This week I’ve been focussing on my drawing skills and working on adding drawing into my current process; creating a sense of depth within my sketches is something that I have been specifically focussing on. I have been slowing down and taking more pride in any preparatory sketches or drawings I create. They are just as important, if not maybe a little more important, than the overall completed painting. My sketches enable me to explore prior to the commitment of paint to canvas and develop my ideas and compositions in a controlled and evaluated manner. Below are 4 images of sketches taken from my sketchbook, read from left to right they show the order in which they were made.
This exercise of developing the composition in steps, being decisive and exploring, has been very useful to me in terms of my process. I think it is definitely an exercise I will revisit again. I began with a rough sketch of a specific location from memory and then developed, abstracted and pushed it further away from the original until I was happy with the outcome. Using different grades of pencils, I was able to create some illusion of depth, foreground and background.
But now comes the tricky bit. Translating this into a painting. Below is my latest painting, influenced from the bottom right sketch, this painting is still in the very early stages of development but I’m going to continue to refer back to this sketch as I go. Either keeping parts of it or chopping certain sections that might not translate as well into paint.
A short post this week, but a post! I’ve managed to post 3 weeks in row now and I’m not only proud of myself but I am actually finding the whole process of writing down my accomplishments, thoughts, ideas and questions related to my art practice useful and eye opening.
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