With sketchbook in hand, go on a journey and document the experience.
Depending on your circumstances this might be a regular commute from one end of town to the other on the bus, a short holiday, or a day trip. Wherever you decide to go, produce at least three drawings or illustrations that say something about your experience of setting out on your journey, your destination, and your travel home. You may want to use more drawings to illustrate some of the stages in between.
Choosing the Journey
The journey that I chose for this task was a not very exciting trip to the library. I generally visit every three weeks and as I did not have any other ‘interesting’ trips lined up, I decided it would be an ideal choice to allow me to get on with the exercise.
I chose to use a 0.2 fineliner for these sketches as I have found that working in pen requires me to be more confident in my mark making and takes away the constant temptation of using an eraser, as is the case when using pencils. Along with the pen, I took a small, A5 sized sketchbook. Each drawing took up about half the size of one page.
The Journey
The first drawing I did pre-journey, at home, and it shows my shoes ready to go walking. I am really trying to improve my depiction of clothing so looked closely at the folds and shadows of the trousers. At the same time, I wanted these sketches to be quite rough as they were recording a brief moment in time.
The next sketch was of my home from the opposite side of the road. I was quite pleased with this drawings as I have always generally avoided drawing buildings in detail and, for a quick sketch, this one worked out quite well. I also think the use of hatching really helped to enhance the 3d element of the building.
The next opportunity I had to sketch was fairly near the library. There is a corner bench on which someone has placed a wooden carving of a cat. I think I was less pleased with this drawing as the perspective of the bench and bricks is skewed. However, I did sketch quite quickly and I think I have managed to communicate the layout fairly well. I also tried to vary the texture of the different elements of the picture so they could be easily differentiated.
My next drawing was one of the most challenging as it covered a complete street view, which was slightly overwhelming. I found myself focusing more on the detail of the right of the composition, which is were the library is located, just giving an indication of the appearance of opposite side of the road and the far background.
It really information overload for me and I felt very self-conscious standing there drawing. I tried to really concentrate on getting the distance between different visual landmarks in the composition fairly accurate – I think I was semi-successful in this endeavour, but there was just so much to take in I found it quite tricky.
As I arrived at the library a short time before it opened, I used the opportunity to sketch the closed entrance doors. I was really pleased with this drawing and I feel it is a fairly accurate depiction of the doors. I found it quite a relief to draw something more contained and static compared to the previous sketch.
Once inside the library I took a photo of the self-service machine which I then drew at home. I did not feel comfortable drawing it from life, standing in the library, as it was quite busy. However, I treated the reference photo as if I was still library, by limiting the amount of time and therefore focused on adding greater detail to the foreground and giving just an impression of the background.
Following the previous image I decided to do an additional drawing to add to the narrative of the journey. I sketched my hand holding my library card. It was also a good excuse to practice drawing a hand.
Once I left the library, I drew another challenging street view. I feel very embarrassed about my drawings of cars! They look exactly the same as when I used to try drawing cars in primary school. This is not a very accurate representation of the reality of the street – there was even more visual information bombarding me than the previous street view sketch.
Once I reached home, I made a pile of my books and drew them for the final sketch of the series. I found this much more enjoyable than the outdoor sketching experience.
Final Thoughts
I found this exercise to be really beneficial for drawing variety of objects from life. I was not particularly looking forward to this one prior to undertaking it as it involved drawing in public, but I think the resulting drawings are fairly decent and there is a reasonably cohesive narrative running through them as a group.
My confidence with drawing using a pen appears to be gradually growing and I also found myself regularly making considered decisions about what marks I could make to differentiate between objects, which I felt was fairly successful.
In hindsight, I could have done a couple of sketches showing more of the library. e.g. the rows of bookshelves, and also tried a couple more street views during the journey, but overall I feel it was a good effort.