Exercise 2:  Distance – linear perspective drawing and painting

Unfortunately, this exercise was overshadowed by my dislike for drawing urban scenes from photographs. I felt trapped – bad weather and not finding interesting photographs in my archives, so I stayed with the view from the terrace and made a watercolour from the photograph. I began with an underdrawing, then colorized beginning with light colours and gradually getting darker. I painted in two lengthy sessions and it felt like a chore. I wasn’t able to get away from detail and hated having to draw the myriads of windows, balconies etc. I let the painting sit for about a week and then finalized it by drawing in the metal fence of the terrace.

My feelings towards this watercolour are very mixed. On the one hand, I think it is not bad, because there is some more generosity in application of paint and treatment of detail, compared to earlier watercolours from photos. On the other hand I think I could have made much more of the motif if I could find pleasure in painting it and be more patient. I guess it is basically a psychological issue having to do with my feeling of being at the wrong place, where I’d largely prefer to live in a quiet and rural setting far away from this bustling city.

Technically, more attempts would be warranted, but mentally I can’t get over my dislike and unwillingness. The situation reminds me of what I felt while doing the drawing course, not being able to positively relate to the exercises and instructions, and a feeling of being led away from what might work for me. I’m not sure what to make out of this. For one, I’ll certainly keep trying to do what’s necessary to achieve the learning aims of the exercise. But I also need to develop an approach that permits more personal engagement. I’m not totally against drawing this city. On the contrary I often like the street views I come across on my way to work or when under way cross-town. But I can’t envision myself drawing or painting in New York’s crowded streets, so it’s all a bit difficult.

Guided reflections

To what extent have you conveyed a sense of distance? What devices have you used?

I think there’s quite some sense of distance resulting from the street prolonged towards the horizon and the size effect of high apartment buildings that become smaller and smaller towards the distance.

How has the painting element enhanced (or otherwise) the drawing?

Well it is actually the painting supplemented by the drawn fence on the terrace. The view looked nicer without the fence but I included it because it is part of my everyday experience of the view.

Can you identify further subjects that you could explore effectively in this way?

I don’t have anything particular in mind, but I think there are many interesting views of the city. If I could overcome my discomfort with drawing/painting in public and find quiet places to sit and work, why not. I seem to have missed out that we were supposed to draw in the first place and use watercolour only as a supplement, so I might try this approach in the future.

Exercise 1: Distance – preparatory drawings

I had some trouble to get going with this exercise. The main problem was that I did not feel inclined to draw urban landscape. I felt reminded of the drawing course where I was constantly directed towards subjects that didn’t interest me, and I had to overcome a lot of resistance until I was finally ready to draw. Due to cold weather, I resigned to using photos of street views, which I took off my terrace. I have all sorts of reservations against these limited views and against working from photos, but at least it’s convenient and helped me to get on with the project. Currently I fear that I’m running into the same type of motivational crisis like with the drawing course, so this was my way to avoid getting completely stuck.

Reviewing my drawings

The first sketch was the view of the opposite site of the street. I was aware that I was supposed to do a quick sketch, but couldn’t help drawing quite detailed. After half an hour I stopped and made a break to rethink my approach. In the next sketch, I tried whether I could reduce complexity and focus on simple shapes and broad outlines.

Drawing became indeed faster, but I found it difficult to depict rows of windows with the fine tip of the graphite pencil. Therefore I switched to a thick, soft tip black felt pen for the third view. Indicating rows of windows and balconies worked indeed better, but the drawing became a bit cluttered from the many dense marks. The fourth view was from a photo I made by holding the camera over the little balcony wall. I corrected the distorted verticals in the photo using photoshop. As a result, the view is as if I was standing in the air, outside the balcony, in 20m height. I used black fineliner for the drawing, and it’s the first sketch in landscape orientation, the earlier ones were all portrait. I think it’s this last sketch that would work best as a painting, because the composition is more open due to the landscape format.

Conveying a sense of space and distance

The main features that helped to create space in my drawings were diminishing size of objects, receding horizontal lines that converged to a vanishing point, and less detail in the background. My drawings are characterized by impatience and the desire to work fast. The attitude seems to work better with bold and dark media like felt pen or fineliner, whereas I feel pencil would require more consideration to work out a broader tonal range.

Maybe I will be able to engage more with drawings when I work on views that I find personally interesting. I’m not sure whether I can overcome my dislike for New York’s endless and monotonous rows of high-rise apartment buildings. I was planning to make excursions to search for more interesting places, but currently it is still too cold for drawing sessions outside.

Reflections on media

My choice of drawing media was guided by the aim to try out several different types and explore what I could do with it. I think that at my stage, I would benefit from sticking to one medium, no matter which one, explore its possibilities  and develop my mark making, before going to the next. I feel that switching media too quickly doesn’t bring me forward because I never get to the point of really working out what is possible with one particular medium. On the other hand, there is benefit in variety and trying out new things, so I’ll try to get this balanced.