Thursday 16.9.10

We had to make small sculptures to prepare for today, made from different textural objects stuck together, and were told not to show them to anyone.

I teamed up with Theo and we had to make a series of drawings of one another's objects, firstly drawing only from his description of the sculpture:

And then from feeling it behind my back, then by looking at only the object and drawing without looking at the paper:

Lastly an observational drawing attempting to get the correct proportions:

In the afternoon we drew our own sculptures in different ways including continuous line drawing, using symbols to replace line quality and tonal surface drawing. I really enjoyed the description drawing and the drawing from feeling, it made me much more aware of how language and senses affect out perception of something. I also liked the blind drawing, I've done a lot of that before and it's definitely a good way to boost my confidence with drawing, which I often lack. I'll use it again and also use variations on the idea, like drawing subjects upside-down etc.

The afternoon didn't go so well for me, I wasn't sure about drawing my own object, which was pretty difficult, and as my confidence dipped again I felt a little disillusioned. I need to practice drawing a lot more to learn all the techniques - it can be learnt after all. I understand that it's a relevant exercise, learning all the different parts of drawing separately so that eventually they can be applied together, but drawing really doesn't interest or excite me so I find it hard to motivate myself. I liked the symbol work, I think it could inform some interesting illustration or graphics work, I'll research Chuck Close, who does massive portraits using symbols. I'm very interested in portraiture.