I've been an affiliate member of the Reading Guild of Artists since I met quite a few of them through the Urban Sketchers Reading group. Their 89th Annual Exhibition at the Reading Museum opens on February 27th 2019. Apart from exhibiting (if you are an exhibiting member), they run events, share opportunities and have various ways of joining in. They also run RGA Fridays which are fortnightly workshops during Autumn and Spring term-times and I went for the first time to attend "Enlargement to Abstraction with Cath Baldwin"
This intrigued me as I don't draw big - the largest being A4 as that's the biggest I'll do for urban sketching. Often my sketches are in tiny sketchbooks or A5/square notebooks that can fit into my handbag or pocket. I imagined this workshop would force me to draw really big but it did much more than that and I've been thinking about the lessons from this workshop since then.
The format
There were three workbenches set up each with different materials - one with flowers and foliage, one with fruit and vegetables (including a pungent onion that had been cut in half), and one with kitchen objects (metals) and I have to admit my heart did sink at this point as I don't really enjoy doing still life exercises as it reminds me of still life at school (and this was also set in a school). I'm glad I stuck it out here though.
We were asked to draw what we saw on A4 sheets of at least two of these workbenches using chalk, charcoal and india ink and concentrating on different ways of mark making to convey texture e.g. using different angles and tools. It was quite interesting to make different marks esp using different brushes and a wooden skewer (both ends) with the black ink. She warned us we were going to rip these drawings up for use in the next part. That intrigued me and I rather looked forward to that.
Stopping and looking at our and other attendees' work was very useful to encourage/inspire us and I know that my second sketch was of more interest to me than the first.
We looked at our drawings and Cath demonstrated the tearing of our sketches. We were asked to focus on interesting marks within our sketches in order to make a collage of the details we found.
 |
| collage of torn parts from the initial sketches |
Cath then encouraged us to zoom in on a part to enlarge and here's where it got really interesting. She went over why it wasn't simply going to be a magnified thickness to the lines and that we would have to look carefully at the line when enlarged as there would be textures appearing in these e.g. a brush line may seem solid but has the finer details of each fibre when inspected closely. We would have to maybe use different tools to convey the same interesting lines in their larger aspect.
This was unexpected to me but obvious once she said it. She gave us a frame to help us (though Therese did point out to me later I could have just used photos and 'zoomed' in- another obvious lesson).
 |
| area I wanted to zoom in on with frame as an aid |
 |
| The largest piece (A3) |
 |
| The enlargement (L) next to the original collage with frame (R) |
At the end of the workshop, I realised, it wasn't simply a matter of projecting on to a larger surface and drawing, as I had imagined (and even done in the past) - in order for the piece to retain its interest at a larger scale, I would have to pay closer attention to the marks that made the initial sketch interesting (including the negative spaces in the brush marks). This could even mean using different tools and techniques than the ones used in the initial sketch. Something my mind is still mulling over.
Many thanks to Cath and RGA Friday for this enlightening workshop.
