Nature on Paper

November Drawing

Hello

Welcome to my very first post as part of Making Impressions, this is our first post for the month and focuses on drawing.

Nature on Paper

For the next three months we are going to be working on a series titled Nature on Paper in which we will be inspired by our local natural environment and the changing season. Each month I am going to start off with some drawing activities to get us observing and noticing and then later in each month we will work though some printmaking processes to create paper ephemera and artworks.

November

This month’s creative project is all about gathering natural forms as inspiration, I began by focusing on seed heads as I’ve always enjoyed to their sculptural forms and the variety of shapes you can see as summer fades into autumn. Along the way I added in other interesting natural forms to draw too, the process of collecting these has been a good excuse to head out on some local walks and slow down and look at the details around me. In these drawings I have used a few extra forms that I have already in my collection so I will create a separate post with photo inspiration for you, but one of the unexpected joys for me in this process was setting up little still lives to draw from, looking at the different shapes, sizes and textures has been something I would recommend trying out.

My personal aim with drawings is always curiosity and enjoyment, I have never considered myself to be the most accomplished at drawing, however I love that we all have different styles and approaches to it, a lot of what I enjoy and I am excited by capturing in drawing is mark making, pattern, texture and layering so that’s what these four videos aim to do.

I am a fan of making a cuppa tea and popping some music on and just enjoying the process, I often find the drawings I produce that are the most interesting to me are the ones when I am not focussing on the outcome and I am just enjoying the process – not over thinking it!

These 4 videos show different ways I am enjoying drawing at the moment, most of these are in my sketchbook and one is on a large piece of paper.

1 - Continuous line drawing

This one is exactly as it sounds – a simple case of pop your pencil on the paper and continue to draw all you can see in one continuous line. I have used a neocolour 2 and a Caran D’ache luminance pencil to draw with in this one.