I’d decided the week before that I’d drop doing the Posca/marker/graff work and work more with pencil and pen this week. That’s because I felt it was getting rather stale and becoming style over substance, the medium was taking over the subject.
The pen piece at the top is the best one I’ve done from the body (or a statue, as I found with Old Father Thames) and I love the second dip pen sketch below despite the few foreshortening issues. The 5 minute pencil sketches above I usually found more successful than many of my quick charcoal sketches.
This was all because I found a new way of working that week (for I’ve got another session to post from last week, I’m behind!) which has borne good fruit in two sessions so far. For every long pose I do a quick ‘sounding’ sketch, in pencil or charcoal to get the lay of the land, and only then I do a further dip pen piece, or more detailed pencil sketch. This seems to force me to notice more, and get the more exuberant ‘sketchy’ devils out of the way!
I still allowed myself to do a few more energetic longer pieces, as you can see from the pastel work below, but measured and more confident and exact is where I want to go. It does worries me to fight my ‘natural’ style but I think as a study it needs to be done, if painful sometimes. It feels a little like starting again?
The funny thing is people seem to love the works where I get angry, and get energetic and frantic over my more measured work, but I don’t want to rest on my laurels, I’ve done that, and as I’ve found with my dramatic ‘Posca/marker’ burn out, it’s not currently the way forward for my life drawing work. I’m sure I’ll continue to use them in the abstract drawings and paintings.
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