Hands on Drawing

The 'drawing week' just gone wasn't made up of sitting around quietly sketching- oh no, it was the complete opposite: collaborative, large-scale and hands on! I felt like I was in one of those Art-Attack challenges that I used to love watching on kids TV.

For our first task, we were each given a 1cm section of a cut-up picture. Without being told what the image was, we then had to enlarge and draw out our section onto an A1 sheet. It was actually quite freeing not having a clue what I was drawing, or how it fitted in with the rest of the picture as a whole. Seeing everyone's different drawing styles in our group, it was interesting to imagine how our drawings would fit together as one. When our individual sheets were all taped together in sequence, then dramatically unveiled from the balcony at the end of the day at college, it was quite a surprise…we'd drawn the Queen! I think she turned out looking quite fine...

my tiny section to enlarge- I had no idea at the time it was part of the Queen's crown!

Taping and rolling the drawing together face down: still in suspense- what was it?

The unveiling- it's the Queen!

Continuing with a royal theme, the next day we were instructed to create a portrait of Henry the 8th from Lidl plastic bags. This specific (and perhaps slightly random!) constraint on our media use, lead to quite an amusing result. I like experimental processes, and it was good to be reminded how just following through an idea to see the results, can allow you to play around and have fun- the constraints we were given stopped us having to make choices about what we were doing, freeing us up to just get creative with the materials at hand. 

Bags, scissors and glue. A truly regal King Henry-sponsered by Lidl?!

We also used the bags as a way of exploring colour, creating gradients and mixing colours using just shades of red, yellow and blue. I love working in the studio and getting to tape all our work on the walls as we go. Just seeing all that colour is instantly inspiring!

I tried to keep my creative process loose, fun and free in our collaging workshop the next day, where I was working from my Box Clever project objects again. 

Finally, a bit of life drawing. I decided to join the UAL life drawing society after getting to do a few sessions on foundation, and finding it really useful and challenging. Hopefully this will give me a chance to to practise, and improve my drawing skills and style. here's a few from when I went the other evening. It really has been a full on week of drawing!