People and Place part 3: Obseravtion - Topography - Where to draw. What to draw. 3.0

So, I decided for this exercise that the 20 or more sketches I wanted to be from the journey to my nans house in the Wirral. I’ve documented this journey in the scrapbook exercise, and I just think it’s a journey I do quite often, and I travel past many different buildings and people and other things so it's handy to document.

I sketched a start point which was the view from my house to the end at the street where the bus stop is. I drew this when I was walking so I had to draw really fast, the picture below is a pen sketch that took a bit longer of the bus seats in front of me. When I was on the bus, I realised that I’d forgot my sharpener, so I had to almost ration my pencils for the rest of the journey. My toolkit I think in future drawing exercises a bit fo colour would be good as these drawing can come across as a bit serious or flat even boring even. Some coloured pens or pencil may give a bit more variety too.

 

The next sketch on the top of the page is of a building/ row of shops on the bus journey, I really liked the pattern of the bricks, and this is how many of the building on this road looked, with small windows and shop signs and the entrance on the bottom. This one I had to almost take a mental note in remember key features like the patter of the brick and how many windows and I think I caught everything. The lower sketch is a popular building called St Georges Hall that I could see from the bus stop, the pace of this sketch I initially wanted to take my time on it but then I thought of some of the artists I had researched called George Butler and Olivier Kugler who do reportage sketches of locations an leave building and other things as an unfinished outline and just finish certain parts of the image.

Another landmark of the city is the radio city tower that stretches quite high over the city and is almost in the centre of town. I took a little more time for this one because I wanted to get the proportions right

 

Halfway through the journey in the city centre my mum went shopping for a present while I sat waited outside an took a bit longer of a sketch session of the street ahead on the left side. I think buildings are so complex and detailed I found it a bit challenging to get the number of windows and distances between things right as well as getting the perspective right. i did a similar technique again of simplifying the image the further away it got, and I like how it turned out. Underneath Is simple just a few pigeons eating crumbs off the floor, people seem to hate the pigeons in town but I like them, its interesting to see how they behave and they’re little head bobs when they walk.

I wanted to include this next building cause its interesting, I didn’t have any colours but one of the costa coffee buildings there is a large row of colourful tubes that go from small to tall and small again wrapping round the circular part of the building. I tried to make certain tubes darker and lighter, but my pencil end was getting quite blunt now. I didn't really worry about the rest of the environment just the tubes.

 

                                                    Underground waiting for the train

 The queen victoria monument ^^^

 

This sketch is from a stop at a train station called green lane that still has it old bricks and groves in the wall; they are very high walls to which makes it quite dark which is cool. Under the shelter was a grit bin. After getting off the train we have to take a short walk to my nans house where we walk through a shortcut down an alley. In this alley there is a skull smoking spray painted on the wall that I really think is cool, it’s almost in the style of really old Disney cartoons.

 The next two pages are random snapshot of my nans house, it’s so full of ornaments, a rocking chair, nik naks, flowers empty vases and a sweet jar and so on. I drew the chair in the corner, a vase, and another pattern of a vase. I asked my nan if she had a sharpener and luckily, she had an eyebrow pencil sharpener in her make up bag which did the job but left for a very uneven sharping of the top of the pencil.

On the table in front of my there’s always new flowers in there every time I visit, and this bunch were really pretty and fresh I just had to draw them. This sketch took me the longest cause I wanted to include as much detail I could with the pen.

Finally, these last sketches had to be quick as they were sketched from the car of my brother who wanted to get home fast. So, these were me relying on quick mental notes.

For the fast drawings I have already researched these artists:

https://www.veronicalawlor.com/

 http://lucindarogers.co.uk/

For the slower drawings

https://davidgentleman.com/

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/paul-hogarth-1299

http://www.olivierkugler.com/

I had a look at these 3 artists 2 I already researched in a previous research task. I think if I had coloured pencils with me I could have replicated a lot more of some of their styles, carrying watercolour an a paintbrush or too. David Gentleman who worked with and watercolour and pencil/pen inspired me to illustrated the flowers in the vase in similar sketchy way to his considering I had no colours or paints.