Keys to Drawing with Imagination – Creating Destruction

Brown Bag Lunch
Creating Destruction
Keys to Drawing with Imagination
Graphite Pencil on Paper
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook
14.0cm x 20.3cm (5.5" x 8.0")

Exercise 9 of Keys to Drawing with Imagination is about drawing things that are crumpled, dented or crushed. Bert observes there is something aesthetically pleasing about the partially destroyed.

This is my third go at drawing a crumpled bag. I seem to have forgotten everything I knew about drawing and rendering shadow shapes. I will persevere with this sort of drawing with pencil and pen over the next few weeks. I need to get back into the practice of first analysing and outlining the shadow pattern and then becoming absorbed in rendering it.

Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Partial Peek

Coaley Peak
Partial Peek - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Ink and Gouache
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook
30.5cm x 21.5cm (12" x 8.5")

Partial peek is the subject of Lesson 4 in Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler . It is the next step after blind drawing (see Drawing and Painting the Landscape - Blind Drawing). The aim is still to spend more time looking at the landscape then your sketchbook. You blind draw as much as possible, but take occasional peeks at the paper to ensure your lines are not too far out of whack.

Clouds in the Valley and Ivy Clad Oak Trees
Partial Peek - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Ink and Gouache
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook
21.5cm x 30.5cm (8.5" x 12")

Philip observes that some elements of the landscape lend themselves more to blind drawing than others - he suggests trees and rolling hills. Liz Steel makes a similar observation in her SketchingNow Foundations course.

Draw the foliage loosely, almost blind without worrying if the tree gets out of control a little.

I think blind drawing works best when a descriptive edge is more important than pinpoint accuracy.

Otter Estuary and Mon & Brec
Partial Peek - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
Ink and Gouache
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook
21.5cm x 30.5cm (8.5" x 12")

I drew a few partial peeks from photographs and one in situ at Coaley Peak - this is just along the Cotswold Way from Selsley Common (where the sketchbook was blown out of my hand during the Blind Drawing exercise). Coaley Peak is normally even windier than Selsley common, but this time the weather was kinder.