Sophie Ashdown

I was lucky enough to be on holiday last week in Turkey with my two boys, one who is 14 and another who turned 16 during the trip.

It was lovely to be away from the “real world” in so much as I wasn’t working my day job (in music licensing) and I escaped the boring parts of parenting (getting the boys to school, cooking for two hungry boys, ferrying them to multiple sports fixtures, and doing endless loads of laundry.)

But there are new responsibilities that go with this course that were inescapable while away last week. I attended a Monday lecture online, participated in our regular Tuesday session, posted some blogs, thought a lot about art, did some drawing, made some new patterns, had some new ideas, and even dreamt about art. I’m happy to say that none of those things felt like a chore.

Despite the hotel wifi dropping off briefly, I was able to join in the Tuesday session as normal, and enjoyed it just as much.

I took my A5 and A4 sketchbooks with me, hoping that I would find the time to do some work in them, or at least attempt to do some mark making. I actually found it easy to draw and sketch every day. Being on holiday does relax the mind and escaping from the realities of everyday chores meant that I had more time and headspace to let my creativity flow freely.

Since there was a theme of trying new things last week, even if you thought you could fail, I decided to do some figurative drawing, which is something I usually try to avoid. First off I sketched what I saw which on the first day was a scene of the pool in front of me. The first version was pretty terrible as I got used to trying to get the perspective right, but the second version was less terrible. I even tried to include people in the drawing which I also tend to avoid!

The outcome is fairly basic and has loads of issues but I enjoyed the process.

I then decided I needed to push myself to draw people, particularly faces, and I recalled being struck by the fashion drawing that I had seen during the summer at the BIBA exhibition at the Fashion and Textile museum. I loved the 60’s style fashion drawings with simplified faces, big eyes, and sultry looks. My attempts at replicating these were not able to drum up the same cool-girl looks from the magazines but I feel like I made a start into breaking down the barrier I’ve had with drawing people.

I’m going to keep working on these facial drawings to see if I can create my own versions of the 60s style. I think that once I can get the hang of the big eyes, hints of a nose, generous lips, big hair, and simplified forms then maybe I will be less reluctant to draw people.

Having said that, I know in my heart that purely figurative painting is not my calling. I enjoy stretching myself to do new things, but the abstract form is where I feel most drawn to.

Apparently I even dream about art, because I woke up at 4 in the morning in the early hours of Wednesday with ideas for a show I have coming up, which sparked a new frenzy in my sketchbook, so I will write more about that separately.

In the meantime I will reminisce in my mind about the lovely holiday in the sun.