Black & White

Whilst considering which subject to choose for this Black and White exercise. I took a fine black ink pen, pencil and sketch pad to the beach and sketched some views up and down the beach and out towards a neighbouring island. This view was quite striking because the sea seemed to be divided, waves appeared to be forming near the shore whereas further out and towards the island the sea seemed much calmer. This still area reflected the bright grey of the sky, whilst the waves were dark the foaming wave caps were very bright white.

This last sketch caused problems when trying to convey the tone variations; and the whiteness of the waves against the varying grey shades of the sea reflected in the overcast sky. I sketched the same view in pencil as well to see if it was easier to capture the subtle contrasts.

But in thinking about the scene afterwards I thought it would lend itself to this excercise very well. Because of its simplicity and having already considered controlling tone in both pen and pencil I chose to draw the outline shapes as a separate piece.

Which I then enlarged to suit A3 and inverted. Sticking with the principle that the whiteness of the waves was key to the piece I cut the black areas accordingly.

My only area of uncertainty was how to represent the island and the immediate area around it. Do I go for a black sky and white island with a corresponding black area behind the waves? This would have the advantage of defining the tops of the furthest waves. I settled for the island as a black silouette.
Having fixed down all the black areas and completed the piece my observations on the effect are that in a way this method captures the bright whiteness of the waves in contrast to the surrounding grey that I saw on the day I made the sketches.

However It also illustrates its limitations, some areas of tone cannot convincingly be converted to black or white and still maintain a sense of depth or a sense of a change in the environment.Although perspective can be captured. The effect however can be very stark and dramatic. And puts me in mind, as I have become familiar with his work, of Edward Bawdens prints.

Objective - Subjective

My Objective drawings
Examples of Objective observations of a pair of glasses.

Drawn without any implied characteristics.

My Subjective drawing.
My object of choice is a baseball type cap. This particular cap is mostly cloth the only rigid part is the peak. The list of words that I made whilst contemplating the cap included the following.

• Crumpled
• Creased
• Squashed
• Formless
• Shapeless
• Cotton
• Faded
• Casual
• Wrinkled
• Misshapen
• Headgear
• Malleable
• Convenient
• Comfortable
• Soft
• Round
• Shabby

The word I chose to associate with the object was Casual
To help in creating a moodboard; I first checked the dictionary definition of the word to confirm my understanding of what it meant. The definitions according to Collins English are: Happening by accident or chance; being or seeming unconcerned or apathetic; not premeditated; shallow or superficial; informal article of clothing or footware; occasional;.
Added to which I considered; unintended, not contrived and not by design.
My focus for items to include in the moodboard became casual clothes; creased and crumpled fabrics;.

I included some obviously contrived examples of casual dress as a reference point and contrast. Having cut out the images using a knife; I then decided to just tear roughly round the images indicative of a casual manner.
I believe that creating the moodboard helped me to understand what was totally contrived as opposed to that which didn't appear to be so. It made me think in terms of how I could make my piece casual. I played around with the idea of recreating the texture of the hat, its shadows and high lights, by cutting out dark and light sections from images of crumpled fabric. However I decided to create the image on a piece of paper which I screwed up first as tightly as I could which I then flattened out again.

This gives the image a texture that is intended to mimic the appearance of the fabric. I then intentionally with little care brushed the greenwash over the hat. I found that it then needed some depth and at that point added some grey.
By the way; part the way through the process I dumped the baseball cap in favour of this hat. Although it had more substance than the cap, I considered that it still displayed the same basic attributes as the cap.
I also decided to tear round the hat to leave a random shape surrounding the hat. And then fix it to another sheet of paper to finish. I toyed with the idea of tearing in the shape of the hat but favoured the more casual version.