Translation

Observational drawing has taught me the importance of looking.

It has forced me to look at what is there and to thoroughly understand the subject in my drawing process.

I'd previously thought that all interesting ideas came from the imagination, that the real world was just mundane and boring. I was wrong.

The real world is interesting because we all share it. The real world is incredible and is what imagination is built upon. We are informed by our experiences.

When we observe the real world, we all see it from different viewpoints. Perception is based on frame of reference, and this is demonstrated in the drawings we make of what we see.

An observational drawing is MORE than a photograph. It has a part of you in it. It is your version of events.

We discussed the difference between drawing from reference and drawing from observation. Both inform drawings, but drawing from observation gives extra detail about shape, size and how the light hits the subject, as opposed to a flat photograph.

Working from reference is useful when it is not possible to access the real thing.

I borrowed a book from the college library about frogs, deciding to use these photographs as a reference to draw a frog.

We were asked only to work with black ink. I tried various methods of translating the information in the photograph onto the page. The photograph I used had so much detail within it, from the scales on its body to the veins on its neck, but I knew that there was more than one way of documenting this. I was not making a facsimile of the original photograph, but interpreting the frog and imbuing a sense of character and movement to the drawing.

We were also challenged to repeat this drawing several times, going over the action in a study of our own ingrained practice.

Above are several different versions of my frog drawing. Through repeating the process, I have got to know the subject and have learned about the mechanics of the frog. It's so interesting to see how much the drawings have progressed and I'd love to just keep drawing that one frog forever just to know how he develops further.

I used black Windsor & Newton Indian Ink, applied with various width brushes. I found that a dry brush technique added some really dark tones and a quick stroke with a fat brush was much too clumpy for the detail of this creature. I much preferred using a fine nib dip pen, making a very scratchy line that captured the texture of the skin as a pattern. 

Unlike most pencils or pens that I would usually rely on for a drawing task such as this, I discovered that ink is much more difficult to control. It splodges and splats and lines are always inconsistent. 

I used the last five minutes of this morning's session to quickly tackle a different animal: a parrot.

Again, I used a dip pen and ink, achieving lots of motion and feathered lines with this media, translated from the flight of the bird in the photograph.

I'm really proud of the work I have made this morning. I worked at a great pace, managing to keep to the task and complete four variations of my frog and an additional two parrots. I am pleased with how the final frog turned out, but think that all four of the variations are important to look at as alternative methods of translation and creation. I will continue to use pen and ink as a technique in the hope to develop my skills in this method.

Looking at the work of other people this morning, I saw some very different techniques of translating information into a drawing. 

Bronte's boys encapsulate emotion through her washed-ink method. She thought about how much of the portrait she needed to include, giving a different viewpoint with each distanced shot.

Galuh's father and son series were all very similar from a far away glance, but when looking more closely it is clear to see that she attempted to vary her brush strokes and her concentration of ink in order to capture the image in a new light.

Haley's sharks are terrifying and brilliant! They do not look like photographs, but they do look like accurate sharks. She has considered which information to include and which background information to ignore. She has been selective in her production.

Wilf's monkeys showed a great deal of self criticism as he altered and improved his drawing with every attempt. He did a great job of modulating his own work and striving for a better drawing.

Observation

This afternoon's task was to draw from observation. I brought in a bamboo shoot to document.

Following the impressive drawings I saw around the room this morning, I wanted to have a go at varying the concentration of ink and creating an ink wash to record the tonal values in the plant.

In two hours, I managed to produce a total of thirteen drawings of my bamboo plant.

Some variations were more successful than others, for example, in the photo above you can see where I got much to excited by adding value to the background (far left drawing), which I think made the overall picture much too busy and dark, taking away from the plant in the foreground.

Once I got used to the method of diluting the ink to change the intensity of the black, I think this added another layer of depth to the drawing and made the pictures look a lot more three dimensional rather than a flat woodblock drawing like the very first drawing under the subheading 'observation'. 

This technique reminds me of Quentin Blake's scratchy, messy drawing style and it was so much fun to create! I am so pleased with everything I have produced in today's sessions. Although it has been a long and intensive day, it has definitely been productive and I do think it has been rewarding.

I have shown myself just how much work I can make in four hours... A LOT OF WORK!

I have impressed myself.