Drawing Journal

My Gallery Watching live reportage-drawing project begins tomorrow Tuesday 20th September at Ruthin Craft Centre and then Wednesday 21 September at Oriel Davies Newtown. I’m both nervous and excited!

My Gallery Watching project starts next month and my drawing practice has increased a pace, with my intention to make a drawing every day so far being kept. And the self-challenging never stops (I now dream about drawing continually) whether it be new materials or new environments. I draw upstairs in the coffee shop on Sundays now. It isn’t easy. I like what I know.

People are further apart upstairs, and the décor and layout demand more attention. I respond by trying to be looser, less focussed on the detail. It’s an uncomfortable state and I’m no pup but I persevere.

Take your drawing to ‘almost destruction’ say Gary Embury and Mario Minchiniello in their excellent book ‘Reportage Illustration’. And I try. I do.

I try to push myself, to challenge the safe, the comfortable. We sat at a different table. It was near the door and with a view of the barista’s work space. I wasn’t comfortable. And people joining the queue kept disappearing behind the pillar. ‘Give it a go,’ he kept saying. I did, and tried to focus on drawings that showed a sense of space. But I became overawed by the detail, uncertain what to include and what to discard. I wasn’t happy with them and gave up. We returned to our usual space. Another time, eh?

It fascinates me how differently I seem to draw in different places. Is it the size of the sketchbook, the time I have to work in or the ambience and clientele of the café? This is in a M&S canteen-style café. I love drawing the people who frequent it, many of a certain age, they take time over their food or sit and stare while they wait for their partners, friends or grown-up children to bring them their tea or sandwiches. The light is different too, made stark by the stretch of window all along one side.

For all the customers ‘slow’ habits I draw quickly here (tending to go there after lunch when I am dog-tired). I’ve got used to drawing quickly, so much so that I don’t think I could manage a long-pose in a life room. Does it matter? I like the challenge of trying to ‘get someone’. These are from the coffee shop queue yesterday.

It was graduation weekend in our town and there were lots of parents and their student-kids. Most looked uncomfortable and the majority sat in silence or stood awkwardly sharing only the necessary information about the kind of coffee, chocolate on top and so on. My heart ached for them. And the ‘kids’ looked like they were barely out of school….

The question is, is am I getting better at this?

I need to test myself. And drawing at the circus seemed a good idea at the time. It was hard. Harder than I thought I would be. I remember circuses as a child being lit up inside the big top. This one was dark. I’d spread out my crayons, felt tips, pens and wash brushes on the bench in front of me but when the time came to make marks I couldn’t see what colour I was reaching for. It was alarming but also very exhilarating. Black became purple, blue was green. It didn’t seem to matter at the time.

Everything was happening so fast. There were jugglers, acrobats, men standing on each others’ shoulders, showgirls on horseback, trapeze artists, a tightrope walker and a clown. I just let my hand move, this way and that. I was drawing blind.

You find yourself drawing from memory almost. And any desire to make subtle marks, or to describe feature or gesture is eschewed. I think of Degas’ or Seurat’s drawings and I cannot for the life of me fathom how they did it. Was it all studio work post the experience? I wanted the immediacy of the action – to try and commit it to the page.

The interval offered some respite but the audience milled around incessantly, stirred up no doubt by the spectacle and anxious to fill their bellies with burgers and popcorn or take their little ones for pony rides in the ring or to be photographed with the clown. The music, though pounding and in itself exhausting helped to keep my momentum going.

That beautiful horse ‘dancing’ to La Paloma Blanca was so kitsch but also so stunning, I heard myself crying out with wonder. Agh, the child is ever present. I drew like one possessed. Am I happy with the results? No, but I am happy I went, faced my fears and did it. Sometimes that is all one can ask of oneself.

I try to keep the practice alive. Mostly it is a daily breathing in and out, a trying, except that is when I have writing to do. Like today. Sometimes I can manage to write in the morning and do a bit of drawing in the afternoon. Marks & Spencer’s top floor café is my current field study of choice. There are always people to watch and draw there. It’s a safe place, a little bland, but safe and the clientele it attracts reflect that safety.

Young families come, or middle-aged couples who’ve popped in for some shopping, perhaps a pair of slacks for him, or women of a certain age lunching on their own or I’ve also seen several grandparents treating their young grandchildren to a cake.

There’s noise but it’s battened down by the low ceiling and the whirr of the air-conditioning (too cold). Tea comes in pots, and there are scones and seemingly home-made cakes.

It’s twee yet sterile, clamorous but sedate. I like drawing in there, if my ‘sitters’ are a little far away. I always draw in my small sketchbook. And I start straight away, no pondering. Sometimes it fails, sometimes it doesn’t.

It’s like trying to keep something warm, something breathing until I can dedicate more time to it. So I will just keep going, grabbing a hour here and there and hoping, waiting for that flow, that gorgeous flow of drawing when I am beyond the stultifying effects of my mind and just communicating….