Week 9, Unfinished
The Holidays with its string of running around, cooking, prepping the house and having a dozen people over for a few days have left me with stolen minutes here and there to draw, which ended this week’s HES with two unfinished illustrations, and a very tired girl.
I’m trying to work more and more on backgrounds, which I usually avoid. It still feels uncomfortable, but it pushes me to think and work a bit differently.
I have to complete the rocks and water on the sleeping rabbit drawing and play a bit more with the lights and shadows. Not sure how to tackle the water, since I believe this is a first, or haven’t done this in a long time. The bear and mushrooms in the second illustration will probably be easier, as I have a love affair with the fungi family.
I’ve integrated a touch of water soluble oil paint to the usual liquid acrylics and pastel pencils. This medium is compatible with water based paints and I find that it adds a bit more richness to the acrylic. I’ve applied some on the rabbit and at the base of the boulders.
La Citta
Friends have been telling me what a marvellous dialogue Hello Every Sunday is, and I agree. If it wasn’t for this I would not have tackled the landscape of Matera, I would have thought it far too difficult and avoided it. It has been challenging drawing these images, first small in my sketchbook and then larger in my A3 Moleskine but it has been so great to push myself into unknown terrain.
I have used watersoluble graphite (which you can see on the right side of this first picture). It gives me more control than ink and the slight blurring needed for this particular landscape. The highlights and the cloud flowing in from the right onto the centre has been done with white pastel. The clouds are the powder from sharpened graphite, you can see the pointed graphite from sharpening also on the right. The challenge was to get the buildings rise up organically from the landscape adding to the compacted mass of textures.
Week 8, Flamboyant
The Challenge of Textures
The ink versions which worked so well for the Olive Groves, did not work too well for the textured landscapes. Either they were strait laced or turned out very stiff. Still I add them here and my experiments with ink are reminiscent of my countless years of experimenting with charcoal.
It is as if time moves in fast forward when you are frantically trying to recapture Matera. I get up early, finish house stuff, exercise and then simply seal myself off in my studio. I think I am gaining some understanding and insight on how to go about things and I would dearly like some more worthy attempts in my sketchbook next week.
Week 7 – Remembering
My uncle was a man who loved nature. He spent a lot of time in the forests of his native Abitibi, a Northen region that he cherished.
He quietly passed away this Friday, after an long illness. I thought about him all week while drawing this, as he was in palliative care. This is how I pictured him, quietly resting in a field, in his long last sleep.
A Blank Week
I have drawn an absolute blank this week for Hello Every Sunday, which is why you see a closed sketchbook as the image. This is largely because I am unsure how to tackle the buildings of Matera which are fairly complex to draw. Solutions take time but they emerge eventually, so next Sunday I will surely have more records of my magical holiday in Matera.
Montreal – week 6, mushrooms and snails
Pencil, acrylic, watercolor, pastel and posca pen
Mushrooms, mushrooms, why do I always come back to you?
Bangalore-Week 1, On the way to Matera, Italy.
So I made these drawings of what I saw through the train window on the way to Matera in the South of Italy.
I am glad to have Hello Every Sunday to discipline me into making one drawing every day.
I tried different kinds of ink, both fountain pen ink and Sumi ink and both the results have turned out interesting.
Montreal – week 5, more insects
Acrylic, pastel, Micron and Posca pen
Semi-real insects for this week’s HES drawings.
I think there’s a story waiting to be told here…
Montreal – week 3, mushrooms
Acrylic, Posca pen
This was a disapointing HES week. I’ve complicated my life and layered, and layered, and layered, for a poor end result. I’m just glad that the week is over and I can start anew!