Monkey Business

Sketchbook Review

We all laid out our sketchbooks on the tables and walked around the room to see what everyone had produced so far. I wasn't expecting to see so many different approaches to sketch-booking, I really expected that they would mostly look the same, but every single sketchbook was unique and personal to the artist. The sketchbooks documented their working process: some students worked quickly, jotting words and ideas before making drawings, some students used their sketchbooks to stick in references and then work from them. 

As always, I was nervous about putting out my sketchbook for other students to see.

My peers commented that I'd made great experimentation in my sketchbook and that they were impressed with the range of approaches to drawing I had taken in these few pages. I'd been adventurous and tried collage and digital media rather than just pen or pencil.

I would agree that I have been experimental and I am quite proud of the varied work I've produced, but I need to keep this going and continue to be inspired by the topic. I've now exhausted the library's Nature section and I need to find references elsewhere.

I saw some wonderful work as I walked around the room. In particular, I was found the students studying the circus theme to be conjuring up the most visually exciting drawings. I think this is because I am passionate about the topic and interested in the history of circus. I found myself regretting not choosing that topic, I want to join in that exploration!

Beth's mermaids for her 'Deep Sea Diving' theme were lovely. She had such an elegant line quality, achieved with a brush pen, that suited the under water subject and was beautiful to look at.

I think a lot of us struggled to produce 'quick sketches' and instead a lot of the work around the studio was precious and delicate. We need to all learn to make mistakes and be risky.

Stephen made loads of sketches of a couple dancing and this was a great method that forced him to watch and understand his subject. Looking through these, I could see how Stephen had made decisions about how he wanted to draw them and what he knew about the anatomy.

Quality of line

We discussed what line is and what its purpose can be in illustration. Lines are magical things and yet they are often the last thing on our mind when we are drawing. Lines are what make up a drawing. They are the building blocks. They can be manipulated and fashioned to achieve different textures and qualities. 

We were challenged to pick one subject from our theme (e.g. one character) and draw it 20 times using no tone, only lines. The idea was that after working from reference and drawing it continuously, we would begin to work out how the subject is built and be able to work without reference by the end of this task, using line to construct the shape that we know by heart.

I focused on monkeys. They are harder than they look! I attempted to use different media and ways of drawing in order to achieve different qualities of line.

My natural drawing process seems to be quite quick. I don't think that my lines are very confident and they are often sketchy and feathered. I wanted to challenge myself to slow down this process and consider every line. I worked from reference and used different media to recreate the monkeys.

Thicker pens force my lines to be more confident (e.g. bottom right in the page above). Using ink and a brush (second from the top right, above) gave my lines texture and the illusion of fur.