I started experimenting with frottage and found a lot of different textures at work and home.

I tried pastel, hb pencil and charcoal for these experiments and found pencil gave the best definition. There were some interesting patterns on the wall of my car tyre somewhere I would never normally have looked. The concrete reminds me of a lunar landscape seen from above or maybe alien skin. I found that I enjoyed discovering textures this way and if I can recreate them using other media I can see how this practice could give my mark making far more scope.

I began collecting a couple of items with different textures namely coffee granules and a fluffy knitted jumper to begin experimenting with  and wasn’t overly happy with the results.

 

With the coffee granules I thought applying ink then sprinkling salt onto the ink pressing it into the paper and once the ink dried scraping away the salt would leave a granular pattern…it didn’t work I just ended up with a lumpy black shape. The pencil  line worked better but a little boring. The woollen fabric which had pulled threads in areas to give a fluffy texture was a little more successful and I think the white out over black ink was interesting as to me it seems to give an idea of layers better than pencil alone.

The black orange smudge was supposed to be the light and dark ridges of a woollen cushion cover but I soon realised that I need to understand pastel a lot better than I do at the moment. It does give a nice streaky effect when you smudge it though.

Finally I tried a wood pattern, a plastic bottle and then just allowed myself a little playtime making marks. One set of marks I really liked was from dipping an old battered toothbrush into ink and the dancing the edge over the page it gives a crazy spiky almost grass like effect.

What Have I Discovered?

I need to learn more about pastel techniques to use them effectively and have discovered some useful tutorial videos on the web which I will study and practice this week.

I think frottage is a good way to discover new textures to incorporate into the work.

Experimentation can lead to unexpected results which may be useful later.

I was apprehensive approaching this exercise coming from a more comic/cartoon approach to drawing trying something abstract like capturing emotion in a drawing is very much outside my comfort zone. I did,however, sign up for this course to improve my drawing and widen my experience of it so I steeled myself and boldly struck out into the unknown. The first emotion I decided to tackle was “Calm” with very mixed results.

Once I engaged with the feeling decided on what calm meant to me. A gentle smooth focus like a wave no sharp corners.  I chose a charcoal stick, stick and ink, a sharpie marker, and a soft pastel as my tools for this assignment.  In the main I believe I achieved this except for the stick and ink drawing which left me feeling anything but calm as I had precious little control over the tool I was using to apply the ink so gentle curves were out of the question. I decided to change my interpretation of calm to mean a single dot of focus in a sea of chaos…I don’t think it works very well but I did learn that a new medium can force you by it’s very nature to reinterpret your ideas. I was happiest with the charcoal and pastel drawings as It allowed me to introduce soft tones into the work and to me soft (soft not weak) is another facet of calm.

Apart from the sharpie this is the first time for decades that I have used materials other than a pencil or pen and ink …it was fun.

I think I’ll tackle Anger next.

Before approaching this assignment I must admit I was stressing about what materials to use. In the end I settled on salt on the back of an old sketch book. I had fun pushing the salt around and soon found an image taking shape. It turned out to be a path leading to a house maybe indicative of the new path I have just started.

I found not being invested in the outcome as it was only a temporary drawing interesting as it allowed me to enjoy the process more.