The task was to make four 15-minute drawings of landscapes from a location with open view in all directions, looking to the north, west, south and east without changing position. Instructions also advised to use a viewfinder to find a focal point for the drawing.
Thursday 11 October – Schillerpark
I did this exercise today although I haven’t yet completed the two research points that appear before the exercise in the course materials. This was because I wanted to benefit from the nice weather – it’s October and it will soon be quite cold in Berlin, so I’m eager to get out when the weather is nice.
The first problem was to find a place with an open view on “landscape” to all sides, in Berlin. It would have been less of a problem to search for an open view on “townscape”! One idea was to make a trip to the countryside, but I’m not very familiar with the region and would first need to do some research, then go on excursion and count on my luck to find a place which would fit the task instructions. But I wanted to do the exercise this evening, so I tried to find a place which would work right away.
I first went to a different entrance point of the park where I had made the sketchbook walk because I know that there is a small area which is a bit elevated and I wanted to check whether there was an open view which would work for the exercise. I walked for a while and saw that there was indeed some elevation, but high trees everywhere and no free view. Luckily I remembered another park nearby which had an elevated stone terrace, and I decided to go there.
So this second park was where I made my four drawings. The time and location wasn’t perfect, because the north view was on the same level as the terrace and not very extended, and the west view was impossible to do because of the blinding late afternoon sun. But I adapted the direction a bit, doing the first drawing in south-west direction to avoid looking directly into the sun.
I chose biro this time because I wanted to have a darker black that what I had done earlier with pencil. While drawing, I felt very unskilled. It’s difficult to develop mark making that conveys something about the thing that I’m illustrating. It would be easier for me to concentrate on broad shapes and outlines and tonal values, but this would mean to miss a lot about the trees, grass, and other textures. So I just accept the drawings as “first attempts”. Maybe I should do all the exercise twice or even three times, just to permit some learning and development, rather than quickly proceeding to the next task. I just know that I need much more drawing practice.
With hindsight, I do like the drawings, although I struggled to be patient and take the time to work on them until they look like something more than just scribbling illegibly. They are not particularly “landscapy” because the location didn’t fit requirements very well. I’d really like to repeat the exercise in a place which permits open view in all directions. There’s just the problem that I don’t know of such a place, and it would be a matter of good luck when I make a trip outside Berlin, whether I find one.
After my four sketches I made a wax pastel drawing of the evening sky. There were clouds in rose and violet tones, this looked quite nice. Oil pastels didn’t work very well, I think watercolours would have been the medium with which to work. The drawing isn’t very realistic. I’d like to do more and in different media.
One thing I realize is that I’m not good at “briefly sketching”. I think my way to go would be to focus on one aspect or detail, and then try to depict this and nothing else. This would be my way to learn something and improve my skills. For me, the tasks in the course materials are much too complex. I can have a go and just try, and I like the inspiration they provide, but I don’t think that they help me to develop my skills, because they are too difficult. I’m trying to do something which doesn’t work for me because I lack very basic skills. It’s good to know, only difficult to develop a strategy how to improve the situation.
Sunday 14 October 2012 – Another attempt
Yesterday I repeated the 360° Exercise at a location which gave me an (almost) open view in all directions. I made a trip to Kremmen, about 60 km north of Berlin. The problem was that it was already very late afternoon when I finally had found a nice place to draw, and so I felt stressed again. Somehow I managed to draw four sketches in an hour, with the few light remaining. I don’t know what to think about my drawings. I like them as drawings but I don’t like them for their low level of drawing skill.
Again problems with following instructions and feeling that I’m missing the most important point, that is to draw something which has meaning to me personally and to engage deeply. For example, on my trip I first headed to a little lake with a café, to rest after driving before beginning the drawing session. I went on a brief walk to see whether there was some open space nearby. It was a beautiful landscape, and I walked next to a canal. On the other side there was a man sitting and fishing, there were very high trees and interesting views with water and trees in every direction. Only that the view was not open, so it didn’t fit instructions and I didn’t draw because it was already late and I wanted to find a place for the exercise.
I walked back to the café, got onto the car and searched in the area for a good place with an open view, and after about half an hour I stopped somewhere on a small road in the middle some fields. The view was at least somewhat open in all directions, and I knew that if I wouldn’t draw there and then I’d have made the trip for nothing. Following instructions, I started the northern view with some trees and a path and some fields in the background. Instead, I would have liked to draw the cows which were quite close to me, but in south-west direction. I was looking forward to drawing them on the west view, but bad luck. After I had finished the north view drawing, the cows had all disappeared and were a hundred meters further down the field.
So the unfortunate conclusion is that I missed two personally relevant drawing opportunities in favour of doing four sketches as an exercise which doesn’t mean very much to me. I know that the exercises are designed to help me improving my drawing skills, but somehow I’m never there where the exercise wants me to be, somehow I’d always prefer to do something else or do things differently. And on top of it comes the frustration that I’m not even good at doing what I’m told to do.