25 January 2010

"Travel writing"

If you're travelling on the London underground and see someone hunched over a small sketchbook, pointlessly drawing line after line - that's probably me. I have been doing a lot of "travel writing" - letting the bumps and jolts of the train tell the story of the journey. Here's a selection of sketchbook pages (click to enlarge) -Sometimes the journey takes one page, sometimes two - of course it also depends on how quickly the lines are drawn, and how close together they are. Sometimes I make different kinds of marks when the train is stopped in a station. Many variations are possible -
Here are some of my favourites. An early example -
A lighter pressure. The straighter lines are when the train is stopped -
Finsbury Park to Holborn, my most frequent journey these days. Note the speeding up at the end to try to fill the page -
A change of pen made quite a different - usually I use a fountain pen, but this felt tip just bounced along the page -
Must get a brush-tip pen and see what happens....

11 comments:

magsramsay said...

I can see how addictive this could become after just 2 hours doing a similar exercise at my drawing class! Any ideas how it could be transferred to fabric and thread?

The WestCountryBuddha said...

This is an enormously, brilliant idea! I love it. You could do a comparison of trains/underground/buses/walking etc. I wonder if different train companies have different graphics for the same journey..I suppose it depends on the rolling stock. OK I'll stop now, as I'm probably getting a bit silly!

jude said...

i really like this. great. i used to make drawings varying the pressure of the pencil while listening to someone speaking. but no one ever knew what i was doing, which made it quite amusing.

Sandra Wyman said...

Love these - those lines are so expressive. I remember doing this as an exercise in various ways of producing tone in pen and ink years ago, but hadn't thought of doing it in its own right - off to give it a try...

Dale Anne said...

What a FABULOUS set of pages....inspirations I'm sure! GREAT IDEA to try different pens.

Julie said...

Not surprisingly many of these drawings have great movement in them. They remind me of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham's wave drawings, which I have had a go at drawing. You could certainly work some of these lines in stitch, maybe to suggest the sea.

June said...

I have been maundering about horizontals lately and your exercises enhance these meanders. Thanks.

Dijanne Cevaal said...

These are wonderful !

Linda M said...

These are delightful! They would make wonderful thermofax screens to use for printing.

Wen Redmond said...

I've done that- and surprised myself with how well it turns out! Liberating eh!

beatrice De said...

Nice, nice, nice !