watching a live dance /drama performance and making observational drawings/sketches from them
To make an exciting start to my project, I began with watching a drama and dance group perform in the studios in college, and sketch and draw them from observation. This task was challenging to do but was inspiration I needed to start seeing how quickly I could produce interesting and lively pieces of work and that not everything has to be to a perfect standard, it's all down to interpretation.
I used black felt marks and contrasting coloured pastels and chalks to sketch continuous line drawings of the performers moving in their activities. The fluidness/freeness of sketching people whilst they were moving allowed me to capture this energy in my own drawings and give them a new, fresh feel.
To improve on this further, I would like to import these drawings into Photoshop/Lightroom and edit the pictures of the drawings and manipulate them all into something new. I would also like to make use of the selection tools in Photoshop to extract shapes/colours and sections from the drawings and evolve new ideas from them.
(THE IDEA FOR DOING OBSERVATIONAL DRAWINGS OF PEOPLE WAS TO PRACTISE HOW I COULD CAPTURE PEOPLE IN THEIR OWN ENVIRONMENT, EVEN WHEN THEY'RE MOVING. THIS TECHNIQUE WOULD BE HELPFUL FOR ME WITH MY IDEA TO CAPTURE MY FAMILY AND FRIENDS LINKING TO ME AND WHAT THEY DO. PRACTISING HOW I COULD DO THIS HAS IMPROVED MY WORK TREMENDOUSLY AND GIVEN ME CONFIDENCE IN BEING ABLE TO CAPTURE WHAT I SEE IN DIFFERENT WAYS/METHODS RATHER THAN JUST THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY OR TRYING TO MAKE THE DRAWINGS LOOK PICTURE PERFECT AND PHOTO REALISTIC. WITH THIS TEHCNIQUE, I WOULD LIKE TO PRACTICE OBSERVATIONAL DRAWINGS OF MY FAMILY AND FRIENDS CLOSEST TO ME AND DEVELOP THEM DIGITALLY AND THROUGH MIXED MEDIA TECHNIQUES. RELATING BACK TO MY TITLE 'LINK' IT'LL HELP ME WITH A WAY OF RECORDING THE PEOPLE THEMSELVES AND WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE AND THEIR ENVIRONMENT.)
- G
