Don't Be Afraid of Drawing!
With practice anyone can learn to draw. I was never remarkable at it at school, but I enjoy trying to come to grips with it in retirement, and it's satisfying to be able to give some sort of approximation of what one sees.
This includes taking part in some of the free local events that encourage people to draw. From time to time there are nationally sponsored sessions called 'The Big Draw', and some of these have been happening during this past half-term. I have been to a couple, the first at Norwich Castle, where I walked around (also visiting a new exhibition) and then chose a painting to draw. I wanted something that was not too complicated in construction which would need all day to complete.
I'd considered some of the teapots in the Teapot Gallery, given my interest in ceramics, but finally chose a work by Norwich School painter Joseph Stannard of Yarmouth Sands. This showed a fish catch being unloaded on the beach, with just enough people to provide a challenge, and a simple background. It was also situated in a quiet corridor where not many visitors walked past. I've developed a fairly thick skin about sitting drawing or painting in a public place where strangers may come and look at what I'm doing. I'm only too aware of my limitations, but my desire to make progress with drawing is stronger than any fear of embarrassment. Still, one might as well avoid the most crowded routes.
A few years ago I couldn't have imagined being able to draw human figures, but I'm gaining in confidence and learning to observe, and to see different parts of a painting in relation to the placing of other parts. I'm getting better at this, except that I did make one big mistake where two figures who should have overlapped didn't because I'd positioned one of them wrongly. Yet I was quite pleased with the result, and the museum staff seemed impressed, saying my drawing showed a confident line and that my figures had character in their faces. They were supposed to mount my work, along with that of other adults and children, in an abstract arrangement, but somehow wires got crossed between different staff and they didn't.
The second 'Big Draw' event I went to was at Strangers' Hall, where I copied a portrait of a lady in Tudor dress and a voluminous ruff. Unlike in the Castle, there were no qualified art instructors to give advice, though I have known them to be there, and once I went there to draw a live model in costume. The elderly attendant said that he had himself never been able to draw, but I recommended starting to learn later in life. We were assembled in the cellars, where the image I was copying was on a poster on which several images had been superimposed, which seemed an odd thing to offer to amateur artists as a model. Wishing it to be more realistic, I went upstairs to where the real portrait hung in the Great Hall and set up my chair to make my drawing there. Again one didn't have to mind people milling around as they entered and bought their tickets.
Between these two events I attended a 2-day pastel workshop at Wensum Lodge with Liz Balkwill, who was the first person to teach me watercolours as well as pastels. There hasn't been a regular pastel course I could attend in Norwich, and I've tended just to go to Liz's half-term workshops - I wrote about a similar one in February. Sometimes the subject is still lifes and sometimes portraits of people, and this one was concerned with still lifes of fruits. Over the two days we worked on different surfaces and used different techniques. Next year she plans to put on a regular monthly 1-day workshop in pastels, which will allow us to advance further.
I particularly like pastel-drawing, although it's a messy business and the work is easily smudged. We were encouraged to make good use of darks, although pastel sets do not usually include many really dark colours, and black has to be resorted to in the mixture. We build up different layers of colour, sometimes alternating cool and warm shades, so that an overall velvety effect is aimed at. Our tutor thought I'd made good progress in this work, softening the edges of the fruit and making the colours sing. An especially tricky part of the first subject was a pot of home-made jam with a brown paper lid tied with some fluffy-looking string. Our tutor recommended squinting so that we only tried to convey the main areas of light and dark rather than trying to put in every detail.
As the weather was quite fine, we had pleasant picnic lunches each day on the riverside terrace, and renewed old acquaintances. One of the people who'd also been on the Majorca painting holiday and I showed each other photos we'd taken there, including one she'd taken of me without my knowing it, looking very serious and rather worried as I painted away on the seafront! Later in the afternoon we witnessed from the studio window the drama of a fisherman landing an extremely big fish from the river, and then kindly slipping it back into the water.
I wasn't as satisfied with what I'd done with the colours on the 2nd day. I think I'd included too many cool layers of underpainting, which dulled the colours; also my shadows were too heavy, and later my husband pointed out that the orange of my pumpkin was too close to the orange shade of my copper ewer. (He never believes in insulting me with false praise, and is quite an astute critic! The same goes for my poems).
Two days of standing at an easel were clearly not enough exercise, and I managed to find the strength after the first day for 'Fitness for the Over-50's' and after the second day for the ballet class that Jane has revived now that she has convalesced from her hip-replacement. And I felt very fit on it!
So it's good to keep drawing, although I don't practice as much as I should. Really one should draw every day, even if it's just for 5 minutes, but I haven't organised myself into that yet. Perhaps I should fit a 5-minute slot into my timetable for each day. And if I can draw, anyone can.
For those of you interested in symmetrical landmarks, this is my 150th post on this blog!