Assignment Three.

My First Try.

For Assignment Three I had thought of some sort of landscape with ruins in it.

I had vaguely in the back of my mind something J. M. W. Turner like, I have seen landscapes of his with wonderful ruins in them.

I am very fond of ruins, there is something so sad and beautiful about them.

Photograph of Walsingham Priory ruins.

I visited (but not expressly) some Priory ruins in Walsingham, Norfolk, (destroyed during the iconoclasm under the reign of Henry VIII.)  

I very much like this photograph I took when there and thought it would make a good drawing.

I don't like working from photos, but as I live far away from this Priory I couldn't go and draw on sight... 

I did print it out though, and drew from that, rather than a screen. 

Dip in pen and wash in ink.

I did this as a sort of thumbnail sketch, to get warmed up and to familiarise myself with the shapes and tones of the composition.  

Dip in pen (also using a sharpened matchstick) and wash.

First I tried a dip in pen with wash 

(a medium that came naturally to mind, I don't really know why.)

I also drew the trees with a sharpened stick, I had seen this done somewhere or another, and it was fun. 

But unsatisfied with the result of this, (I wish to persevere with this material, just not on a assignment. I think all my attempts have  looked somewhat heavy-handed.)    

graphite pencil and graphite stick.

I had a go with graphite next, this looks slightly better, but the perspective and shapes were thoroughly wrong.

Charcoal pencil (and charcoal stick) on white paper.

I had a go with charcoal, not my favourite thing to draw with, but I thought I might have a stab at it, and it is another material I would like to be more confident in.

Dip in pen, and watercolour.

My last try was with dip in pen again and wash (or rather what should have been a wash but turned into a watercolour painting.)

I decided that the view was the thing that was wrong with all the work above, 

Although looking through the archway was a fun, a sort of frame to the composition, there wasn't enough to the rest of it, just being a stretch of grass and a mound with an arch on top, there wasn't much in the middle-ground at all. 

Maybe it wasn't so much the photo but that I had what ever the artist's equivalent is to writer's block, so I resolved to change my composition.

My Second Try.

A photograph of the Abbey ruins, York.

Keeping with the ruins idea, I found this photo, taken when I was in York, of the Abbey ruins there.

I like this image, the lighting is very nice, the long shadows show that it is late evening and I love the two large, dark stone-ish forms to ether side, and crisply light up bench, (although I excluded the lens flare from my drawing.)

The composition is, (I consider) much more interesting than the one before, it allows for more depth, having objects at different distances throughout.  

I later discovered that Turner had actually sketched theses very same ruins (and very almost the same viewpoint), 

sadly too late for me to draw inspiration from his stunningly delectable drawing. 

J. M. W. Turner, The Ruined West Front of St Mary's Abbey Church, York.

Dip in pen (also using a sharpened matchstick) and wash.

Again, I did two quick sketches.

Charcoal pencil and stick, white chalk on a purple support.

You can see from both these thumbnails that, at first, I intended to leave out the bench, but thought better of it, as it makes for a bit of detail, while the angle of it brings the eye into the drawing.

Assignment Three. A small bit of dip in pen and graphite pencil on a white support.

I sketched in the shapes roughly with pen and ink.

Sharpening my pencil in such a was that I (using the side of the lead) could make thick lines of tone, I rendered the drawing, carefully and softly putting in the house and trees in the background and getting darker as I came closer and closer to the foreground. 

I put in some of the architectural details, 

but being mindful that the constructive criticism of my last assignment was that I had been too precious in the way I had treated some of the more intricate parts of the drawing, and so I tried not to get carried away, and spent little time on it.

I finished off with the bench, enjoying the shadows under and on it.

I am quite pleased with the way it looks and enjoyed doing it, although its not the most exciting of drawings and I am annoyed with myself reverting back to pencil again, in the end.

It might have looked a bit more striking if I had used black conté or something of that ilk, or maybe put some colour in it.