Wanderlust 2024 - weeks thirty-three to forty - Drawing

 The Drawing theme has been an interesting one, with some weeks I enjoyed much more than others.  

This first week in the theme was about choosing a painting and then removing parts of it to add our own mark, tracing over the shapes.  I chose this Waterhouse girl and kept her head, hands and feet but then added to her sleeves and dress.

Week thirty-four found us drawing with different pencils - H through to 6B in my case, although I used 2B most. We looked at the work of Francoise Gilot, who was a muse to Picasso as well as his partner for ten years.  A blending stump (which I hadn't really used that much before) was used to create the shadows and shading and I was pleased with my results.

I loved using photographs and drawing with a waterproof pen in a loose style, before adding watercolours.  Haddon Hall on the left, my front door on the right.  This was a lesson from Kate Crane, who I am a fan of.

We had to draw a self-portrait in pencil crayon for the following week and I did not enjoy that at all. I don't like seeing myself in photos and then to have to draw myself too - ugh!  I wasn't happy with the end result, so covered it with gesso and then covered that with tracing paper and marks.  It is there on the left hand side, but you can't really see it anymore, which is a blessing!  It's my 'Branwell' portrait (the famous one Branwell Bronte painted of himself and his sisters and then painted himself out. You can see it here.)

Drawing a tree using inks and a bamboo pen and sticks and then adding in crayons was the next week.  Not one of my favourites.

Illustrating a list of things we could choose from various prompts was much more up my street.  We had two colours and could layer them up to add shadows as needed.  

We gathered leaves and flowers from our gardens, or went on a walk and then used repetition of shapes in different sizes to create these botanical-looking things. It was all about being loose and not over thinking.  I like the swirly background I made.

The final week was the 'Artful Musings' where an artist talks about their life and art.  They usually show a piece of their art which can be used as inspiration.  However, this was botanicals again, so I decided to keep with the drawing theme and try an exercise from Sketchbook Revival this year.  We used a viewfinder (2 x 2 inches) to locate interesting images and text from a magazine and these were cut out and stuck onto the journal page.  We then turned the page upside down and drew what we saw.  We could then add colour to the images. It was very freeing, as I was looking at shapes and lines in the images, so didn't get hung up on trying to make the drawing look like a coat or whatever it was.  

Here it is the right way up. 

We now move to the final theme this year, which is Alternatives.  We shall see what that brings...