Expressive Drawing – Equilibrium

Walking the Dog
Expressive Drawing - Chapter 8 - Play 1
Ink on Rice Paper
40.5cm x 20.5cm (16" x 8")

In Chapter 8 of Expressive Drawing, Steven Aimone identifies the importance of equilibrium or balance in nature and suggests a drawing incorporating a sense of equilibrium, speaks poetically about nature and life.

Related Drawings - Asymmetrical
Expressive Drawing - Chapter 8 - Build 1
Graphite and Charcoal on Paper
59.4cm x 84.1cm (23.4" x 33.1")

Steven defines equilibrium as the unity that occurs when opposites or polarities come together like yin and yang. He identifies examples of different types of polarities such as night and day, hot and cold, wet and dry, pain and pleasure, hope and fear, love and hate, light and dark, active and passive, rough and smooth, top and bottom, inside and outside, front and back, left and right, and so on. He explains that equilibrium provides a feeling of stability and is usually a desirable and necessary thing, but sometimes instability gives a sense of life, excitement and tension.

Related Drawings - Symmetrical
Expressive Drawing - Chapter 8 - Build 1
Graphite and Charcoal on Paper
59.4cm x 84.1cm (23.4" x 33.1")

The play exercise for the chapter involves creating drawings with left and right balance without resorting to symmetry. The build exercise entails creating a pair of related drawings. They both have a sense of equilibrium, but one of them is almost perfectly symmetrical and the other is asymmetrical.

Flying a Kite
Expressive Drawing - Chapter 8 - Play 1
Ink on Rice Paper
40.5cm x 20.5cm (16" x 8")

I still haven't got back into the swing of these exercises, but I am persevering, trying to absorb the ideas, and trusting I will be inspired by some of the later chapters.

Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Measured Drawing

View Towards Gatcombe Farm
Measured Drawing - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
April 2019
Ink
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook
21.5cm x 18.5cm (8.5" x 7.25")

In Lesson 5 of Drawing and Painting the Landscape, Philip Tyler introduces some techniques to accurately draw a picture to scale based on sight measuring and angle checking. This involves adopting the stereotypical pose of the artist using a pencil in an outstretched arm to estimate the relative size of objects, measure angles and to check alignments.

The approach is similar to those explained in other sources including The Urban Sketcher by Marc Taro Holmes (Citizen Sketcher) and Liz Steel's SketchingNow Foundations course. This isn't surprising because there are a limited number of ways to address the challenge of translating a three-dimensional landscape into an accurate two-dimensional drawing.

Philip includes an interesting discussion about how much of the landscape we can see without turning our head. This knowledge can help us to tackle our tendency to include too wide a field of view in our drawings and to simultaneously draw everything too big.

Edge of the Common
Measured Drawing - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
April 2019
Ink
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook
16.5cm x 12.5.5cm (6.5" x 5")

The exercise also includes the seemingly unrelated concept of decorative line drawings in which the confidence and fluidity of the line work is as important as the subject:

... the objects in the landscape become a series of shapes that are defined largely by an unwavering line. There is a real confidence to the line, finding the rhythms and repetitions of motif within the landscape.

Otter Estuary - Decorative Line
Measured Drawing - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
April 2019
Ink on Paper
19.5cm x 15cm (7.5" x 6")

The picture of the Otter Estuary is a decorative line drawing using a photograph as a reference. The other pictures were drawn from life, first focusing on accurate measurement and then trying to create decorative lines.

From the Bench on Fewster Road
Measured Drawing - Drawing and Painting the Landscape
April 2019
Ink
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook
12.5cm x 16.5cm (5" x 6.5")

I had the usual apprehensions about drawing in public, but there really doesn’t seem much to worry about. I take care to position myself as out of the way as possible. If anyone notices what I am up to, they are usually too timid to disturb my fierce concentration. If they miss (or ignore) the signs that I don’t want to be interrupted, they only want to look at the drawing and to pass the time of day. In common with most sketchers, I haven’t encountered anything except pleasantness and compliments.

Keys to Drawing with Imagination – Macro Drawing

Walnuts Are Brain Food
Macro Drawing
Keys to Drawing with Imagination
Graphite Pencil on Paper
Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook
14.0cm x 20.3cm (5.5" x 8.0")

The objective of Exercise 11 from Keys to Drawing with Imagination by Bert Dodson is to make an enlarged image of a small object or creature using a good magnifying glass. Bert observes:

Enlarging an object transforms it. It reveals a level of structure and detail that is otherwise invisible to us.

This was a challenge because my magnifying glass is not good. It provides a small distorted field of view with minimal magnification – frankly, I would be better off squinting at the subject. I am also struggling to get back into the swing of modelling with pencil (see Keys to Drawing with Imagination – Creating Destruction). I’m persevering because this is a core skill I want to cultivate.