Observation to Imagination
Starting with a trip out drawing in Cambridge, we were asked to capture thumbnail sketches of the environment, paying close attention to the changing weather's effect on the landscape.
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It was an exciting challenge to see if and how I could communicate certain subtle differences in changing wind, for instance. On the first charcoal sketch, I found that the smudginess and urgency of mark-making went a long way to show strength of wind. On the next, as to find a way of showing the gentle breeze I paid attention to the ripples on the water, which would appear differently according to the gusts.
Since I would be spending most of my time in Ipswich and Felixstowe, I started to look for good spots to sketch- somewhere next to water. Probably my favourites of this selection are the charcoal series of a day in Felixstowe as the light dimmed.
It was fun to just play around with media I don't regularly use. Oil pastels have a chunky joy to them and I also loved doing a scene in fine line alone; I'd like to find a reason to apply those ink techniques to something else along the line.
Now that we had a setting that we had observed from life, the next step was to imagine that setting amidst a fictional weather event. I liked the Felixstowe seafront as my spot for this, and I chose to depict a snowstorm. Here's a selection of sketchbook thoughts and thumbnails sketches.
The following are a set of media tests, attempting to find a convincing way of drawing snow. It was harder than I first thought to make an opaque, brilliant white.
The final series, in black watercolour:
One of the main challenges here was finding some recognisable features of the seafront that would show through the obscurity of the whiteout. I thought during my practice sketches that there was something effective about seeing typographic details through the snow, and the Fish & Chips sign was an obvious choice for the seaside setting.
The spots of snow were held in place with masking fluid, which I could peel off after painting the scenes. I experimented in every way I could think of to add white on top, but nothing was nearly as brilliant white as the paper itself.
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In trying to communicate the snowstorm, I wanted to leave enough negative space in the central image to suggest the transformation of the landscape to that glaring blankness. In my visual research it was clear just how much snow leaves a stark washout effect on the land.
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A consistent feature is the position of the horizon. I liked that in my early charcoal sketches of Felixstowe promenade, and thought it would hold the series of images together. The fourth picture breaks this up, with a close-up of the amusements' crane machine and kids' car. Maybe in retrospect I could have included another horizon somewhere, but I thought I should mix up the compositions a little.
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Felixstowe's a special place to me and I'm glad to have had the time to bring it to life with a touch of imagination, allowing me to see it with fresh eyes.