Creation

This piece was the major homework assignment from my life-drawing classes last year.

: We were invited to introduce a sense of context to the scene, drawing from the surroundings of model. However we were also encouraged to make the image as busy as possible, so many of the objects and surroundings here aren’t actually drawn the way they were found in the classroom. The pot plants, for example, came from the other side of the room.

: The model took up another pose and we were asked to redraw her in the image. She didn’t have to fit in the perspective or context of the scene. Some of my classmates drew the new pose over the old one. We had opportunities to add a third pose as well however I felt my image was sufficiently busy at this point.

: The image was divided into nine sections and we were given a few minutes to work up each section individually. It was interesting to see the works evolve by bringing each section to different levels of polish.

: For homework, we were asked to cut up our image and then enlarge each piece. The desired effect was to introduce some slippage and distortion.

: The new pieces would then form the basis of our work. We laid out the pieces in ways that would allow for interconnecting lines or concepts to be drawn across the image.

: Eventually I felt that trying to fit all nine pieces in wasn’t serving me well so I took a few out. Here are my first attempts to link the pieces together and pull together a concept. The drawing process is pretty stream-of-conscious from here…

: Here I introduce a bit of depth with black gauche. The image was pretty chaotic at this point as I hadn’t got in my head what I was doing yet. By blacking out a busy section I was able to get some of the clutter out of the way and concentrate on building up shapes and form.

: This step feels much more cohesive than the previous ones. I’ve worked up a good range of tones and it feels like this has some real depth and flow to it. A a little yin-yang symbol appears. It’s a little scribble that I make while I try to remind myself to stay on task. I don’t really have a theme for the image yet, so it’s an attempt to find a conceptual direction… balance again?

: The yin-yang felt poorly placed, compositionally. With reminders that this was a life-drawing class and some encouragement to “find” people and body parts in our image the yin-yang evolves into a little person. With a focal point now found I have no idea what to do with the rest of the image. I’m feeling a little lost, but I soon work out what to do…

: I find a second person in the lower sections of the image! (You may need to view the large version to see my initial face scribbles)

: Now my picture has some direction! It feels like this is turning into a story about creation – of art and of ideas. The squared shapes and edges will become picture frames and the swirling masses will become hair for my creation goddess. There’s the totally unintentional treble clef in there too.

: I try to find some way to link my upper figure to my lower one, both visually and narratively. For this image we were allowed to use white and black gauche and a single pastel colour. It feels as though the ‘magic’ here is flowing like water, so I choose blue.

: Some better lighting here. It’s funny how much the colours change under different lightings!

: Here I’m working to integrate the white from the paper sheets with the rest of the image. In some spots I blend white in the surrounding areas to integrate things and in others I just try to match things tonally.

: The completed piece! I had been unhappy with the straight-down blue line in the image which ran counter to all of the nice flowing lines so I played with the shapes a bit. I could have polished this a bit more but I was feeling a bit nervous about how I’d tackle some areas and felt they’d probably be left ambiguous instead of introducing details that might ultimately just confuse the whole thing. Part of what I like is just the simplicity in some of the bold blocks of black.