Drawing summer school - day 4

Was it yesterday's meditation that brought on my calm state on waking early?

Watering the garden, I took time to smell the roses - well, honeysuckle - and to photograph it

 for drawing on the tube journey -

Today's tutor, Marcus Coates, had us moving between close-up looking at microstructures and making large-scale imaginative structures that scrutinised things natural. Fascinating to hear him talk about his own work. Dawn Chorus (2015) is amazing. A lot of his work draws on bird-ness, but his range is wide - an appearance on Galapagos TV, for instance, in blue-footed-booby costume, giving a bird's eye view of the inhabitants ... with a teeny bit of social critique.

To work. Buddleia through the loupe, against cool blues and greens of my sundress -

 I stole the idea of making an eye-level shelf to hold the specimen -

... and got this far before giving up - the looking back and forth through the lens was so very frustrating. The memory of the exact shape gets lost, somewhere....

(Even with my best spectacles, prisms-in-lenses-wise, my severe astigmatism means that refocussing is active rather than automatic - I have to decide which eye to favour, and find its sweet spot in the varifocals. But hey, I can still see, even if looking is slow.)

I took a few deep breaths and turned the paper over. This photograph

 blown up on my phone, screenshot taken, became a different kind of lens, another type of aid for looking. Cheating? maybe; I don't care. It does lend itself to scrutiny, to discovering "what the thing is itself".

Such a beautiful thing

Even with this in hand I lost my place in the intricate structure, and (like others, it turned out) resorted to absorbing and expressing the principles of the plant's growth -

 I was so impressed with the large scale works others were producing. Impressed and discouraged, actually.

 A second chance - "take another plant..."

There wasn't time to add the spore cases ...

 On to the next!

 ... imagination at work as we transition from this physical world to the imaginative world of the (possible) drawing ...

What I chose to do was outright self-sabotage. Working title, Uphill Struggle -

As the ink ran down, I tried to stop it by blowing (through a straw), which somewhat emulated plant growth - roots and leaves -

The look of it was creepy, horrible... and it hung there, unfinished/unresolved, overnight. My calm mood of the early morning was completely gone. And it was hot hot hot in the big gritty city. Time to go home.

Certainly I wasn't expecting  what happened on the last day.

Drawing summer school - day 3

Combining meditation with drawing, today's tutor was Jane Sassienie, who along with Tania has set up Drawing Breath.

Drawing provides a focus, a place to drop anchor. Giving time and space to the drawing is giving time and space to yourself. Drawing is a unique physical and mental activity that allows creative absorption, which appears to slow time down. Drawing allows for different ways to communicate, celebrate, be curious, and see the beauty of small things in ways that help us live and endure. Drawing Breath is an invitation to anyone, at any level. 

With mindful breathing we return consciously to our breath where we can experience a coming home into our body that is safe, solid and grounded. From this centred place we have more courage to take a leap. There are many different breathing patterns that give us access to hidden parts of ourselves, and new ways of understanding others. The exploration is endless and as simple as breathing.

Take a breath 

Make a mark

Which is what we did....

First, a lovely surprise - it was a delight to see the supplies table so tidy, clean, organised -

Those supply tables can get so chaotic. (A metaphor for life, wot?)

After a discussion of "what is practice" and thinking about breathing, we breathed in and out in various ways (I was initially resistant, but shouldn't/needn't have been). The first drawing exercise was to put a pool of ink, mixed with washing-up liquid in hope of bubbles,  onto paper and blow through a straw to move it around

In chronological order

 "Allowing the drawing" - oh how various. They went up on the wall.

Then  we made marks each time we inhaled and exhaled, first with usual breathing and then with a focused breathing

Each mark a new breath 0

Many different responses ...

I wasn't the only one who felt resistant to the next exercise, performative drawing (check out Sam Winston). But on we went! We worked in pairs, one (blindfolded) acting as "brush" - holding the drawing material - and the other moving the brush, ie being the artist, deciding what marks to make.

 Interesting. The brush could go along with the artist, or be awkward through not being held right, or provide gentle suggestions of improvements, or just plain be resistant.

 And as artist - my goodness, what sort of mark to make? How to break out of making the same one over and over? When to change medium? Where to move the brush to next? How to make decisions while grappling with using the brush?

 It certainly provoked discussion.

Back to observational drawing - with a sigh of relief. Reunited with my friend the basil plant ... different media (always hoping to find the perfect all-purpose medium)

Carbon paper gives a different quality of mark -
and leaves a whiteness in the blue

Ink - the scary medium! The blobs are
a happy accident

 People were getting into using their little notebooks (given to us at the start) not just for notes but for small versions of the drawing that went on - "Let me be the brush while you draw my plant" -

From my notebook -

Ugly scary inky marks, drawn with several breaths

Small version of the big line drawing, on newsprint alas,
that needs a dark background because my lines are so faint

Drawing summer school - day 2

"Choose an object" -

Then, working in pairs, we first spent 5 minutes looking closely at it (the drawing came later) -

 including with magnifying glasses -

One person drew the texture of the object, for 5 minutes, without being able to refer to the object ... and erased it -

 The other did the same, over the erased marks -

First person again -

 This time some marks got left ...

 and a final drawing was made -

 New piece of paper (smaller; newsprint), both of us working on it at the same time -

 The morning's results -

In the afternoon, consideration of the similarities of plants and humans, in terms of life-cycle. The task - to make a sort of hybrid between plant and human.

I used the veins in my hands as a source - they bulge, but they supply life-blood! Like sap in a tree. Like (neural) pathways that can be set up when others are blocked.

All sorts of botanical and medical information and metaphors swam in my brain as I struggled with the shapes -

nearly gave up, then switched to charcoal

persevered and started to enjoy it

Some people saw "Matisse's dancers" in it, but I think of it as the Dark Wood and all that lurks there...

Next to my work were these "hybrids" - plant-body, landscape, chimera ....

The tutor of the day, Sarah Woodfine, had had an exhibition at Danielle Arnaud; though it was closed, it hadn't been taken down yet, so the class walked over to the gallery (on Kennington Road, about 20 minutes from the Drawing Room).

Refreshment in the garden behind the house -

 and a close look at Sarah's work. She often draws on rolls of paper, using B and HB pencils -

Another snake, a different format -