Sunday 23 September 2012

SKETCHING IN BLACK AND WHITE


A few evenings ago we were watching our DVD of 'Tea With Mussolini', one of our favourites, a very British film but with the added 'fizz' supplied by the inclusion of Cher.  She is so elegant and beautifully dressed in the film, and when she appears no-one else matters.  

I enjoy trying to sketch from the TV or DVD - it's very demanding and a matter of trying to remember what the image looked like when things move on.  So this was very quickly done, not very like her, but I was pleased with the result.  


Cher was wearing the most ridiculous but gorgeous black and white hat, and carried it off with panache.


Some of my greatest art enjoyment comes from drawing and painting in just black on a white background, or in black and red on a white ground, usually with Pitt or Uni-ball waterproof pens.


This kind of faceless, almost formless, character often appears in my sketches when I just put the pen to the paper without deciding in advance what I am going to do.  The drawing really just made itself, and then I had the pleasure of filling the figures with patterns, one of my favourite 'doodly' occupations.  

Who they are I don't know, but there's definitely something going on there, and I'm a little uncomfortable about it.

The wavy lines in the background are shaded in with Caran d'Ache Supracolor II Soft pencils - usable simply as pencils or as watercolour pencils, and lovely to work with.  I didn't want the 'rivers' or 'paths', or whatever they are, to dominate the picture.


As so often, I scanned the drawing into Photoshop and used a filter on it - this one was done with 'Find Edges'.


And for this one I used the Glowing Edges filter, which translated it into white on black.  I liked this.


This abstract was drawn a few weeks ago.  I wanted to try a different approach to an abstract, and just let my pen wander where it wanted.  I find this kind of thing very therapeutic and meditational to do.


Just to brighten up a very black and white page, here's a photo of a man's T-Shirt I saw in Matalan a few weeks ago.  

How fantastic, a gorgeous journal page on a T-Shirt.  Not a chance in a million years of getting my beloved to wear anything like this, but I couldn't resist snapping it.

5 comments:

  1. I love your rollerball figure drawings, especially the figure groups. They have such a strong sense of design and form and remind me of african or tribal art figures.

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  2. That must be some seriously quick sketching you do in front of the TV!

    Loving your group of figures and how they just seemed to emerge for you! Morag is right they do have a very tribal feel to them.

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  3. Love that t-shirt!! must keep an eye out for that. Love your doodles, I like the figure groups, as previously pointed out, they do look tribal, although the smaller figures remind me of little penquins :) x

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  4. I love your people designs. They are really lovely shapes.

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