Drawing the Space with Andrew Vass

It has been a long time since I have taken a drawing class.  As I clicked the submit button to register and pay for Andrew Vass' class at Firstsite I was hoping that I would come away from the class with some new ideas, having tried approaches that I didn't know or had not used in a while. I was looking to be shaken up.  Apparently Andrew stopped in a layby and collected the agricultural material he had us draw from in the first session. I liked the chaos and having to make order of objects that didn't make sense.  We had short drawing sessions of 15 minutes or so, materials weren't brilliant, but those obstacles interfere with 'knowing' and I like that feeling of being overwhelmed.

Andrew mentioned that he thought we should be applying some of what we did in the sessions during the week.  I spent about 15 mins working big, A2, with ink in a chaotic part of the studio, no mixing tray, a bucket of water and jar of poor quality ink, from The Works.

This week we were asked to bring in two objects. One was to be something important to us and personal, the other something random, perhaps to juxtapose.  As I had been working on unfurling, I brought along my African matchbox book and the 'foil' object was in fact a rice packet - foil/plastic.

Andrew had us photocopy these in a variety of ways, but the copier made things quite black so we abandoned that. Instead we drew our 'special' object from memory.  Urgh. I guess I need to be told to look intently.  My drawing was really quite non-specific, but the process was interesting and revealing. 

We were asked to scale up our objects on to really big paper (A1).  I had brought some pastels but only used the ones in my charcoal tin, a very limited palette, so tried to get the feel of colour as well as a range of tones.  Before beginning I knew I could never finish in 15 mins, so I just tried to follow the rules, 'work from the inside out'.

Our next task was to again work from the inside out, Andrew came around and poured ink on our paper and we were asked to use the blob and a medium sized brush to draw our second object - the foil packet. My paper was on vertical drawing board so the ink ran down and pooled in the lip.

A2

Like the week before, there was some resistence to Andrew's process driven session.  Most of the people in the class want to emerge better artists. One woman was quite stressed that the ink wasn't working for her. My advice was to banish the idea that she would produce a masterpiece and just have fun with the challenge. What does a 'better artist' look like?

Finally we were given the task of drawing one or more objects using ink again but we could apply it ourselves!  Andrew suggested I use two blobs of two colours and to work outwards.  I placed the photocopies under my objects.

A2

A2

Today I took the black and white ink drawing and added other ink and gouache to it. I decided to use the rice packet, my iron and a piece of fused plastic as motifs. I had never worked pastel over ink, and liked the energy the ink had, so used it as an undercoat. I loved the happy accident of some orange under the blue and kept thinking Whistler as I chose bits of the background to draw out.

Painting from mail

Just before stuffing one of those clear envelopes with something for Marie, I unfurled the upcycled mylar - a Lloyds bank advertisement, cut down to make an accordion book, and placed it on yesterday's collage color study. "I could paint from that," I thought. 

small painting from new model

Every morning I get up and make a list of things I really hope I will do, but my discipline stops there.  I do things all day but if something takes my fancy, I will not stick to the list. Some kind of response to Monday's new model not been on my list but if the list said 'paint' 'draw' 'monotype', I might have read 'return to that model.' The thing that has been on my list since H and F have been back at uni has been colour studies and I haven't ticked it on one single day.   I don't think this is finished, yet, but I have enjoyed stroking colours of paint next to colours of paint in a pastel approach, maybe it counts as a colour study?

A new Model

2 min

2 min

2 min

2 min

2 X 2 min

2 min

10 min

10 min

10 min

10 min

 I remembered to bring my smaller pad with under-painted pages and attempted to apply my summer drawing approach to the model.  Looking at Vuillard before the session evident.

Loosening up

10X12

12X18

After a long hiatus from painting (2+ months), it's fun to see where I begin. I approached the start by beginning as freely as I could, with a loose idea in my head and some drawings to set me off.  As ever I feel like I can't remember what I've learned in the past, which may be a good thing.  I think I need lots of little canvases for the moment, a few colour studies and lots of drawing.

15 minute sketches

Bread to bake, so had half an hour spare, en route to drawing.  I purloined this pad and fixed pastel colours on each page with rubbing alcohol just before the timer sounded.  Next the task was to use about 5 pastels to record some part of a scene at the dock, primarily using colour in 15 minutes. I want to do three of these evry day until the book is filled. The pad pages are roughly 4X4.5".

Below a glimpse of what happens at the dock at night, written 31st July, 2013.

Night Swimming in Maine

Limb-tangle of night jumpers

pouring their bodies rapid fire

into the sea.

‘It’s a party down there,’

says the birthday girl,

breathlessly.

Light pools on bikini shoulders.

Wring of towel.

Barnacle tiptoe up stairs.

And squeals as water

peels from backs,

Labrador-style.

We listen from the house

Imagining our smaller frames

Stepping off the dock into the night air.

Light on table

What could be better than spending the morning edging a beautiful garden, midday the time to record light on a table, followed by a walk to the end of the island and back under the ripple of a hundred flags with my niece, Molly? Peter Lloyd Jones http://www.peterlloyd-jones.co.uk (who I happened upon painting the activity around the church) agreed with me that Cranberry Island is paradise.