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Thursday Art group - Session 12
< back | Session Menu | Session 12 - Pen & Ink Sketches
In this session we walked around the corner from the art room to St Aidan's Nature Reserve. The sun was out and the air fresh.
On return to the studio, drawings could be 'worked up' and colour paint or washes applied.
St Aidan's RSPB Nature Reserve (Click on some of the plants to enlarge)
Top
St Aidan's sketches (Click on images to enlarge)
From top to bottom and left to right: Stan, Vee - Tracy, Mags, Lorraine, Stan - Rebecca, Lorraine, Nan - Rebecca, Nan.
Stan (top drawing) has captured the feeling of overgrowth and the stark feel of late Autumn with his scratchy pen marks and lines of colour.
Vee's tree (lower drawing). The use of delicate horizontal lines and a pale silvery wash, work well to show the texture and appearance of the Silver Birch. I also like the scrawl, almost signature, nature of the lines in the grass. The sky becomes a bit of a late afterthought and fills in the gaps around the branches, rather than being present behind them.
Tracy's sketch has nice reflective qualities, although I'm not sure that this intention was in her thoughts at the time. The plants to the left of the path were probably growing upwards from the banking, but actually produce the impression of being reflected in the water - a quality which might be remembered for future landscape drawings.
Mags had a few attempts at rendering her water and it was proving to be a challenge to reproduce both the impression of depth in terms of distance, together with the flat calmness of the scene. If lesson time hadn't run out, I'm sure she would have got closer to achieving this.
Lorraine has achieved the qualities of expanse, stillness, and climate, in this picture, with a delicate touch of line held together with careful application of paint and washes.
Stan is never afraid to try things out and uses his drawing as a test-bed for different ideas. Experiments here include crosshatching shadow, line and pigment spreading with water.
Rebecca likes to work with bold strokes and it was not surprising that she mentioned that sketching in charcoal would have been more preferable for her. Sometimes, the detail afforded by fine tools such as pens, pencils and fine brushes, can perhaps lead to feelings of impatience. If this is the case, I fully understand the feeling and this is made more apparent when technical skills are still in their development phase.
Lorraine's drawing of two trees was quite stark on the white page of the sketchbook. The lines of detail were expressing form and texture but, as she said herself, it needed something to fill in the surrounding space - to give a better feeling of location. We talked about applying a background to imply the dense coarse undergrowth and this has worked very well.
Rebecca's last drawing for the day, a tree, really began to take on form and weight - producing a stark, somewhat wintery, scene. I particularly like the branch that goes off to the left and towards the background landscape, the higher branches that come out from the trunk, and the fine lines of tall grass behind the base.
Nan started with a tree, but soon decided to focus her attention on the detail of one leaf. A casual glance as I walked past caused me to at first wonder, which was the real leaf? Perhaps by working close-up, this is a good way for Nan to have more control over developing her skill and technique.
Top
Drawing with Ink Pen
Techniques
suggested
Sketch quickly to get basic features.
Use a cloth or tissue to wipe excess build-up of ink off pen.
Do a few detail sketches of features you want to remember.
Make a few notes on colours or other details you want to remember for
working on drawings back in the studio.
Suggestions
and observations
Although the emphasis was on sketching, time went quickly and I realised
I could have suggested that people took cameras to record references.
I took a few photographs (as you can see from above).
I think that some people possibly felt overwhelmed when attempting to
record so much information in such a short space of time. Patience to
learn can sometimes lead to frustration, but be assured that results do
start to follow persistence.