“When I am actually drawing, and not just thinking about drawing, I stumble across much more interesting concepts. I use that word, ‘stumble’, very deliberately, as it often seems to me that the best ideas are accidental and I just happen to be witness to them.
“… what I choose NOT to draw becomes just as important as what I choose to include.
“The process of physically drawing something engages not only your mind, but your eyes and your hands as well. It seems to me that all of this additional sensory input can’t help but to inspire you better than just thought alone.”
A drawing doesn’t have to start with a predetermined endpoint, a vision of exactly how it’s going to turn out, or even an idea of how it might turn out. You can, and may, let it evolve and develop as you draw i.e. make it up as you go along. Think of it as heading into the part of the map where it used to say “here be dragons” i.e. we don’t know what exists here but some of us enjoy going here to find out.
I happened to be at a friend’s house on the morning she and friends were having a drawing session in the garden. I discovered they pick a subject and technique for each get-together from jars of folded-up bits of paper. This one was to be baskets done with pen and wash, which explained the array of baskets on the table I had been wondering about.
I had a pocket concertina sketchbook with me along with my zip-case of assorted pencils (graphite, coloured, water-soluble), pens, and a waterbrush. The baskets didn’t appeal to me initially; the purple irises and yellow poppies were far more enticing.
So I started drawing some of what I could see to the left of the table with the baskets.
Then as a challenge to myself, and having gotten some of the itch to draw the flowers out of my fingers, I decided I would draw the baskets, changing scale so they weren’t too tiny. And because they were an integral part to the scene or story, I included a couple of the people drawing the baskets.
As can happen with an unlikely seeming subject, once I started drawing the baskets I was pleasantly surprised by how much I was enjoying it. Trying to get the perspective not-too-wonky but also not obsessing. How to convey the different weaves and textures. The scale was right for me too: small enough not to have to spend too long but big enough allow for mark making with my fude pen (bent nib) and adding water to the water-soluble ink.
I added a little to the right still before stopping for lunch and a nap.
Then continued with irises and yellow poppies to the end page. I also worked a little yellow and blue into previous pages using the water brush and Inktense pencils.
I got asked to pull the technique and subject for their next session from the jar. Turned out to be very me things: quick 30 minute drawings for technique with pebbles and bark for subject.
“Remember, the purpose of working en plein air is to learn to see better – to note value [tone] relationships and colour nuances that you only can only see when painting from life. It’s wonderful to be able to bring this knowledge into your studio practice. Painting en plein air is also about the experience of being in the moment in your painting environment. What it’s not about is a brilliant result! Nice by-product but not the purpose of painting en plein air.”
Plein-air isn’t only about landscapes or cityscapes. It could be a drawing of your mug in a coffee shop, the chairs in a waiting room, the inside of a building, a flower pot … it’s anything and everything that’s not in your “comfort art-making spot”.
Why do it? For me it deepens what I notice about somewhere, slows my brain’s running about and focuses that energy into creating something on a page. I get to listen to the birds and bugs and sea. The results vary from intensely pleasing to uh-oh, usually somewhere inbetween. Even if everything I paint is a dud, it’s not like that doesn’t happen in my studio on occasion.
What am I aiming for when I’m painting on location? It varies, depending on what I feel like, what else I’ve been doing, and if it’s a new spot or a regular one. Sometimes I focus on a small detail in a landscape, sometimes it’s the overall scene. To paint a sense of it, not a photographic likeness. To explore pattern and texture, shape and colour. Shape conveyed by line done in ink or fluid watercolour (whereas in my studio I’ll “colour in” the shapes).
Tone or light/dark is rarely a focus for me until mid-way in a painting. I know it’s something I don’t see strongly, instead I get seduced by colour and texture, so I have learnt to stop to assess and adjust it rather than fight against this natural inclination. On location, I often don’t bother because I’m having to much fun in the moment.
Bow Fiddle Rock is simultaneously inspiring and intimidating because it’s such a recognisable landmark. The last time I painted there was nearly a year ago, in August 2022 (see photo below), and before that June 2019 (see this blog post).
From August 2022. Acrylic on three sheets of A3 watercolour paper taped together, and primed with gesso in adance to give a bit of surface texture
This time I was in the company of members of the Moray Firth Sketchers, and as always it was interesting to see their results (photos on the Facebook group here) and the viewpoints chosen.
The tide was starting to come in, and I found I was enjoying the movement of the water along the channel in the big rocks in the foreground, perhaps even more than the dramatic shapes of Bow Fiddle Rock. So I picked a spot on the pebbles before they drop down steeply to the water’s edge that gave me a good view of this.
If you’re familiar with the branding of UK supermarkets, you’ll know where that orange bag my paint supplies are in came from. That little bit of green foam makes a huge different to comfort levels sitting on the rocks.
I had brought my zip-up case of favourite drawing pencils/pens, plus some of my liquid watercolour bottles having selected only a few colours at home with the steep walk back up the hill from the beach in mind. I knew that Lunar Black, Hematite Geniune, and Soladite Genuine Blue would give me the fundamental colours I needed for the sea and rocks. A bottle of white acrylic would give me the sea foam.
For some reason I’d also thrown in a roll of masking tape, and I was glad I did because sitting on location I had the urge to paint larger and could tape two A3 sheets together. The first painting I started with hematite watercolour, but felt I was getting a little lost as to where things were so I swapped to pencil to feel my way around the forground, using different marks for the rocks and pebbles.
Next I added some blue for the water, to differentiate the water/rocks/sky areas.
Then I went back to the rocks with hematite and Lunar black, aiming to add a sense of shadow and separate the foreground rocks from the fiddle.
I stopped here to let the watercolour dry, then decided I was pleased with the energy to the painting and the risk of losing this was too great if I continued. So I put it aside and taped together two more sheets. This time I started with pencil.
I added blue to the sea, using the silicone ‘paint brush’ to try and get a sense of the white wave edges of the incoming tide. Applying the colours in a different order to my first painting prevents the sense of duplicating myself. I took the blue right up to the pencil lines depicting the edges of the rocks with the thought that I would wait for this to dry and then paint the rocks. (In my first painting, I’d tried not to get the blue too close to the rock colours in case parts were still wet and would thus run into the sea.)
I used predominantly Lunar Black on the left of the fiddle rocks because it was now in the shade. I should have added more colour to the arm or ‘elephant trunk’ in the top right corner, and might still do this. In the foreground, I added some white acrylic to the incoming water.
And finally a little splattered colour for some pebbles.
Which is your favourite? Left or right? Post in the comments section below to let me know. I’m hard pressed to choose myself.
Look Ma, I’m being sensible and wearing my wide-brimmed sunhat!
“I believe that I do not experience the world in the same way that a camera does; that the technical precision of a photographic view of the world offers a seductive but basically false rendering, one which is based on an idea of the world as understandable, containable, defineable, precise, whereas my feeling is that the world is full of ambiguity, doubt, compromise and guesswork. … To work in a life situation is to directly experience this mobility of experience
… Further I believe that the creation of an artwork – the materials, surfaces, processes and attitudes is somehow analagous to the processes of perception so that the making of the thing becomes in some way an exploration or example of the partiality of our engagement with the subject/sitter. This whole terrain is to me the stuff of living perception; the interpretation and creation of our own version of the world — nearly all of which is absent from a photograph, so all that is lost before you even start.”
A photo is but a sliver of time, it’s not the beginning and end of what could be seen. Why would you let it dictate what you include in a painting. Please, a gazillion times over, never, ever give me the “but it was in the photo” reason for doing something in a painting. Use photos in a way that you can see say, “I thought I wanted to include it as an element in my painting which uses this photo as a starting point”.
“I think drawing enjoys not being at the centre of things. It is traditionally seen as preliminary, a generator, not an end in itself. It comes first, with something more ‘important’ to follow. Because it isn’t at the centre it becomes the weapon of choice to explore more elusive or marginalised areas of expression, experience and consciousness. Drawing is more portable, affordable, resilient, and direct.
“… It’s a practice, which means you have to practice, and do it again and again.”
What is it that stops us from creating a painting on a canvas with the same relaxed vigour that we’d start drawing with a pencil? When does the “this is a serious activity” switch get thrown?
Sunflowers, Vincent van Gogh, 1890, pencil on paper, 13.4 cm x 8.5 cm. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
Painting with a friend in the sunshine, with coffee and munchies, makes it possible to forget about the hassles of life for a bit. In our view was a magnificent old oak tree, with fresh spring leaves and branches spreading upwards and outwards in a twisty tangle.
I started with water-soluble ink in my fude pen (the fountain pen with the bent nib), then used Serpentine green watercolour, lemon yellow and iridescent green acrylic ink.
The first painting (above on the right) I got the sense of the branches peeking out through the leaves, but on the second (above left) I got carried away with my enjoyment of the ink dissolving as I added water. It ended up with very dominant branches and trunks, and a feeling of there being any leaves on the back only, none on this front. I tried using coloured pencil to change this, and some opaque paint (by mixing in white) but it didn’t help.
When I said it looked like a dead tree standing in front of other trees, my painting companion said I was being a bit too harsh. But when we swapped paintings, she chose the other one! I picked one where she’d used water-soluble graphite for the trunk and branches, which on the rough watercolour paper she used gave a strong sense of bark texture.
Our other companion was four-legged, and I couldn’t resist trying to draw her even though she’d move when I was about half way with every attempt.
Newly emerged leaves in spring have a bright, cheerful yellowness to them that seems to celebrate the beginning of a new growing season. I was sitting in a friend’s garden in the Scottish Borders looking at the red and yellow tulips thinking they lent themselves to a painting, but kept being pulled back to a couple of trees where the leaves were catching the sun whilst casting shadow on the stems.
I started with coloured pencil, trying to get the sense of the layers of leaves and small branches, sunny and shade sides.
I added watercolour and acrylic ink in various colours, including an iridescent green.
Mixed media on A3 watercolour paper
To stop myself fiddling with this painting while I was waiting for it to dry, I started another which I did wet-into-wet (and forgot to take progress photos).
Mixed media on A3 watercolour paper
I put the iridescent ink as a lower layer in the second painting, rather than top layer as in the first painting, so it shimmers through the other layers. The final layer was a deliberately opaque choice of cadmium yellow mixed with titanium white, so it would obscure what was beneath it.
“Monet chose … a rejection of the orderly perspectives of traditional landscape, by denying the viewer any imagined entry into the actual space depicted, and by emphasising the patterns of forms and colours within the painting itself. … the role of composition is increasingly taken over the brushwork and colour
“… the brushstrokes never establish a hierarchy of importance among the elements depicted; each is equally integral to the whole scene.”
John House, “Monet: Nature into Art“, pp54,76
In traditional Western landscape painting you are supposed to have a focal point and a path for the viewer’s eye into the painting leading towards this. You’re supposed to position this according to the Rule of Thirds, and the painting have a foreground, middle ground and distance. You would’t put the sea cliff so it fills the canvas, not to mention painting the shadow side of it. But fortunately Monet did.
The Manneporte (Etretat) by Claude Monet, 1883. Size: 65 x 81 cm. In the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
In a linear model of personal growth, you can only go up or down. By design, there are people below and above yourself. This model can be falsely reassuring, as it seems to offer a clear path to success. …
In a circular model of growth, nobody is more advanced than anyone. There is no “up” or “down.” People are at a particular point of their own, unique growth loop. Everyone only competes against one’s self. The circular model can be more daunting, as there is no predefined direction — you need to design your own personal growth process — but it can also be infinitely more rewarding
I have favourite subjects I come back, each time at a slightly different point, sometimes the medium I’m using, sometimes how widely or closely I’m focusing. In the past fortnight I’ve been exploring something new to me — blind embossing* on my A3 etching press. I’m using string to try to get a sense of the continuous ink line drawing I enjoy but it being indented into the paper itself. I know where it comes from, what the loops were leading me to this. Some of these are techniques/mediums, e.g. printmaking, and some are subject i.e. looking closer and closer at seashores down to individual pebbles. It’s not a conscious looping, it’s driven by curiosity and enjoyment in art techniques and materials.
(*Blind embossing is printing without ink, creating textures in damp paper.)
Watercolour and blind embossing
Here are a few of the loops that have taken me to the painting above.
2009: Copper etching plate from a workshop at the Highland Print Studio in Inverness, which introduced me to printmaking and presses
