Sophie Ashdown

So in the past week I have continued to work on the ink drawing of my friend’s cottage. I’d like to say that it has been a labour of love but it has also been a labour of frustration.

To recap, I was trying to create something completely different to what I normally do. Instead of creating large abstract colourful paintings, I am creating an A4 size black and white drawing using only an ink pen. VERY different to what I normally do.

Here is a photo of where I am up to:

And a reminder of the original image I’m working from:

What I have done/added:

• Filled in the stonework using pointillism. This took AGES although it was quite therapeutic and I was able to lose track of time while I worked which I love. However now when I look at the overall effect, I feel that it is too dark and I should have left more white spaces around the “bricks.” It does look better than leaving them blank though.

• Did the tiling on the roof. This took a few attempts in pencil first but eventually I took the plunge and did it ink. I think it looks okay but in real life there are many more tiles than I have drawn.

• Made the plants (trees?) darker and more textured. This was fairly straightforward. I like how they turned out and I like how they pop out of main drawing of the house.

• Did the brickwork above the windows. I made these darker in shade than the stonework to show that they are different colours in real life. I think they turned out okay but maybe a bit too dark?

• Did the name plate. I was dreading this because I was really worried that I would mess it up and ruin the whole picture. I purposely made it bigger in the drawing than in real life so I would have more room, and I think it turned out okay. Strictly speaking the writing should be white on a darker background but I think that would have been impossible to do successfully so took some artistic license here.

• Added the door handle but annoyingly I accidentally filled in the key hole which would have been a nice detail.

What is left to do and decide on:

• More work on the roof and under the eaves but this shouldn’t take too long.
• Some kind of shading on the remaining window panes?
• If/how to colour in the door? This one I am still struggling with. See more on this below.
• Do I add more shading in general? Overall I have purposely made the drawing quite flat, and if I start adding shading then it will become a different type of drawing. I am not confident on how to use a single ink pen to do the shading. I could use an ink wash instead but then I would have made the drawing different from the beginning if I knew that using the ink wash was going to be an option. I would likely not have used pointillism for the stonework and also made other choices for the window panes.

I am particularly flummoxed by what to do about the main front door. It is a light blue/teal colour but how can I show that using only a black ink pen? There is no option for light shading. I thought maybe I could get a grey ink pen but when I tried that (on a first version) it looked like I had used pencil to do the shading and it looked strange.

Wouldn’t it be great if I had a group of fantastically talented artists to draw ideas and inspiration from?!? Ah ha! Of course I have these in my amazing course-mates. I decided to pose the problem to the group Whatsapp. Firstly I received loads of positive messages and support which was amazing. And they gave me lots of ideas to try, – eg adding colour or ink wash. Zoe sent me a selection of different ink drawings she has done of buildings and gave some specific advice about shading which was great. Whilst I didn’t come up with an exact answer for what to do, Nicola suggested that I photocopy the drawing and then practice different techniques on that. So that is what I’ll be doing next. (Thanks Nicola!!)

So what are the key things I have learned in this process (so far):

• I’m not as bad at figurative drawing as I thought. Despite all of the things that I see are wrong with the drawing, I still quite like it and hope that the person I am giving it to will like it too. This give me a bit of confidence in doing more figurative work in the future, and has got me thinking about how I can incorporate some figurative aspects into patterns, or vice versa.
• The part I enjoyed the most was doing the stonework, which is no surprise really since it is the most “pattern-like!” I probably could have predicted that at the beginning.
• Messing up a first version then creating a second version was actually really helpful. I learned a lot doing the first version so the second came out much better. I have also been able to go back and practice different techniques on the first version before committing it to the second version.
• I should have thought more fully about whether I would use ink wash in addition to the ink pen. The outcome would likely have more depth, perspective, shading, and detail. Does that mean it would have better? I’m not sure but I think as a result I might try doing something else with ink wash so I get the experience of it.
• Stepping out of my comfort zone was actually quite enjoyable. I love it when I get “lost” in the work. When I look up and realise that I’ve been working for 3 hours non-stop and it felt like minutes.

I feel like this whole process is giving me back my love for creating art, as over the past few years it had started feeling like a chore rather than a joy. I’m excited for what comes next.