DRAWING
the coffee vendor's stall in Dewsbury yesterday made me realise how much I've
missed getting out to draw. I hardly ever go anywhere
with the express purpose of drawing, nor do I go to fresh places that have
the capacity to surprise me. Drawing is a way of exploring the world
yet I go around the
same little
circuit snatching the odd sketch when my other tasks are ticked off. There's
nothing wrong with drawing the same subject again and again but as I've been
sitting at my computer for almost the whole of August, I'm ready to see somewhere
other than my desk and the familiar scenes within five miles of home.
It's been soul-destroying in the sense of 'soul'
as 'the vital principle'
corresponding with the Greek aiolos meaning 'quick-moving, easily
moved'. Soul has also come to mean 'deep feeling, sensitivity, esp. as an aesthetic
quality; zest, spirit' (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary). I feel
because of the way I've plugged away this summer at my Sherlock Holmes text
and at the same time
got
more
drawn
into the
business
of geological
conservation that my zest and spirit have suffered.
As we walked
back from Dewsbury along the towpath, I tried to work out how I could get
myself back into
regular
drawing.
Small is Beautiful
My little part-colour Sushi Sketchbooks are difficult
to produce but my recent Walks booklets in black and white line
in A5 format are a dream to print. I felt that with the second booklet on Newmillerdam I
came up with a way of drawing that suited the medium. Technical limitations
might be seen as a constraint but they also present a challenge. In making
the most of the possibilities of a given medium you can often express more.
It's the principle of 'small is beautiful'. If that wasn't so then waxworks
would be the most moving form of sculpture and laser/firework,
smoke & mirrors rock concerts would be the most moving form of musical performance.
Well, they could be, I expect, but they can also be a bit overblown; an emotional
binge.
I was reminded yesterday of my weekend drawing with Danny
Gregory and, a year later, of a weekend drawing with his friend (and mine)
'hobo-artist' Dan
Price. In his Moonlight Chronicles Dan limits himself almost
exclusively to black and white line, punctuated by photographs here and there.
Maybe it's
time that I set off doing something similar to refresh myself, something that
I could reproduce in crisp black and white within the constraints of desktop
publishing.
Ruskin on Line
'The power to be obtained,' Ruskin urges his students in The
Elements of Drawing, 'is that of drawing an even line slowly and in
any direction; all dashing lines, or approximations to penmanship, are bad.
The pen should, as it were, walk slowly over the ground, and you should be
able at any moment to stop it, or turn it in any other direction, like a
well-managed horse.'
It think a spell of doing line drawings would be good for my
soul. I love the marks you can make with Japanese brush and bamboo pen but
these chunky lines can hide a multitude of sins. With line drawing - as in
my wobbly drawing of our television (left) - there's nowhere to hide.
I'm just finishing reading through the entire opus of Tintin stories
and I'm humbled and astonished by the simplicity and control of line in some
of the drawings by Hergé and his team. Tintin in
Tibet, which
as near as we get to Hergé's soul, is still my favourite with The
Calculus Affair my favourite amongst the road movie/comedy thriller stories.
It has the pace of a Hitchcock film such as North by North-west.
Chronicles v. Sushi Sketchbooks
I
notice that Dan Price is now offering Moonlight Chronicles, issues
1 - 50 as a boxed set. He's just reached issue 60.
I'm envious of Dan's relentless energy and determination, he
goes to great efforts not to get stuck in the kind of ruts I find myself in
but I'm delighted that Danny Gregory has given my own modest 5
sketchbook offer a mention on his Everyday
Matters website:
'They
are among
my
favorite
possessions
and
I
heartily
recommend them as examples of the journaling art at its peak.'