Just back from a two day workshop with Paul Newland, thanks to the New English Art Club. Paul's course description intrigued me. However, it was with some trepidation that I went to London, the day after getting back from Maine, to draw plein air somewhere near the Mall Galleries.
This is a 2-day workshop about investigation and exploration, it will take place near or within St James's, with the Mall Galleries Learning Centre as a base. The aim is to record your evolving perceptions of place. The space, changing light, architecture, traffic and human activity may all be seen in numerous ways and in the course of these these two days we want you to explore your own vision of these phenomena. This may be done with numerous studies, or with one large work. You may enrol for one day only if you wish. There will be a plenery session at lunchtime and at the end of each working day.
After speaking to Paul, my goal was to make a series of what I will call 'gestures' to establish a sense of place that I will work from to make a small painting back in my studio.
I stood across from a few dynamic streets so there was a stream of traffic between me and the subject. I learned quickly about how big the closest buses are and how much they obscure what I am trying to see.
Paul wanted us to consider 'space' first and although he asked us to use line to begin with, I used pastel. Without even deciding to, I edited much of what I saw. The goal was to get many done quickly.
Next I moved onto light and what I noticed was that the sky was the lightest area - a little swathe of blue might appear, but the sky was mainly white with grey punctuation. The cream coloured stone of the buildings and the column appeared darker than I might expect. I limited my palette in both cases as the light seemed to require that. I never felt finished and I have included everything I did over the course of the two days here, even the things that don't work!
All of the drawings are contained in an altered sketchbook I'd prepared the day before: A Silent Traveler in London by Chiang Yee. Most measure 12 x 18 cm - with one taking two pages, so 24 x 18cm.
Paul wanted us to capture elements of human activity and traffic as well as the architecture and folliage that characterised the space. He encouraged us to experiment, to gather a range of drawings. As a countryside dweller and never having drawn plein air in a bustling place, suggesting, let alone pinning down a bus, a car, a person on their way somewhere else was thrilling, exhausting and difficult. I tried tone, I tried line and I tried colour. Much of time I was in full struggle mode trying to juggle all the competing demands. I wished I knew more about perspective and spent lots of time holding my pastels up to check the acute angles of the roads, realising the scale was all wrong or the distance between things didn't make sense.
All the individuals in the group were drawing in different places and Paul had to find them. He found me quite easily, I think, and he and I had a series of short talks about different directions I might explore and he helped me to see where something didn't work.
I have to tell you that to make the sight of me even more comical than simply a scruffy middle aged woman with a trolley and a table easel drawing in a book (with lots of people, traffic and delivery carts going by), I was wearing two sets of glasses, one on top of the other in order to see the scene. I believe this version of me is not an intimidating version, as I had many curious onlookers and quite a few conversations. One young man took a panoramic video of me, my subject and all the chaos. Another handed me his phone and asked me to type my name in it.
The person I spoke with longest was a man named Skye from Bejing. He designs museums and was in the UK for a month. He had been to Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London at least. He showed me some gorgeous photos of museum art, his parents and their acupunture images. We spoke twice, once before he played a game of table tennis with a man who found him on the street and then again after. I nearly missed my train…
Skye noticed that my book had Chinese writing in it, which you can see in the drawing below on the top page. This thrilled him! We'll see what I can make of all of this… I'm not feeling very confident but Paul in standing by to give me input.
I took a slightly later train back. After dinner I noticed the sun setting over the hedge - of course the light faded fast but it felt good to position my easel right outside the front door and to observe my non-urban view,the sun going down behind the hedge for a short time, pastels in hand, no head torch this time.
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