Session Three: drawing

Only half a day on drawing, the afternoon was to be on theory. I have to say my heart sank rather when Tony once again put out a still life on the floor with a very similar set of objects which we were to draw using charcoal in much the same way as we had in the first two sessions. This is not a still life than inspires and the way the objects were set out today left acres of empty space so finding a decent composition was particularly challenging:

There was the usual struggle placing the objects in the drawing. Once again the rubbing away, left traces of where I had been. Not quite as stimulating the third time and I was worried that this would be a rather unproductive session. but two things emerged. The first was Tony's admonishment to explore the empty space in the composition: but if we were going to do that, we needed to make sure it was a deliberate decision, put more space into the drawing, make a feature of it. In this case we were helped with the white sheets. So that helped me find a composition that was over half empty space.

The second thing that happened was he encouraged us to look at and make suggestions and Steve came up to mine and was forthright in feeling that the drawing could be re-framed: get closer fill the sheet even more. Below shows where we got too. Again rubbing out the bit we didn't want. and then re drawing it to fill the whole sheet.

There would have been a time when I could not have countenanced starting the drawing again to make it fill the whole sheet, but these sessions have, as i have said before, encouraged me to feel happy to re arrange and transform a picture at late stage. This is good lesson: I have often get stuck with a drawing that clearly wasn't working but that didn't stop me from battling on and living with its problems. I am learning to feel the same way with my oil painting. I suspect this is a big lesson.
 So here is the finished drawing. Not a huge development from the finished drawings from week one and two, but I am interested in the way they have become more abstract and I do think they have given me a vocabulary that I can develop later in the course with other media: