I decided to improve my drawing skills and so everywhere I went I took my sketchbook with me and did drawings in concert halls, while sitting waiting for people and at lunchtime in woods near my art college. Particularly I drew on walks. The sketchbook has replaced my camera as my favourite way of making a visual record of the place I am in or the objects I see. Drawing really is becoming an additional sense with which to engage with the outside world. It also challenges me to look ever more closely at what is around me and find marks that will evoke what I see in anyone else who looks at my drawings. I have worked up to a large scale (1.5 metres by 1 metre) in charcoal. Working on this scale has been a liberating experience. The marks can be much more free than those done in my sketchbook and the sense of exhilaration both in the process of making them and then seeing on the wall is intense.
At present I am working just in black and white - I don't want the distraction of colour. My current project involves doing drawings in the woods which are only half an hour's walk from my front door. They centre on clearing in the wood where four paths intersect. I have done a series of drawings of each side of a clearing. I started doing these in the summer of 2013 and the drawings record how the scenery changes through the autumn and into winter.
I have walked through this clearing hundreds of time over the past 26 years, with friends and family and drawing brings back memories of these occasions. My powers of observation have improved considerably over the past year since I started the project. My sense of hearing has also become more sensitive. I hear the sounds of crows, buzzards and magpies and the distant sounds of traffic and planes taking off from Bristol Airport. I have made some recordings of the ambient sound while I am drawing and I have found that playing these recordings back while looking at the drawings adds another dimension to the evocation of the spirit of that clearing.
While I am drawing, people come past often walking their dogs or on horseback. They are intrigued to see an artist at work with an easel in the open air, particularly in January. Some are surprised to realise, after talking to me for a short while, that I used to be their family doctor.
Here are some examples of my drawings:
At present I am working just in black and white - I don't want the distraction of colour. My current project involves doing drawings in the woods which are only half an hour's walk from my front door. They centre on clearing in the wood where four paths intersect. I have done a series of drawings of each side of a clearing. I started doing these in the summer of 2013 and the drawings record how the scenery changes through the autumn and into winter.
I have walked through this clearing hundreds of time over the past 26 years, with friends and family and drawing brings back memories of these occasions. My powers of observation have improved considerably over the past year since I started the project. My sense of hearing has also become more sensitive. I hear the sounds of crows, buzzards and magpies and the distant sounds of traffic and planes taking off from Bristol Airport. I have made some recordings of the ambient sound while I am drawing and I have found that playing these recordings back while looking at the drawings adds another dimension to the evocation of the spirit of that clearing.
While I am drawing, people come past often walking their dogs or on horseback. They are intrigued to see an artist at work with an easel in the open air, particularly in January. Some are surprised to realise, after talking to me for a short while, that I used to be their family doctor.
Here are some examples of my drawings:
I tried making intaglio prints from my drawings, in hard ground, then soft ground and aquatint, but the results were not very successful. This was partly because I could not find the right sort of marks and partly because I could not get enough control over the tone I was creating using aquatint.
I have been much more successful using lithography and have completed a series of six prints from lithographic stone and from metal plates. Some of these are shown below (click on an image to make it larger):
I have been much more successful using lithography and have completed a series of six prints from lithographic stone and from metal plates. Some of these are shown below (click on an image to make it larger):