JPierro Card9 work in progress

Thought I would post this drawing in progress. Like I said on my first sketch for this topic, I interpreted the line Richard wrote “Boiled  sweets” as a woman covered with boils. After playing around with a couple more sketches I found myself with the desire of doing a simple scene with the two figures in a frozen moment on the page. The woman, his victim & treat, falling to the ground and him in his moment of bliss.

What I think I would like to do after I finish off the two figures is. switch to a walnut ink and give the drawing a backdrop. I pulled it into photoshop and added a piece of an old drawing to see what it might look like.

This ever changing blog will hopefully help me evolve as an artist, by trying different approaches to my pen and ink drawings. I expect to do plenty of drawings that don’t quite work out so well, but that is part of the process.

So here is the deal. Although our seed text idea will still drive our inspiration, and we will be including sketches and random comments/ impressions, we are removing the time element. I think that will give us the chance to produce better art for this project.

The current seed text will inform the next images. Stay tuned!

The Management

Turning in my sketches woefully late this week as I was wrapped up in another project. In the first sketch I was working with an idea of a murderer that dissolved himself with acid. Then I left that and started working on the idea of a victim that had been posed with his head made into a candy bowl supported on the stem of an ice pick. This is how my work starts, in scribbles, which is ironic given the slightly obsessive finish, but anyway. If you look closely, you can see the outline of the murderer showing through the thin paper of my sketchbook. The candy bowl victim is superimposed on top. This is called a happy accident. It suggested something to me that I had not considered consciously. You’ll have to wait until Sunday to see what I mean.

Richard.

John Pierro card 9 sketch

This week I thought I would just play around with some inspirational pen and ink drawings. I only got around to doing one, but I like the ideas that came out from doing it. The way I chose to interpret the “Boiled Sweets” line was that it was a woman that was covered in boils, or my first thought that this maniac was boiling her to eat her.  The thumbnails and painter sketches are fun, but I don’t seem to be using them correctly, the spontaneity and my drawing style is lost when I try and become too premeditative. I was not happy with the way I attempted to do my finished drawing last week. The way I enjoy doing my drawings is by  starting with an expressive contour drawing and then filling in the details. With those details other ideas usually find their way into the drawing. Like I said, this for me is a an exercise in how to approach my pen and ink drawings, I’ll figure this out before we finish all 52. – John

Week 9 Card

Richard A. Kirk's Week 8 Art

In my finished drawing you can see how different elements present in the sketch are either embellished or discarded. Throughout, I kept thinking of seahorses even though the morphology has no specific seahorse references. The other thing that was niggling at the corners of my mind were the illustrations from Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish and the gorgeous chapter starts of watercoloured fish. The latter is a good example of how different elements can subtly influence the process without actually being evident in the finished product; a kind of cloaked intertextuality. Did I just say intertextuality. Richard.

“Don’t let despair get the better of you; rear up the conviction you have within you like a tower of rock; cling to it and never waver, even if the earth below and the heavens above should founder.”

The Duel, Heinrich von Kleist

JPierro's drawing Card 8

Richard's Week 8 Sketch

I tend not to develop sketches a lot. One of the main reasons for this is that something can be captured in a few lines, which can not be recreated with any amount of labor or perseverance. It makes me crazy. So my sketches tend more toward notes, simple visual notes that give substance to images in my head. They are like navigational aids through that white space that can be otherwise so intimidating. This sketch is for the week 8 drawing. What interested me was in capturing the idea of a wave in the form. I was thinking of what kind of wave touches the sky and immediately thought in terms of life changing experiences. The idea of childbirth came readily to mind. It is an indirect interpretation of the phrase, so I didn’t want to be literal in the execution. For that reason it is the tentacle limb of the “sea-nymph” that suggests the pregnant form. I might do more with this idea in the future; the sea as an amniotic environment. In this piece to I wanted to shed the eroticised nymphs of J. W. Waterhouse and depict something more predatory like a moray.

Richard.

This is a working sketch that will wind up being pretty close to the final drawing I think. I like messing around in painter, it’s a fun program that allows me to play around with ideas quickly.

I was just having some fun trying to figure out what type of pose I might use before I settled on her riding on her aquatic creature. I was thinking about making her part bird, thinking about how sirens have been portrayed in the past.

My thumbnails this past week were influenced by a drawing in my sketchbook that I just happened to see when I was sitting to draw. It’s the kookie drawing of the winged female figure riding a unusual creature in the middle of the page. Sometimes a thought gets in my head and I can’t seem to see anything else. To me it worked with the idea of a sea nymph or siren, I wanted to try and show them in my own way, riding a creature that would might make you think before you approached her.

John

Normally, we would have posted a finished drawing last night. Instead, what you are going to see in the next couple of days are some thumbnail sketches; visual manifestations of our thoughts around the last seed text. Next Sunday, you will see the finished drawings, and the next seed text card.

Henceforth, we will be posting sketches and comments in the first week after the seed text is revealed, and then at the end of the second week we will post the final drawings. This will continue until we have finished the 52 images.

We have also lifted the restrictions on size, so we are no longer bound by the 4″ X 6″ format. After all, this is a project to celebrate creativity not to limit it!

Our hope is to  provide each other, and our readers/ viewers with some insight to our pattern of thought and working methods and to see if viewing each others sketches or work in progress will bring anymore inspiration and influence into the mix to our exchange.

Check back later this week to se the first of the sketches for the
card 8 topic.

John and Richard.