Stack of chairs

Friday morning at Leith School of Art and I walked into the studio and was confronted with a pile of chairs!
This was the still life for the day............

 After the initial shock, I began to be quite excited by the idea of tackling such a tricky subject. Life throws allsorts at me and so, why not chairs?

 The brief for the first drawing was a five minute sketch drawn blind. Graphite on A4 paper and not looking at the easel but focusing on the chairs.

The second drawing was not much better but I was beginning to understand.

The next drawing was done with the non dominant hand. In my case, my left. I had no control over what marks I was making and I found it difficult to connect my brain with my hand.

This made it very interesting when the next short drawing was done with my right hand. 

It was immediately easier and I felt my old patterns of finding structure, brain connected to hand and vision was more familiar.

The result was very curious. In everyones' drawings, the dominant hand sketches were the most boring.

Blind drawings had more vigorous marks, non dominant hand drawings were more lively and had far more interest. They also showed the feeling of chaos that the stack of chairs produced. 

The brief for the rest of the morning and the afternoon was to spend longer on a charcoal drawing, A1 size and focusing first on the stack of chairs and then focusing in on the one aspect of the chaos.


The right hand drawing was causing me trouble as it was losing all spontaneity until, with five minute before finishing, Ginny suggested rubbing out most of it and redrawing.
Nothing like a bit of pressure and time limit to focus the mind.
The result was a more complete drawing.






The drawing on the left was tricky because of the tendency to be fussy over perspective. My aim was to capture the detail of the chair back on the left and the detail of the shadows, which echoed the amount of pattern and detail. Not enough time to get it all in....

Summing up the experience.. What I failed to do was to capture the energy and sponaneity of the blind drawings. They both became too sterile and next time I hope to remember to think less of the result and more of the initial feeling.