medium like dip pen, to combine shading and accentuated raggedness of the texture.

So the second drawing was done with dip pen and gnarly lines, and then using graphite stick to indicate the darker background, the cast shade and the darker tones on the vase. I also used rubber to create the lighter elements of the texture. The drawing is not technically exact, but it contains those elements that I found relevant.

Some more reflections

I had thought about textured objects and what I could select for a still life arrangement, and found that the vase and the dried sunflower might be nice together. So I realized that I had been doing preparatory studies which would help me in the final drawing. I decided on three elements for the drawing: The vase, two dried sunflowers, and the braided table mat. These I would put on the white table against the darker study room background, but with the intention of blurring any defined background elements to retain only darkness and maybe some of its colour values.

Since the objects were all in earth tones, I wanted to draw on brown paper which I thought would combine nicely. I began trying out arrangements and found a very nice one, which combined lighting from a lamp with remaining daylight. There was a beautiful light contour on the vase, but … I didn’t draw right away because I had to do something else, and unfortunately I did not take a photo. When I came back later, the light situation had changed and I had accidentally changed the position of the lamp, the vase and my work chair. I tried to reproduce it, but it didn’t work out. Missed opportunity!

But I think I will get back to the idea. I would like to combine dip pen and ink with pastels in different brown tones. My landscape colour selection of Conté crayons which I did not find appropriate for the supermarket shop drawing seemed to be well suited for this arrangement.

The drawing

I had decided on the textured vase, two dried sunflowers and the braided table mat. It still took me almost three hours to decide on the final arrangement: The positioning of the two sunflowers in the vase, the angles of the table and the table mat, the background, the lighting, and my own position relative to the drawing. The main problems were

– to have a full view on one of the sunflowers and an interesting side or rear view onto the other
– to have the table mat in an angle that brought out it’s braided texture
– and to have the lighting create clear contours and light up the surfaces so that I could continue the drawing after the daylight had vanished.

I approached the drawing in several stages: First an outline sketch in pencil to give me some orientation on the page, then I used dip pen and ink to make a line drawing. I had chosen brown, rather rough paper which would be fine for pastels. For the dip pen, I therefore chose a different nib, one which was broader and a bit stronger than the one I had used for the texture experiments on smooth paper. Drawing with dip pen on the sheet attached to the easel wasn’t that simple, and I produced several ink stains. They are not really integrated in the final drawing, but I appreciate them as “beauty marks”, little errors that increase authenticity… I learned for future drawings that I could avoid these stains by always stroking the nib against the ink bottle, to get rid of too much ink.

I drew the table mat in a second step and made a pencil construction drawing first, onto which I added a characteristic line pattern with ink. Earlier experiments had shown me that I would have difficulties to draw the braided pattern, but with the pencil construction, this went fairly well.

The next step was to add colour. I began with Conté crayons, but was soon dissatisfied with the ‘landscape’ colour selection and added colours from a box of soft study pastels. Getting the colours right was difficult. I worked up the colours in several layers, using soft tissue, Q-Tips and brushes to blend colours. I’m not entirely satisfied with the result, but for now I can’t do any better.

I would have thought that the black ink lines would come out stronger, but they tended to grey out from the layers of pastel that I applied. I think this works quite well for the table mat structure, but less for the sunflowers. I also feel that I tend to stylize when drawing, maybe more than is good for a drawing. I may rework the drawing at a later time and try to improve it, but for now, I’ll make a pause and let it rest. This is the ‘for now final’ version. Compared to the last working version, I added the tiny shadow to the left of the vase, and it has darkened a bit from spray fixation.

Despite all the imperfections, I have a sense of achievement from this drawing. I developed a simple composition and based the drawing on earlier studies. This type of working process is new to me – all my earlier works were spontaneous and borne out of the moment. It is also the first drawing where I gave deliberate attention to textures. Overall, it feels like a good step into a new direction.

References
Kaupelis, R. (1980) Experimental Drawing, Watson-Guptill Publications, New York

Part 1: drawing textures

The first part of the task was to select a range of objects with interesting surface textures, and to draw the textures in an experimental way, using pencil or pen, in a series of 5 cm squares in the sketchbook. Then as a second part, we were to experiment with the technique of frottage.

Page 1: creating textures using line – dip pen and ink

I chose an A3 white paper sketchbook and dip pen with black ink for this task. Overall, I found it very laborious and had many difficulties with the dip pen: the nib was very scratchy, I had problems taking up the right amount of ink, and difficulties to find a fixed position for the nib where it wouldn’t waggle. Not sure if these were beginner’s problems or whether dip pen isn’t the best tool for the task.

I tried to select objects with a rough texture, with not only visible texture but one that would also be rough to touch. I chose some made and some natural objects. Both presented their unique challenges.

Made objects
–    a bamboo basket: very difficult to depict the structure using line. I wasn’t able to focus my eyes on details and struggled to depict the apparently simple pattern. It would have been much easier to draw the basic lines with pencil first and then the pattern of directional, interrupted visible lines in ink. Alternatively, I would have preferred to use a tonal medium like charcoal to set the base tone and then work out light areas and dark lines.
–    various textiles. I found the textile surfaces less difficult overall, maybe because the textures were less rigidly structured and allowed for a more impressionistic style. My approach was to try and draw short, whiggly or curvy lines that corresponded to the character of the cloth.
–    rough sandpaper versus towel: I think these look too similar, or the towel would appear to be very rough indeed! The sand paper lines were very edgy with many little spikes, and I wasn’t able to control my hand’s movement well enough to make distinctly softer curls for the towel. Maybe I moved the hand too fast, or it may have been an error in my visual analysis of the texture
–    a braided table mat: I found this quite successful, because it depicts the basic structure with very few lines.

Natural objects
–    two stones. I placed the light source from right above, which helped to bring out the structure by casting dark shades. I discovered that I could create lighter and darker areas by making the texture more or less dense. I had known this theoretically, but here it developed quite naturally out of the task itself.
–    a natural sponge. I found this very difficult, because the lines were so delicate and low in contrasts that they could hardly be seen. Again, I had difficulties with eyesight. It might get better if I use reading glasses (need to buy some, shouldn’t defer this any longer).
–    shell and starfish: very difficult too. I find my lines not delicate enough to capture the fine texture of both objects. Again I had the feeling of not using the best medium for the task.
–    a cork top and a very old lemon: Here the fine lines worked quite well. I managed to not make the lemon too dark, and made only few marks which I found characteristic. Not sure whether the cork is recognizable, though.

For the future I see two areas where I need more practice: Firstly, more work with dip pen and ink to develop my abilities, and secondly, trying to depict structures with a different medium – one that permits shadings.

I’m not sure whether the focus of this exercise was on depicting textures using line, or whether the idea was to depict them using whatever experimental techniques gives interesting results. I wasn’t overly comfortable with the idea of experimenting with ink blots and smudging, as suggested by the instructions, but maybe this is the way to go here.

Due to the many technical problems I had with the dip pen, especially the waggling and scratching nib, I did some research on the internet. I have now understood my error. I did not know that the nib must not be between the metal nibs at the inside of the holder, instead it is supposed to fit between the metal nibs and the rim of the holder. I tried it the correct way and it fitted perfectly! Looking forward to no more waggling nib.

Page 2: creating textures – experimenting with ink

I liked the first page I created, but felt that I hadn’t been very experimental, and that there would be an interest in exploring more unusual ways of mark making with ink. I decided to make another series of squares on the same textured objects, but with different instruments. I remembered the early mark making exercise where I explored a variety of unusual tools and wanted to build on experiences I made there.

I chose wooden stick, toothstick and matchsticks as tools and also set aside a white household tea candle. I had the idea of using the water-repellent effects of wax to create new textures. I worked on one object after the other and tried to depict the texture in a more improvisational style. The mark-making was less controlled than with the fine nib of the dip pen. I used the wooden instruments in various ways, for example I applied the fine tip for fine lines and dots, or the side of the tip for broader marks. I also fringed a tip and created irregularly shaped marks, then smudged the ink with wax, tissue or another wooden stick.

For some of the made objects, I did a pencil construction of structural lines which was very helpful. Especially the texture of the bamboo basket which I found totally unsuccessful on the first page was much better now. There was a difference in approach between the first page and this one. On the first page, I had tried to recreate the texture I saw with lines that had similar characteristics. On the second page, I was more concerned with the overall impression of the texture and how I could mimick this in a more global, impressionist way which was not restricted to line. I also created dots and stains, smudges and also used some white gouache to bring out structures. Working with wax resulted in tonal shadings and other unexpected effects.

I enjoyed both approaches. The first was a good learning experience because the restriction to a single technique helped to develop its variety, for example by changing the nature of one’s movements or the proportion of darker versus lighter areas. The second approach was liberating. I think the resulting textures are more varied overall as a result of the greater variation in media. I imagine that a drawing using the first approach would appear more coherent and consistent in style, while the second would appear much more expressive and uncontrolled.

Part 2: Experimenting with frottage

I was glad that there were so few directions other than “Experiment !” and a basic explanation of the frottage technique: Place paper on a texture and rub with crayon or pencil to create an impression of the texture.

I had some prior experience with frottage from a beginner’s drawing course which is offered online at Tate Gallery, London. I was sensitized to the importance of paper thickness and the relative softness of the drawing instrument, although I had not yet developed firm knowledge of what works best for what type of object. But my earlier tries had taught me that too heavy paper would not let through fine textures, so the first choice was to select rather light paper –lighter than the sketching paper I have available.

I chose a simple office notepad with white paper of 60 or 70g, and also dressmaker’s tissue paper which is semi-transparent and extremely light. I wanted to try frottage on a series of objects with different papers and drawing instruments. Since I did not like cut edges, I did not cut but tore the paper sheets into rectangles of about 10×10 cm.

Overall I did 32 frottages on a selection of the objects I had already used for part 1. Afterwards I glued them onto 3 pages in my A3 sketchbook. For the first frottage series I chose
–    the tatami pillow, made of woven marsh grass
–    the braided table mat
–    the sisal scratch board for cats
–    the woven table cloth

With these, I tried out both paper types and used 3B pencil, 2B graphite stick and black conté crayon stick. Conté frottages were much darker than their pencil and graphite counterparts. I had expected that the tissue paper would have given a clearer impression of the textures, but actually it was difficult to see any systematic differences between the two paper types, they worked equally well.

Then I wanted to do some more frottages with the other objects of part 1. Since I saw not much difference between paper types, I decided to focus on the light office paper as it was easier to handle (did not roll up after frottage). For this series, I concentrated on 3B pencil as it appeared dark enough for interesting contrasts and it didn’t smudge as easily as conté. The remaining objects were two stones, a coral, very rough sandpaper, a shell, a starfish, and a bamboo leaf, among others.

The difference between the two paper types became relevant again, because the tissue paper permitted wrapping around an object more easily, for example with the shell or the starfish. On the other hand, with some textures it was difficult not to make holes with the pencil accidentally, for example with the bamboo basket or the cork top, even with the more resistant office paper.

Some reflections on frottage

What I liked a lot about this technique was the ease with which it permitted to create a naturally asymmetric and authentic texture which was very close to the visual impression of the object’s surface. A limitation is that it needs a physical roughness of the surface – it doesn’t work on smooth textures like wood grain. Another limitation is that it requires the drawing material to be placed on top of the surface, so the technique doesn’t lend itself for use with drawings in a sketchbook. It would also be difficult to apply to the texture of a crocodile or other reptile…

My main objection against the technique is that it will not work very well with typical quality drawing paper which I’d choose for final works (as opposed to studies). But I nevertheless find frottage very helpful and inspiring as a technique to increase sensitivity for the specific texture of objects. One task in the Tate Gallery drawing course had been to use frottage as a basis and then try to draw the frottage structure using traditional (or more experimental) drawing techniques. This is something I can imagine to explore further in the future. A nice variation of the technique might be to use dark paper with white pencil, or variations in colour.

References

Tate Gallery Drawing Course: Introduction to drawing techniques
http://www3.tate.org.uk/learnonline/onlinecourses/