Lots of Bodies
I worked very hard last week to produce a decent body of work for this Sunday’s Hello Every Sunday. I managed about two drawings per day and it took about 2 to 3 hours per day to do. I used ordinary writing ink on ordinary paper. What I liked a lot were the textures and surprises that the medium produced on paper, telling its own story over my drawing. We try to control the medium so much to the point where restricting and restraining it kills off its energy and spirit. Here, I am allowing the ink to dance along with the drawn figures and create its own story.
My references for these figures were from Elizabeth Heyert’s beautiful photographs titled The Sleepers, where she photographed sleeping people and projected them on ruined walls in a ghost town in Sicily. Her photographs are huge, powerful images, my drawings based on them are small intimate studies of the human form.
Week 14, The strange farmyard, part 2
And here is a bit of reverse engineering. Click on the arrows to see the steps.
Gesso, acrylic and white gel pen on watercolor paper
Week 13, The strange farmyard, part 1
I’ve started working on a special kind of farmyard, made up of half-hens, half-seed pods. I still have a long way to go; this is a slow process. I have three that are almost complete, but I still have to work on the details, create more hens, and some sort of background that I don’t have in mind yet.
Gesso and acrylic on watercolor paper
Mish Mash
My illustrations for the week are varied. I tried drawing a seashell, which is more difficult than it looks. Then I played around with ink splotches on wet paper trying to recreate the surface of the moon. Moon surface or Chapati, you decide 😉
On Saturday, I did my first ever Linocut. It was experimental. I was trying to get a feel of work on the sheet, applying colour and adjusting my thinking in order to get the appropriate results. It was fun. Then as I was looking through the pictures from the linocut party on my comp, a beautiful yellow moth flew on my comp screen and sat there, it was about the size of my little fingernail. I drew that too.
Week 12, Hare visiting a mushroom
Graphite, acrylic, pastel pencils
A Drawing a Day.
The last week had me down and out with a cold. I have been wanting to do large compositions of my visit to Rome using paint. I tried it and failed (very last picture). But experimenting always leads to results eventually.
To do a drawing a day, I decided to do one simple drawing in my book of anything around me or what comes to mind. That seems to have worked out better since there are results to show for HES.
Week 11, Drawing on black paper
Hurried Sketches
So this week, my contribution is rather pathetic. Having a busy week is not an excuse. I kept pushing my drawing time to the next day and now I regret it. Today, Sunday, my sketching friend and I went to Cubbon Park to find something to draw. There was a Comedy Club in progress and we started drawing the people there. My results at rapid sketching the human figure embarass me greatly. Even worse is having to upload it here. The drawing of the kid who stared at me as if I was a zombie turned out reasonably better than the others because she sat still and let me take my time. Later the comedians gathered around me in excitement just because I drew them. I was glad to leave. I am not even going to put these up on instagram. I will console myself that the point is to draw, rather than draw well.
Keep on Drawing
Right from New Year’s day I was on the go. Since this is the holiday season, I had friends visiting from other parts of the world and from India itself. It made for many enjoyable moments, like sketching in Lalbagh with one friend after a very long time. I had forgotten how good it felt.
In the middle of cleaning and tidying up my house for the New Year and for the impending arrival of more friends, I looked at all the waste bits of paper on my desk and in an impulsive moment I made a collage. The ink strokes that made up the cut up bits in the image above where for testing the density of ink for the large ink drawing of Matera below. Nothing is wasted!
In the anxious and unrestful atmosphere in my country, I am glad to be able to ground myself again and again by drawing.
Week 10, The Holidays are almost over
And we will need a holiday to recuperate from the Holidays ;-).
You know that I have been away from home when you see graphite drawings. I bring the essential when I have to travel: pencil, sharpener and eraser. I came home in time to finish the rabbit and the bear.
Graphite on paper
Acrylic, soluble oil paint, pastel pencils
The rabbit doesn’t seem that much different. I added a bit of shadows and did my best to render water, but I will definitely have to work on that.
Acrylic, gesso, watercolor and pastel pencils on paper