Drawing Colour, Shadows and Struggles
My week began drawing in Wilmington Square, a short walk from Angel Station and we had the option to either stay put or explore the surrounding area. I set off to see what the streets had to offer but found it extremely difficult to find something I wanted to draw. I’ll be honest and say that drawing from the city is something I find uncomfortable and challenging as I don’t really have a natural interest in capturing streets, architecture or the public inhabiting them. I ended up back where I started, and began the morning with some terrible pencil sketches:
In the latter half of the morning session, I told tutor Andrea Mclean of my struggles and she offered me some great advice on how to move forward:
Looking at the smaller works in my gouache sketchbook, she noticed that my windows and doorways were free of any obstruction. They were clear passageways into invented worlds.
The drawings I completed above were being obstructed by trees or foliage. The shapes or “portals” I had drawn had some form of barrier in front of them.
This may have contributed to my lousy morning, so for the afternoon I thought about how I might utilize gouache and steer away from a direct-observational approach.
“Be aware of what’s outside your vision. The world is not just what is in front of you, the world is also around you.” - A quote in class, forgot who it was from.
The afternoon was a stark contrast to my morning defeat, and I completed two gouache paintings in my sketchbook. The trees that had been obstructing my view (and apparently my imagination too) had been pushed to the side. This allowed me to open up a passageway into an alternate reality inspired by what I could see in front of me.
Where the Light is Brightest, the Shadows are Deepest
- Goethe
In this weeks Enduring Images class, we looked at the history of the shadow in art and the different ways artists have addressed the theme. Whether looking at the shadow as a representation of the soul, or watching Peter Pan brawl with his own shadow I was excited for a day of gloom and mystery. For the morning, we had an excellent setup to work from; a large sheet hung diagonally across the room and bright lamps cast dramatic, dynamic shadows for us to work from. As I usually do, I began the day with pencil and completed some tonal studies:
As I completed my tonal studies, I was itching to move onto colour and this week my set of references included the painters Howard Hodgekin and Richard Diebenkorn. Below is a gouache painting that seemed to work, but I would say that it was simply the result of a fantastic scene to work from.
For the afternoon, the setup was changed to a more horizontal layout, more inline with the room with much softer lighting. The softer lighting eliminated the dramatic shadows, and the new positioning of the drapery made it difficult for me to find a good composition. Due to this, I ended up working even smaller to try and experiment and attempt to find something that would make an interesting painting.
You can see from this piece that I was struggling not only with composition, but also with colour. Below is a double page spread from my sketchbook which shows how I tried to readdress the colour and composition (see right), and after a frustrating afternoon the painting on the left was a short, final piece I did that actually worked quite well.
Drawing Colour
“Nebamun’s Garden of the west” immediately captured my attention amongst The British Museums Egyptian collection. The unique, almost Persian-like birds-eye-view of a garden surrounding a pond was a fascinating image to start drawing from. With a soft colour scheme and intricate details, I tried my best to utilize tone to give a sense of what the colour might be like:
As for the afternoon, it seems like this week has a running theme of either having a great morning and difficult afternoon or vice versa. So ... the afternoon was hell for me. As I slowly trudged around pondering on what to draw after lunch, I decided to take on a complex Roman mosaic. To begin (see left image below), I started off quite small; putting down broken marks to try and capture the essence of the work and material. Before long, tutor Ann Dowker caught up with me and had me readdress the scale of my drawing; pushing me to work larger and in a more expressive manner (see image on the right).
With only 20 minutes of the day left, my eyes could no longer register the mosaic in front of me so I set off for one final, quick drawing before heading off to our crit:
A really interesting comment that stuck with me from Ann was:
“your drawings look like drawings of someone who is interested in colour.”
As an oil painter, I’m very much interested in colour and I want my drawing practice to act as a guide for my paintings where I can translate my marks and tone into colour schemes that work.
Come next week, I’ll be having my first tutorial so make sure to sign up to my newsletter to be notified of my next post. In the meantime you can check out my Instagram and YouTube for more of my work.
See ya next week,
Tomas
