Landscape Drawings .... winter 2014

Had a drawing day yesterday .Loved it. Went out for a walk with the dog down along the canal, took lots of photos and drew for the afternoon.

At the end of the afternoon I felt  that I had rebonded with graphite and massively increased my skills , particularly with regard to blending and tonal gradations. I did this really as preparation for the Art Group in the New Year.we are looking at drawing and I needed to define what we were doing.

Anyway, techniques I used were;

Blending with my fingers
Blending with a torchon/ tissue
Scraping the pencil with a Stanley knife to produce graphite powder which I then rubbed in
Layering to produce darker tones
Pressing on heavier to produce darker tones
Using the heavy b pencils to produce a darker tone

Using a rubber to lift out the pencil
Sharpening my pencil with a knife to get a longer tip, to allow for more variety of marks

Mixing graphite powder with water to produce a graphite wash ( loved it )
Painted the wash on the paper or over parts of the drawing

Scrubbing all over the paper with graphite on kitchen roll, wet or dry

Using the water soluable sketching pencils




Loved it all !




WHAT IS A DRAWING ?
Well there's clearly loads of work that comes under the heading of DRAWING , ie dry media on paper.And there's clearly loads of work that comes under the heading of PAINTING, ie paint on paper/board/canvas. But there are loads of pieces that could be either, for example, drawing and painting in the same piece or painting a graphite wash onto paper. It is up to the artist to name the piece, and really what's in a name........ Drawings usually command less money than paintings ......




So, after my draw yesterday, what ideas did I have ?..........what did I learn?......
Try and turn the drawings into bigger pieces on the a Daily paintings boards

Continue to explore all the pencils I have .... I only used three of them yesterday, an hb, an 8b and the soluable wash pencil.all were different graphite colours
I found it hard to get the darks
I need to mix a good graphite colour ( maybe use watercolour instead of acrylic but then I would have to put gesso on, )
Put gold powder on them
Try embellishing a print........



That' it .... Will see what today brings

Photos of the drawings from yesterday.......

This one below was done on a 52 cm sq. Acrylic primed board. I love it now but does it stand up as a piece in it's own right ? Not sure........ Continue working on them and think about how it would look framed. The process was much harder on the acrylic board, I couldn't get the darks and the pencil was obviously so different on the board.......