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The start of flowers in coloured pencils! So far not happy...
Watercolour pencils and an attempt to cover an A2 sheet of grey pastel paper with something that I can work on.
How on earth do I face a sheet of paper that large with a pencil point?
The sound of the pencils across A2 paper really set my teeth on edge and so I quickly changed to water coloured pencils, draw very quickly and then brushed it with water so that the colour ran down the board.
Grey pastel paper seemed the best way of dealing with the white of the flower heads and to get the paleness of the flowers. Also tough enough to take a lot of messing around with water plus pencils.
What a mess!
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The third attempt was greatly helped by a fellow student, Louise, who suggested underpainting. Her example gave me hope and I started throwing acrylic paint at the paper. As it dried so quickly, I worked fast and just tried to cover as much as possible. It was a huge relief to be able to mix colours again.
To be able to get the colour as I want instead of being at the mercy of a medium that imposed it's own colour meant I could work with it rather than against it.
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| The Lost Pencils |
The next task was to use the coloured pencils to achieve some degree of detail.
However, to my surprise, I lost my set of coloured pencils.
I had the watercolour ones but the coloured pencils had completely vanished. I have now spent two days searching for them. No sign of them.
I then started to scratch some detail of the flowers into the dry paint. It took all my time to just get the pencil to show up. Pencil sharpener was wearing out and still no detail was manifesting.
Now, a day later, the flowers have wilted, flower heads closed and the light has gone.
I then started to scratch some detail of the flowers into the dry paint. It took all my time to just get the pencil to show up. Pencil sharpener was wearing out and still no detail was manifesting.
Now, a day later, the flowers have wilted, flower heads closed and the light has gone.
It has been raining for three days and I am NOT going outside to capture the real thing.
I found I was so busy trying to get the watercolour pencils to make a mark that I got lost with the actual drawing. The ellipses are wrong, the perspective is wrong and the tone is non existent.
It is dead, lifeless and not worth the effort involved in trying to achieve detail.
What I saw in the flowers was the drama of colour, the movement and the life. This has not been expressed in any. Because of the conflict of trying to do something I did not see, the drawing suffered.
I would rather do a monochrome pencil drawing of flowers in order to describe detail. To get detail when I can't mix the colour seems a waste of time.
Perhaps it is time to do something else?
Flowers revisited
I decided to rethink what was wrong with my drawing and came up with the idea that for me, drawing flowers is to show the essence of flowers which is that they are organic. This means that the drawing should be organic and have a life of it's own.
The conflict was in using coloured pencils which need planning and organisation. This is not how I see anything that grows. Flowers have a quality of life which I found difficult to capture. This time I tried using a 2b pencil and started in the middle of the paper and let it grow by itself without planning anything. I draw what I saw, which is blurred by my shortsightedness and also because I did not understand what I was seeing. I just draw what I saw.
An ordinary pencil has a quality of line and softness which is able to convey movement and tone which the coloured pencil, to me, does not have.
Early days.... Yet to complete this.
It occurred to me that my mistake was in trying to get a reasonable composition without being able to draw flowers in the first place.
Also, I tend to see in colour, shape, paint and tone. Perhaps the best way to draw flowers is to use line.
It is dead, lifeless and not worth the effort involved in trying to achieve detail.
What I saw in the flowers was the drama of colour, the movement and the life. This has not been expressed in any. Because of the conflict of trying to do something I did not see, the drawing suffered.
I would rather do a monochrome pencil drawing of flowers in order to describe detail. To get detail when I can't mix the colour seems a waste of time.
Perhaps it is time to do something else?
Flowers revisited
I decided to rethink what was wrong with my drawing and came up with the idea that for me, drawing flowers is to show the essence of flowers which is that they are organic. This means that the drawing should be organic and have a life of it's own.
The conflict was in using coloured pencils which need planning and organisation. This is not how I see anything that grows. Flowers have a quality of life which I found difficult to capture. This time I tried using a 2b pencil and started in the middle of the paper and let it grow by itself without planning anything. I draw what I saw, which is blurred by my shortsightedness and also because I did not understand what I was seeing. I just draw what I saw.
An ordinary pencil has a quality of line and softness which is able to convey movement and tone which the coloured pencil, to me, does not have.
Early days.... Yet to complete this.
It occurred to me that my mistake was in trying to get a reasonable composition without being able to draw flowers in the first place.
Also, I tend to see in colour, shape, paint and tone. Perhaps the best way to draw flowers is to use line.
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