Media Studies First Year Term 1
Seeing Your Way to Draw Hoi Ching Lee, Sabrina
Our first exercise: a person draws his/her hand while a drawing referee observes the ways the person sees and draws. If his/her ways to see and draw is believed to be wrong or bad, the referee needs to make a signal to inform the drawer. The exercise seemed slightly nonsense to me because I thought a person’s way to see and draw should be something internal and very hard to be observed outside. My partner Ho Sung did not make any signal when I drew and I barely made any when he drew - there were times when I doubted if that was the right way to draw or mark, but maybe it’s just his method of drawing? But as time passed, I began to notice mistakes in his way to draw, his movement of hand, his usage of the drawing tool when he started rushing, and I understood how drawing needs our constant care and concentration; if you’re not on full mode then mistakes will start to occur which will affect the drawings. For my own drawing I am quite satisfied with the dark and light effect, though it can be intensified. The outline of the hand, however, are so not good - I repeatingly drew the line to get the most accurate shape, but they turned out to be too thick. This was my first time in years to use a graphite (Faber-Castell Graphite Pure 2900 3B); I liked the variety of line/shade it can make. We were then asked to ‘buy’ one drawing among all the ones did by our classmates, considering the skill we wanted to aquire. Again, this seemed odd to me at first but as I was making the decision it taught me that there are many aspects in drawing and we can be very specific and clear as to ‘how to improve my drawing skills’. Of course I choose one with clear, delicate continuous lines. The way our drawings were described and connected to the drawers (“I can see he lost his interest in this part” or “I can see this person was not afraid to make decision”) was new and inspiring to me as well.
Walk & Draw: British Museum
2/ I drew by drawing a box (corridor) as a guidance for perspective, then drawing things that are more important in forming the space, such as columns and larger sculptures.
1/ I drew by drawing everything I see as much as possible.
3/ I drew frame by frame as I walked through the space.
4/ I drew as many ‘important’ things as possible from bottom to top.
5/
6/
The Walk & Draw exercise was very fun. I could allow myself to make mistakes and just look forward (literally) and continue with my drawing. Yet it was not a brainless or playful game at all, as I need to constantly choose what to draw and when to stop drawing this and start capturing that... The only rule of the exercise is to draw while walking (DON’T STOP), and I was quite confused - are we supposed to come out with a normal drawing, or something crazy that the viewers can obviously tell I am moving? So, I experiemented with different methods as listed under the drawings. Some of them failed but some of them are alright. Number 2, 4, 6 were the more successul ones in my opinion because a depth of space was created with main objects captured.
The Clocks Gallery, British Museum
On the second session we went to the Clocks Gallery to draw antique clocks. Some of those clocks have movements in them and some have forms that create spaces inside them and around them, making them a good target to draw. I first chose the left clock because there are moving parts and a hexagonal prism space inside. To show the sense of space, I started using more tone instead of lines, and for that I learned to make a small thumbnail testing the main tone first, which was very helpful as a guidance; I no longer have to worry using the wrong (darker) tone in a part and ruining the whole drawing. I also struggled to forgo the details of the clock. But after being suggested to not draw all the detail part a couple times I eventually did it (the bottom part of the clock - there were more gearwheel inside the ‘box’). Many people are obsessed with drawings that has super fine and delicate details, and that affected my ‘drawing beauty standard’ too. But as it turned out, a drawing that emphasises on space (with tone) can still be powerful and eye-catching even it is simplified. The right clock I drew is when I started to frame my drawings. The frame, which I never paid much attention to before, is important to define a view and show a clear spatial context. I still find it fascinating how much impact a simple frame have on a drawing. In this drawing I used tone to draw the clock and its position on the table, its shadow on the wall...... I think it was a successful one!
As we moved towards 3-dimensional space and objects, tone became our main focus. Now we had to totally abandon lines and just use tones to create an image. In this collage I used only 5 shades produced by the graphite pencil to create image of my kitchen table. This was harder than I expected because the colors shade of these objects in reality is far too more than 5 and it was challenging to arrange them into the 5 groups in the best way. There were many decision making going on and even though this collage of tone is far from accurate, I believe the basic effect of light and shadow of the objects and background was achieved.
If we had a performance level line graph throughout the four weeks drawing journey, this would the be lowest point. In this session we drew marble sculptures with only 5 steps of tone that is uncontinuous. The tone itself can often reveal the shape of an object even without an outline, therefore line need not exist at all in this case. The horse sculpture is more complicated than an apple or a boiler (my previous collage) and I found it really difficult to use only 5 tones to make the drawing. I think I had lost my confidence and I began to see like a scanner does, scanning all the areas that belong to this tone and then drawing it on the paper, hoping it would have an accurate result that resembles the horse. But it was not like that - the drawing became really patchy and the contrast is low, and it fails to show the form of the sculpture as well. I also felt like I couldn’t make good decisions, that sometimes I would categorize them into couple tones, which worked well at this area (able to show the changing form/ overlapping of object) but not at another. Even if I was very careful about this, it was very hard to avoid this problem.
After that I switched to another sculpture to start again, then switched the material back to white paper and graphite, because having grey as the existing middle tone is quite challenging to start with. Although the right one still may not look very good, that the object doesn’t ‘pop up’ from the page, it was better than previous ones. One difficulty for me is to remember the specific strength/force needed to create each of the tone using graphite, and not to mix up them.
Greece: Parthenon, British Museum
Not feeling satisfied with my 5-tones drawings, I adopted an easier medium that is tone markers, which alrerady have the differences in tones that I don’t need to control anymore. I also trusted my intuition and decision-making more, instead of constantly considering whether that shade belongs to the range of this tone that I had set. In fact, I don’t think this precise and technical way to see and draw is good, because there are times when we need to show the change in shape (e.g. a curvy area) or overlapping of objects but then if we strictly follow the conversion of the real shade to one of the five tones, we might not be able to show it; we need to make adjustments. Once I stopped trying to be precise, trying to become a photoshop filter that turn a color picture into five shades of grey accurately, I began to really see and feel the shape and form of the object again, and I just translated what the tonality I saw to the paper without over-analyzing. The result is significantly better.
To prepare for the last session of drawing deep space, I attempted to do one in the school’s studio (top and right drawings). The tone- only way to see and draw became more obvious to me as the best way to show space. Space doesn’t really have outlines in reality, but the light and shadow on them is real. I continued using tone markers because they work better for me.
Walk & Draw: V&A Museum
We had another Walk & Draw exercise at the Victoria & Albert Museum which I was happy about because it is a fun game. For the first two drawings, I did it in the way similar to the last time. Then for the drawing on the right I used a new method, that is aiming to produce a normal drawing with a normal, stable perspective view, except you cannot stand at the same place and have to walk around inside the room, which I suspect is what our teacher wanted us to do at the very beginning. I did not cheat and stop to stand, therefore these drawings are rough. I attempted to use tone to quickly capture objects for a couple of times, but because my control over my drawing tool, the graphite pencil, was still not good, drawing outlines was mostly my best way to draw in a very short time.
Cast Courts, V&A Museum
In the beautiful Cast Courts in V&A we were asked to draw deep space, with objects that are very close to us as well. I chose this view where there are exhibits in difference distances with a corner of the court faraway. I think this is a successful first try as I was able to just use tones to illustrate the spatial environment, as well as the sculptures themselves. However the use of tones can be improved a lot more, and the choice of the framing of view was not the best.
This time I chose a better view, including a black scuplture in a touchable distance which I tried to draw in detail, with the carvings and the small part of light reflection. At the back, there were few big arches that create this layered dark and light effect, while on the top the smaller arches and windows have a dramatic variety of tones too. In terms of the using of tones and the decision-making for it, I improved. The comparison between this and the last drawings also reveals the importance of finding an interesting frame of view that gives more opportunities to practice with tones. It is overall a successful drawing of deep space.
In this four weeks I was very glad to have the opportunity to draw amid the heavy workload from schoolwork. Every drawing session at the museum was enjoyable, at the same time I have learned a lot: the ways to describe and discuss drawings, which also influences my view on drawing as a subject; the way to see objects, especially the spatial relationship of them and their surroundings; the importance of including the background and a frame; the power of tone in showing spaces and forms; the amount of decision need to be made in a drawing process...... But the most significant part of this course for me is how I failed at the third session using only tone and how I improved afterwards. The 5-steps tones drawing method was new to me and at first it changed my way of seeing and drawing in a negative way, that I became merely a scanner detecting areas where the tone matches. Then I realized I was not really studying the shape and form of the object itself, so I tried to see and draw in a more natural way, and stopped worrying whether the tone I decided on this part is actually correct or not. The result was not drawings that are imprecise, but rather drawings that reveal the shape/space better, because that was what I was looking, not areas of shades isolated from the object as a whole. The change from graphite to markers also helped different kinds of medium have different properties and it is fine to not stick with one but choose one that is best for achieving what I want. For me, to improve my way of seeing (and drawing) is not to completely doubt how I see and perceive things with my human eyes - that would drive me a bit crazy; it is about continue to trust the way I see things as well as my intuition and decision, but slowly experiment with it through drawing, a lot. I am not good at philosophy, but I feel that ‘Seeing Your Way to Draw’ in fact includes both ‘seeing your way to draw’ and ‘drawing your way to see’, which is amazing if I am not overcomplicating things again!
To be continued