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 -
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A lighter pressure. The straighter lines are when the train is stopped -
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Finsbury Park to Holborn, my most frequent journey these days. Note the speeding up at the end to try to fill the page -
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A change of pen made quite a different - usually I use a fountain pen, but this felt tip just bounced along the page -
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Must get a brush-tip pen and see what happens....
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 -.jpg)
A lighter pressure. The straighter lines are when the train is stopped -.jpg)
Finsbury Park to Holborn, my most frequent journey these days. Note the speeding up at the end to try to fill the page -.jpg)
A change of pen made quite a different - usually I use a fountain pen, but this felt tip just bounced along the page -.jpg)
Must get a brush-tip pen and see what happens....
11 comments:
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?
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!
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.
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...
What a FABULOUS set of pages....inspirations I'm sure! GREAT IDEA to try different pens.
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.
I have been maundering about horizontals lately and your exercises enhance these meanders. Thanks.
These are wonderful !
These are delightful! They would make wonderful thermofax screens to use for printing.
I've done that- and surprised myself with how well it turns out! Liberating eh!
Nice, nice, nice !
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