Exercise 3.0

Observation topography

Before I embarked on this task, I looked into some of the illustrators listed as ‘fast and instinctive’ and ‘slow and sustained’. This gave me some ideas about how to approach my drawings and how the results might vary depending on how long I spent on each one.

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For this task, I chose to travel from a relatively rural/suburban area into a town centre along a road that I drive and walk down practically everyday. My start location was the park close to my home and the end location was the theatre in the town centre at the end of the stretch. When choosing this as my route, I tried to think about the changes in architecture and greenery.

I took my toolkit out with me and tried to use a variety of materials, even though the task specified using materials I felt comfortable with. Most of the materials are familiar to me anyway, but I did challenge myself to use some watercolour pencils and pastels, while also trialling some of the methods I had used in Part 2 (e.g. rapid sketching, blind contour drawing etc.) This helped me to be less precious about my drawings and get a good impression of my surroundings.

My main focus was drawing, but I did add some notes as I went along, particularly to do with noises and how busy the locations were. I think I was daunted by trying to capture traffic or crowds, which is something I’d like to return to.

Below are the sketches and notes I captured on location:

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Along my journey, I felt a change in the atmosphere; from peaceful to bustling. The sketches I made were mostly based on the buildings, but I think I managed to capture a few other details, like trees, lampposts and benches. I know there is a task coming up linked to people and crowds – I am eager to explore this further, as I felt quite daunted by capturing everything in front of me.

Once back home, I returned to my sketches and started to explore ways to represent my journey. I began by drafting a map-style illustration with each landmark along the way:

However, this felt forced and quite flat too. I managed to achieve some interesting angles on the buildings I captured and I wanted to somehow merge these to play with perspective and illustrate my route. Ideally, I wanted it to feel like the viewer was looking up at the different buildings as I did from different angles. Below, I attempted joining some of my first sketches together:

I commented here that this felt more representative of my experience along the route. I decided to group some of my sketches together as sections of my journey and try joining them in this way. The results are below:

This task was enjoyable because it encouraged me to get outside, experiment and capture a route. My joined-up sketches attempt to convey movement and a change of perspective, so I am quite pleased with them. It was a good opportunity to properly trial my toolkit, which worked well. The materials I packed made for a variety of images; some colourful, some monotone, some textured, some minimal. Next, I want to challenge myself to capture crowds, traffic AND buildings – the full setting. The task has highlighted how daunted I am by this!