Drawing Day at West Dean

I am half way through a Foundation Diploma course at West Dean https://www.westdean.org.uk/CollegeChannel/ShortCourses/FoundationDiplomainArtDesign.aspx. As part of the Diploma, students are invited to attend "Drawing Days" - a useful way to spend time with other students, catch up with the tutors, have a tutorial and spend time in this lovely place. I attended my second day last week.  I was more relaxed this time, having less on mind and knowing, to a degree, what to expect.

We were asked to consider structure in drawing, composition and particularly the potential of zooming in to part of the subject - in this case architectural plants. 

I chose a plant because I became fascinated with the negative spaces between the leaves and first drew a small thumbnail of the spaces in a selected part and then repeated it by drawing the leaves themselves.  It is interesting how different, yet similar, these are. I prefer the second of the drawings - it seems more balanced as a design.

I then drew a larger drawing of a segment, really enjoying pushing the charcoal around, and found myself responding to the shapes of the leaves etc.  The feedback on this was that it might be more effective if the darks, or some of them at least, were darker.  I will carry on working on this and recording the changes.

 The plant was very colourful, with a yellow and red bract so I decided on collage for my next piece.  I only had a small pack of materials with me - magazine pictures and photocopies of some of my own pictures so was limited in choice but this was useful as I had to make do and be more creative with my response.  I drew the plant on top of the collage in black felt tip to emphasise the shape.

Later when I was uploading photographs of this, I accidentally zoomed onto a part of it and was surprised by the result. It has potential for further development - perhaps into print.

The next two pieces of work developed on from the collage - first drawing the basic shapes and adding some grey tones - and then just looking at the negative shapes

 I have found myself developing drawings more and more recently.  This is a direct result of the Creative Development weekend in December at West Dean for Diploma students where we were introduced to the idea of a "body of work".  I can see more potential in the collage and drawings developed from it and intend to work on the ideas generated.

After lunch I had a look at another plant - a succulent with a stem of very small flowers.  I enlarged them, trying to identify the structure - finding this difficult without a magnifying glass and then used these drawings as a basis to draw larger and then larger still in light sienna and black drawing inks.

This a great day - I was surprised how much I achieved. I feel all the drawings have potential for - by developing the ideas in the drawings but also in cropping them and looking at enlarged segments for development

Etching with copper sulphate

I recently attended a two day etching workshop at the Wrexham Regional Print Centre - www.regionalprintcentre.co.uk, tutored by Tracy Hill - www.tracyhill.co.uk.

I have limited experience of acid etching, and was interested in experiencing a less toxic method. The process is the same as the traditional acid method but obviously different chemicals are used.  We used both zinc and aluminium plates as matrices and printed with oil inks onto Hannemuhle and Somerset paper.

Tracey demonstrated every stage which was useful for everyone whatever their previous experience, and she was very relaxed and generous when asked to go over the details again for anyone who needed it.

Firstly the edges of the plates had to be bevelled, to prevent the blankets on the press being damaged but this also means that the final print will be cleaner, and then degreased as grease, including that from fingers, would effect the ground that was to be laid over the plate.

The acrylic ground a mixture of two substances - rather than a traditional wax ground - was then rolled on to the chosen plate. Textures were created by laying various found objects, lace, feathers, net, dried plant material,string, stencils, onto the plate which was put through the press. The plate was then heated on a hot plate to fix the ground and finally placed into the copper sulphate solution.  The solution etches into the areas of metal which have been left exposed by the textures pressed into it. The plate is then cleaned of the remaining ground and detritus from the mordant and printed.  This is my first attempt - two feathers and a piece of unravelling cord on a zinc plate.

Before printing I used a dry point needle to emphasise some of the details of the cord that and also add details of a third feather in the upper left corner to link in with a pale mark that looked like a quill. Ideas for future development includes printing with chine colle to emphasise the feather structures, burnishing the highlights and more dry point work.

I next tried a smaller zinc plate - the same process with the ground but after allowing it to partially dry for a few minutes I added water with a brush. The result is reticulation where the ground - which is water based - partially dissolves with the added water and produces interesting, not entirely predictable results.   Again before printing I added dry point - too faintly as can be seen in the prints but these can be worked on further.

I burnished the un-etched metal of the plate to make the highlights more prominent added a traditional wax hard ground and emphasised some of the dry point marks made earlier and then inked in green as an experiment.  I don't think the colour works and prefer the blue black - the abstract design reminds me of the flint walls of West Dean and in the future I will continue to work on this plate to emphasise this element and perhaps try to replicate the lovely colours one sees in flint particularly when wet.

The next day I worked with aluminium plates.  These are slightly less predictable in the mordant and I decided to try with some semi abstract landscapes. I have had a week drawing mountains recently and these were in the forefront of my mind as inspiration.  The first plate was covered with the ground and then water added for the reticulation.  The abstract shapes reminded me of clouds so the mountain range was added below with a dry point needle and some more water added to provide texture on the land.  The second plate was a thin strip.  I drew onto the ground using a dry point needle for an impression  of landscape and also added a little water reticulation for tone and texture.  On reflection, this was too much for such a small plate - less is more in this instance.  After heating the plates to set the ground, they were put into a saline copper sulphate solution.   The back of the plates had to be covered with plastic tape to prevent the back being attacked by the etch and in that process I must have scratched the larger plate with a small piece of grit. This didn't become apparent until after the print was pulled but as can be seen left quite a prominent series of marks all across the plate.

I inked the plate again trying to remove some ink from the most prominent mark but this seemed to make it more obvious, so decide to add to the scoring with dry point - in an attempt to make a virtue from an error  - and extend some of the marks including the very harsh ones to create a feeling of wind sweeping over the landscape.  This was an improvement and when I inked the landscape in green making it more prominent it made the image more balanced still.  The motto is - make sure the area is perfectly clean before turning the plate over before taping the back!

Finally I decided to try the small landscape with some chine colle - a white tissue with tracings of green ink on it.  The plate is too small for the large piece of tissue so I will print the plate again with smaller additions perhaps in unrealistic colours to emphasise the abstract nature of the marks and to de-emphasise the complicated, detailed landscape I tried to represent.

All in all a very busy two days - lots of experiments and 4 plates that I can continue to work on and develop at home and perhaps take  back to Wrexham for some more etching. I have lots of ideas and intend to play around and see how far I can push them.  



Exploring drawing with five tutors

This is a West Dean course - www.westdean.org.uk - and entailed 5 days of drawing with different tutors each day.  After the introductory weekend this is the first course in the FDAD that I have just started.

The introduction was by David Stent on Sunday night who gave a short talk on William Coldstream and Ewan Uglow.  Incredible draughtsmen who spent a long time making sure that their measurements and proportions of the individuals they drew were very accurate.  Their drawings and paintings are noticeable not least for the construction lines that remain in the work.  A hard days concentration, drawing, measuring, rejecting and re-drawing followed.  I am still not sure whether the measurements in my final drawing are correct but I do like the fore shorted foot!.  My conclusion here is that I realise I would benefit from spending more time making sure of the proportions in life drawing. Something I was aware of before but had not acted upon.


The next day something totally different. Frances Hatch http://www.franceshatch.co.uk/  aims to incorporate her emotional responses to the landscape, and often that includes her impressions of the noises around her whether they are natural such as birds and winds or mechanical such as a CD playing in the background.  Frances started by playing us some music and asking us to respond in various ways with a variety of implements and media. We were drawing on some discarded brown paper which had been crumbled and then straightened so not precious and everyone seemed prepared and ready to thrown themselves into it.  The resulting pieces covered a huge range from abstract and wild to realistic and restrained.  This set the mood for the day as we progressed through a series of exercises using collage - some from the first pieces which had been reduced to small cuttings, the discarded pieces providing useful collage material.  Frances introduced us to 'Oblique strategies" a set of cards used for making decisions - www.rtqe.net/ObliqueStrategies/.

Frances gave us all a card and asked us to consider how it could help us with the collage that we were working on.  The one given to me seemed to bear no relationship at all but gradually the thought came to me that I hadn't liked one of the marks I had made as a direct response to one of the
instructions Frances had given us.  The comment of the card led me to the thought that the mark was restricting and that I could break it - this I did with collage pieces and think the final piece benefits.

The strategy I found today when I looked was 'Define an area as 'safe' and use it as an anchor' - will have to think how that impacts on my current art project of portraits!

The third day was with Emily Ball. http://emilyball.net/    By this time most of us were flagging with the usual midweek slump of energy. Emily came in with lots of ideas and energy.  We spent some time just making marks with charcoal  - an enjoyable exercise that never fails to surprise and delight. We practised making light and dark and changing the weight of the lines - very basic but something we all need to be reminded of from time to time.  We then held hands with a partner and described the hand of the person just by touch - my drawing looked nothing like a hand unlike some of the otheres but I was surprised how much information for a drawing could be found just by touch alone.

This prepared us for the next exercise - holding a small object hidden from sight and drawing it, using
 the marks we made as a direct response to the touch and feel of the object.  I enjoyed this and I feel it has helped me to become more aware of the range of marks and how the viewer responds to them.  I had already been looking at Van Gogh's mark making in his drawings so was very aware of how boringly nondescript my mark making was.

Emily told us the aim was to "Animate the inanimate"  or to give life to the objects we were drawing by being aware of them three dimensionally and trying to give an awareness to the viewer of that.  I used the same little dried up fish as inspiration for all three drawings - amazing how they differ.

 Another exercise, again in partnership, was a drawing where we took turns to add, remove and replace elements of the drawings - this required us to respond to marks rather than being allowed to be precious about certain marks or passages which we were pleased with but that didn't necessarily balance or add to the rest. As individuals we can be very parochial and wrongly decide to keep something that we have worked hard on but which is spoiling a painting or drawing but when working with another person it is easier to see the whole and, of course, they and you, can take the decision more easily to remove, rearrange that precious part since the emotional tie isn't the same.  An interesting exercise and one I intend to utilise with mono print.

The fourth day was with Carolyn Genders - http://www.carolyngenders.co.uk/   a ceramicist so someone who automatically thinks in the round - a sharp learning curve for me.  The day was a journey from 2 dimensions to 3 back to 2 and then back  to 3 involving paper and finally clay.  Mark making was an important element again but this time noticing how marks made in 2D look when incorporated into three dimensions.  An interesting discussion regarding the difference between shape and form was not fully resolved to my mind but perhaps I need to study more 3D work and undertake a course to fully understand it.  This was only the third time I had worked in clay apart from a very disappointing evening class over thirty years ago and these latest experiences all within the last few weeks, so I was very surprised how much I enjoyed the clay.A future course is planned to help develop an awareness of the 3D which I hope will help with 2D work.

The final day was with Martin Ward http://martinward.net/gallery.htm   This was a short day being the last of the course and stared with a block of wood - we were asked to place it in a position with other elements to give it sculptural significance and drawing it.













After that we arranged for the block to be cut into two to our individual requirements - placed the two elements in a different location and
 again drew them.  Apart from being very tired and having difficulty with angles, proportions and straight lines I enjoyed the exercise.  Not much mark making in my efforts compared to most others in the group, and I was a lot less imaginative in the placement but I felt the mass of the wood was shown. I have shown placement of the blocks as the 3D is more interesting to me than my drawings.

The course developed during the week, each day standing independently but in fact building on the previous days and, I feel, coming in full circle with angles and proportions and measurement.

On reflection, I felt that I learnt something new each day, the main being that when representing something in 2D, it is essential to be aware and try to make the viewer aware of the fact that it is 3D - a variation in mark making, weight of the mark and portraying the mass of the object can help with this as well as accurate observation.

Taking time to look before plunging in with the charcoal, pencil or brush or cutting tool is the most important message I have brought away with me - something that was repeated by each and every tutor.