Exercise: Identifying tools and materials. Part two: Drawing.

Next I needed to do my drawings.

The first drawing I chose to revisit was the boot for the objective drawing. I chose this because I thought the boot is a relatively complex form, and it should be an interesting challenge to try to represent the shapes without just outlining the outer border, but rather to get a feel for the character of the shoe.

First I attempted it with my Pentel ink pen and regular graphite pencil. I used my drawing of the boot as my reference. I wasn’t very happy with the result. It looked messy rather than expressive, and still seemed very Western in approach.

I attempted the drawing a second time with the same materials. This time I set up the boot again and tried to draw from life. I was moderately happier with the result, but I felt it shared a lot of the same problems as the first attempt.

The second drawing I chose was the investigator from the exercise on choosing content. I wanted to choose a figure in order to attempt the style captured in my chosen reference image by Yoji Shinkawa, and I felt that this was the best character out of all of my finished artworks so far to do that.

Again using the brush pen and pencil, I found myself really struggling. Part of it is because the brush pen is very difficult to use well. The difference in pressure between a very thin line and a very thick line is extremely slight, and requires very steady hands and a lot of control. I love using the brush pen and it’s great for practise, but I feel like I seldom get good results with it! The final drawing still seems overly messy and concerned with shading and accurate representation. There isn’t that delicate presence of the artwork I shared in part one of this exercise post.

I tried the exercise one more time for each drawing. This time I worked at a bigger scale, A3, and used a long handle, relatively large round brush and a pot of sumi ink. Working with ink presents a unique challenge. Even compared to other water based mediums, it has a high degree of permanence, much more so than watercolour for example. Every brush stroke, even heavily diluted, is a large commitment. It also dries on the paper very deceptively, lightening considerably. But the permanence also makes it exciting and expressive, and the lightening allows for translucent layering. It has its own challenges, but I find it a very enjoyable medium.

I do feel like the results are a bit better. I definitely feel like these paintings have some merit. There’s sort of a deconstructed effect going on, and I think there’s at least a few areas where negative space is utilised well. But on the whole I still think they come up short. Nonetheless trying to approach a painting in a different way is a good exercise in lateral thinking and pretty entertaining too. I’m going to continue practising this style, even if nothing ever comes out of it I have fun doing it.