had no plans to sketch outdoors today, but windy weather and turbulent skies beckoned... one of four studies, this one is in graphite and conte pastel... very breezy, soil from the recently ploughed fields gathered up into brief dust storms (no rain for weeks), clouds moving laterally very fast, sun intermittent, quite dark, slithers of light... a day best described as bracing... on the beaufort scale maybe a strong breeze, umbrella use becomes difficult...
[sketchbook... another cloud study]
[cloud study... detail 1 ]
[cloud study... detail 2]
[cloud study... detail 3]and lastly, the original sketchbook page; what a little judicious cropping can do to an untidy image....
[cloudy study... in sketchbook]
cloudbusting
i purchased a large format landscape sketchbook this week - it's eco-friendly recycled paper too... took half an hour or so to sketch these, late afternoon... i used graphite stick and loosened with some water and reworked... the paper buckled a bit but it's just a sketchbook, not a portfolio of finished drawings...
[sketchbook... cloud study 1...]
[sketchbook... cloud study 2...]
[sketchbook... cloud study 3...]clouds are both frustrating and interesting to draw... they slowly morph as you draw them, so that you have to rework what you started according to what has changed, and then the marks become more gestural, more about exploring direction and depth of tone than a truthful rendition - a drawing as a distillation of subtle movement, they become something quite different to the frozen image i had in mind... i started at a point in the middle sky which seemed most interesting.. perhaps a lack of time made me pursue much broader mark-making so that these are not cloudy skies; a small section of the sky was used as a visual starting point but they evolved into something much more expressive and abstract.... all the time i was drawing these i had the lyrics of the doors song in my mind - break on through to the other side, as if trying to find my way out of abstraction rather than a way in....more cloud studies... graphite and water... taken with low-power flash, so a bit of burn-out on softer tones... am beginning to learn that time of day and type of cloud (the weather) determines if it stays reasonably still or changes very rapidly...
[cloud study 4 - very quickly done]
[cloud study 5 - a bit more time taken on this one]
[cloud study 6]
[cloudy study 7]these are a little too scratchy, not soft or hazy enough, rushing - light changing very quickly, last one completed about 5.30pm, with sun very low in sky, a bright glimmer of yellow gold in the swathes of violet blue grey, ... found and then lost, the moment gone... also noted that i am working far too big, coarse marks for size of sketch pad, and thus run out of paper... either i buy a large roll of drawing paper and work on the ground, or limit myself to small scale studies using colour pencils and watercolour; the former sounds more exciting...
sunday sketchbook
on the drive home, i stopped in a scrubby overgrown lay-by to sketch for a while... using my handbag-sized sketchook, it's only 14cm x 10cm (as you can see from the pen in the photograph)... i used an indelible waterproof fineliner pen, which requires a certain discipline in drawing... no erasing and no smudging for softer tones...
[sketchbook... view through a gap in the hedge...]
[sketchbook... looking down the lane...]
[sketchbook... corner of field with trees and ditch]there doesn't seem to be any particular reason for this activity; they are not preliminary studies... i am finding this type of drawing very therapeutic, de-stressing, a moment of peace and calm, quiet me time... perhaps it is the lead-in i need into doing some etchings...next week, i hope for more unsettled weather... i want to hone my skills in drawing clouds...