What happens when I draw…
I initially observe, then after much observation, I find the elements I have observed make their way into the abstraction. Then I stop observing, and allow those elements to bed themselves in. Then comes a period of repetition. After a lot of repletion and experimentation into materials, line, colour and so on, changes occur… a moment of mutation… where suddenly the drawing looks weird. Like a word does when you write it out lots of times and forget how to spell it.
This is what happened with the latest drawing. I had use odd colours, not in my usual palette: a walnut ink, and a terre verte watercolour (which I haven’t had much success with, it’s a flabby colour) I think I was harking back to the original observed colours rather than using my usual combinations of Paynes grey, yellow ochre, or alizarin crimson (lately I have used a lot of this red on its own)
I’ve not been 100% happy with the giant watercolour paper either. Although it is heavy – 400gsm – the surface of it is nowhere near as robust as the Bockingford watercolour rolls I was using before, despite that being 300gsm. So it’s not the weight that matters, clearly.
What I have ended up with is a drawing that I’m not completely sure I like. I like bits of it, but the whole composition is a bit unsettled, unresolved. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I just need to work out how I did it and whether it really works.
