Drawing 4: Completed

Hi Folks

I've completed the fourth drawing in the series. Here it is - hope you enjoy it!!

Jacob

Drawing 3: Completed

I finished the third drawing in the series today. Here's the set of progress pictures running up to the final work.

Hope you enjoy!!

Drawing 3: Major Section Completed

The upper wheel and brake portion of the drawing are now done, along with the large shadowed areas that sit behind it. The deep relief afforded by the contrast is really working in this drawing - I think it will be quite a dramatic piece when completed.

For those interested, the dark areas are done with a very soft B5 pencil. I work the graphite into the page in a disorganized fashion, trying to avoid patterns that would look like artifacts unnatural to the subject matter. When laid down this heavy, soft graphite appears oily on the paper, and it reflects light which is counter to what a shadow is. Just like heavy oil paint shows clear bush marks, heavy graphite literally reflects the technique the artist used to apply it. The way a work like this is lit when on the wall becomes quite delicate as a result, and in situations where the light changes, the drawing will look quite different at various times through the day. I render the shadows in a crosshatch fashion to breakup the reflections. Even then I find I have to adjust the lights over my drawing table so as to avoid reflections as I work.

Soft graphite is also prone to smudging, which in this kind of drawing style is the last thing I care to have happen. Once completed, I spray the work with a fixative to "lock" it down. As I draw I keep a separate sheet of paper under my hand to help avoid blurring things. With a drawing like this that has so much shadow I have to be very careful in planning how to work down the page.

Here's two more update photos. Let me know what you think and don't be shy about becoming a blog member. I post updates on my Facebook site linking to here but would love to see how many folks are following the work and whether you have any questions.

Enjoy!!

Jacob

Drawing 3: 10 Progress Photos

Here's a set of 10 progress photos documenting the start of this drawing. I'm really enjoying this one, almost as much as I found the last drawing troubling. It's a composition with lots of contrast both in terms of detail and tone. I'll let the photos do the talking for this post.

Enjoy!!

Jacob

Drawing 3: Layout

Today I completed the draft layout for the third drawing in the series. This will be a more dramatic composition with large deep areas of shadow and a strong juxtaposition of circular elements in the background with linear elements in the foreground. The rotation in this composition places wheels at opposing corners, which lends a sense of tension and movement to the piece.

I've given some thought to why I choose a particular composition to draw at any given time. These are pretty abstract works and the idea that they somehow reflect anything about me, the artist, can seem a stretch, but there are strong connections. Drawing 2 was rotated upside down. I've just finished a set of life changes that have in fact flipped my world on its head. I can't say I willfully set out to reflect that in the artwork; but it found its way there nevertheless. Seems there's a healthy dose of my subconscious at work in these drawings.

This composition reflects my state as well. The wheels feel like they are rotating, yin/yang like, perhaps toward a place of stability or an alignment that could be considered normal. The linear elements provide a strong feeling of connectedness between the wheels; holding the whole show together as it spins around. That's a good summation of where I'm at just now, settling out after a big change. Again, I didn't pick the drawing with that in mind - it's as though it came to me as the right one to draw now.

Here's the photo composition and the rough layout. The next step is to setup the drawing on water colour paper and then begin the rendering. I'm looking forward to it!

Between Drawings: The Locomotive

I thought it might be interesting to post some information about the locomotive that I'm using as the subject for these drawings.

The North Carolina Transportation Museum is located in the town of Spenser, about 45 minutes drive north of Charlotte, NC. The museum has a great web site and I'd encourage you to check it out if you're at all interested in trains, planes or automobiles.

The following information about the steam locomotive I'm using for the Decapod Project comes from the NC Transportation Museum's web site.

© North Carolina Transportation Museum

Seaboard Air Line #544

"The locomotive was built by the American Locomotive Company in March 1918. This 2-10-0 Decapod was built for the Russian State Railroad, but never delivered due to the Revolution of 1917. Before the locomotive could be used in the U.S, wider tires had to be installed since the Russian Railroads used 5-foot gauge, instead of 4 feet 8 ½ inches. It then became the property of the United States Railroad Administration, begun in 1917 to control the shipment of vital war supplies during World War I. Decapods were employed on branch lines throughout the Seaboard system, being based in North Carolina at Hamlet and Raleigh. During the 1950s these decapods were transferred to the Gainesville Midland, a Seaboard subsidiary in Georgia. The 544 was placed on display in Atlanta in 1965 and later sold to the North Carolina Railroad Company in 1980, which donated the locomotive to the State of North Carolina. The 544 was cosmetically restored in 1996 for display in the Robert Julian Roundhouse."

Drawing 2: Finished!!

The second drawing in the series is complete! :-)

This one is much more about surfaces and focal points than the first work and it was unnerving to draw. I like to have a sense that the piece is coming together as I move through it. This one didn't do that until very far into the effort. With so much flat area the "pop" of there being depth in the work was a long time in coming. It arrived with the completion of the dark area, behind the wheel on the upper right. Without the view into those deeply shadowed zones the drawing wouldn't have worked. There's always the risk of that happening with every work and it tends to give me pause at the start of a new composition. I suppose it's another aspect of having patience, which is something I find this sort of drawing demands on a consistent basis.

Another aspect of this work that made it challenging was the lighting direction - it's upside down from the real world object. This isn't a natural way for objects to be illuminated and it proved a bit hard for me to get right at times. The easy test, of course, is to rotate the page around and see if it makes sense. After looking at the composition for many hours doing this actually looked odd as well. It's an interesting comment on how the eye and mind work together to create a familiar view of the world. We're highly visual animals and rotating something 180 degrees jars that familiarity and forces a reevaluation to take place. I think that's one reason the piece grabbed my attention. I'd be interested to know if you have the same sense looking at it.

Here are the final progress photos and the finished work. Hope you enjoy it!

Jacob

Drawing 2: Finally Back to the Board

So.... I've been away for awhile, doing some of those things that life presents along one's path. For the last week I've been able to turn on the drawing table lights and pick up the pencils again though, which has been a welcome return to a familiar place.

The second drawing in the series is starting really take shape. This composition has less components than the first drawing, and there are broad areas of flat material, which is challenging given the frontal nature of the work. Basically it's tough to make it interesting. It's even harder to develop a sense of depth when there are fewer overlapping elements. As a result I've found myself uncertain about the work - actually fighting urge to quit this one and move on. Going on faith, I stuck with it and worked down to the left corner's dark recesses, where the area behind the wheel lurks in heavy shadow. It paid off as the whole drawing was lifted once this shadow zone was completed.

I find rendering the light areas much more difficult than the dark. While each carries its share of subtleties I find the eye "fills in" details, almost creating them from little or nothing in the shadows. Conversely, the highly lit metal surfaces demand meticulous attention to detail in order to look genuine. It could be the mind's habits at work - our night vision isn't really that great and our brain's penchant for filling in the gaps in the visual field lends credibility to the phrase "seeing things in the dark." I've really noticed the difference between the two on this drawing.

Here are the latest progress photos. Hope you enjoy them!!

Jacob

Drawing 2: 4 More Progress Photos

A quick update to get my latest progress posted.

These pics give you an idea of the layering that takes place to build up the texture and depth of shadow.

Hope you enjoy!

Drawing 2 - Some More Progress

I've made some more progress in between a few other things that have been going on these days. With the arrival of Spring comes yard work and any other number of things to keep me busy, but it's all good! 

Having completed the flat area at the top of the drawing, including its big curved highlight, the first structural element has been added that cuts into the composition from the left. It ends in one of the three circular features that anchor the drawing. The fasteners connecting this pivot point provide the initial opportunity to "pop" something off the surface of this piece, as the shadows give a sense of depth to the elements. It's interesting to note how metal handles light differently from say wood or other materials with organic surfaces. Even areas of rough metal pick up light in unexpected ways, often reversing the rules so that in shadow there comes a bright highlight from a reflected source of brightness. You can see this on the bevel ring of the hex nut, but if you look closely there are other edges inside the shadow that brighten in a similar way to pick up the softened edge of the rounded corners. There's no shadow cast from this top element on the flat surface above it as there's too much space between them. At this point that makes the drawing seem awkward, but I'm betting on it working out as I continue... fingers crossed.

I'm looking forward to the next parts of the drawing as they are heavily shaded and will lift the top areas up to give a strong feeling of depth. I get a real kick out of it when this happens - it never fails to put a smile on my face - quite magical even though I've done it many times before.

Here are the latest progress photos. I hope you enjoy them!!

Drawing 2: Back at the Board

After a long visit with my friends Paint Brush and Paint Roller, I happily returned to the drawing board this afternoon and reacquainted myself with my pencils. I always have a moment of trepidation after a longish time away from drawing - there's a sense of wondering if it'll work out like it did last time. It didn't seem to take long to get past that though, and I made a good start on the second drawing in the series.

I've altered the composition to remove the grease fitting on the top most connection point. It was too directional and gave me a sense that the drawing was upside down, which it is, but I don't want that to be the impression of the viewer. The rendering here at the start involves a set of layers that will build up the flat area across the top. It's a challenge to make a basically smooth flat surface interesting, yet if one looks closely there's plenty of texture on the surface to work with; it's just subtle.

Here's the first snapshot of the work in progress. I'm laying down the second layer of detail using a 2H pencil. The first layer was laid down with a 5H - the hardest pencil I work with these days. The harder the pencil the lighter the mark it makes.

Drawing 2: Where's the Beef?

Hi Folks

I wanted to post a brief update to let followers and visitors know I'm still around and the drawing is still on the table.... with a drop cloth over it. After several years in our home we decided it was time to paint this spring, so I've been making marks in a bit more of a macro fashion all over the walls with a 2.5" brush and an 8" roller. Mind you I'm still paying attention to detail around the edges - it's just not quite the same attention as when I sit down to draw.

I'm hoping to complete the painting project in a week or two and then return to pick up my pencils again.

Until then Cheers!

Jacob

Drawing 2: Composition

One of the things that happens in a creative endeavour is change and this project is no exception. After finishing the first drawing I looked at the remaining compositions and some of them no longer measured up. I actually had two of them drawn on trace paper and scrapped em, which meant I needed to return to my original photograph and look for material that matched what I'm doing. You'll see the updates in the progress bar above. In the end, 5 of the original compositions were retired, replaced by 2 new ones that follow the rules and 3 that don't. I'll share the ones that break the rules in a later post. Suffice to say they are worth straying off the path for or at least that's the way it looks at the moment. This triaging has produced more rejects than keepers by the way - I've got 23 compositions in the project folder.... It's a good thing I'm not a baseball player.

Here's the next subject I'll be drawing:

This grabbed my attention when I had the feeling it was looking back at me - sort of peeking out between the foreground elements with a bit of an eyebrow arching over the top.

On another level, the rotation of the photo reversed the lighting, which adds a twist to the piece that moves it just out of the familiar zone enough that it begs another look. We're used to seeing the world lit from above and reversing that gives the eye a bit of a nudge. There's a fine line here though, as too much of it - too harsh a reversal - can be jarring to the point we dismiss what we see as improbable and look away in disbelief. In this composition the lighting is soft enough to suggest there's something not quite right, but what that might be is uncertain. This is a visual hook that gets the attention of the viewer and pulls them in to investigate. Note as well the range of tone from black shadow all the way through white edge highlights. Having this variation in a composition allows for the development of depth and interest as light areas move forward and dark recede. I look for compositions that contain these types contrasts inside a set of layers - recall that I don't employ perspective in these drawings, so the viewer must be convinced of depth using other techniques, like this one.

There are some very strong forms at work in this piece that also recommended it for the project. This work differs sharply from the last one in terms of the angles of the elements. Here almost everything is heading off in a different direction, suggesting we're looking at a nexus of objects coming together, but yet there's no single physical point of contact - the connection is fragmented and shared by three points. These become elements of interest in the picture that carry on a visual conversation between themselves. As we look in on them we see there is a relationship of motion here that could happen at any moment. This charges the composition with energy as the viewer recognizes this is a train and these are parts of its engineering that move in rotation around one another. In the first drawing there was the potential for motion as well, but there was also a clear directional grain in the piece and a counterpoint element that called attention to that rule. In this work the opposite is happening and when we find something that lines up it's almost like we solved a puzzle or caught a glimpse of these whirling parts at just the right the moment, which is sort of cool.

Here's the layout drawing for the above composition. I didn't alter anything on this between the photo and the paper - the picture just works; it's balanced right out of the gate. 

Next time I'll talk a bit about the tools I use in the early stages of developing one of these drawings.

A Story Between Drawings

The completion of my first drawing in this series got me thinking…

MANY years ago a well know Nova Scotia artist, Don Pentz, met me as a young man. Don is a friend of my Mom and I had completed some drawings that showed promise, so she arranged the introduction. I was shy and uncertain of what I wanted to do in life, and approached the meeting with something a notch or two less than optimism. I was welcomed into the artist’s studio – I had never seen one before, and we sat by a window looking out on the Lahave River. Don looked at my drawings. To my surprise he expressed his surprise, noting that the work was good enough for a gallery and that while I still had plenty to learn, he was genuinely impressed at what I had done without training. He asked what I planned to do with my talent. Art was never something I had been encouraged to consider as a career. My teachers saw greater things for me and pressed their ideas home to the point where I took their vision as my own; I answered accordingly. What Don Pentz said in response has echoed through my life since then: “If you are an artist, you will come back to the art and there’s nothing you will be able to do avoid it.” He gave me a brief overview of his own life to that point as proof of his assertion. I was young and had not the ears to hear the sage wisdom in his story, or if I did, the wits to comprehend it.

The years that have passed since that meeting by the Lahave held moments that I now bring to the drawing table as I “come back to the art”. My work is richer for this in ways I may never fathom, but I can say that the passion and energy that pull me back to the paper and pencil comes from a deep well that I cannot ignore.

It’s a story I thought might strike a chord with some, so I offer it... between drawings.

Drawing 1: Completed!!

Okay... There's too much of the little kid in me to keep this under wrap.

I finished the first drawing last evening and I gotta say I'm happy with it - thrilled in fact!! As the first drawing in the series it's really the proof in the pudding, and the drawing came together completely as planned, which is always a welcome outcome.

Going by the number of progress pics and a couple extra times I didn't document, I sat down at the drawing board around 20 times as I rendered the piece. I didn't "clock" this one and thus don't have the "logged" hours, but really... this isn't about the clock, so I'll leave those hands on the wall to tell their story in another space.

In a wink to my day job that has me in front of a computer a lot, I've made the photo bar at the top of the blog a "progress bar". As I finish each composition I'll replace the colour picture with my drawing. For those technical folks reading this don't worry - there's no reboot at the end!

So here are the remaining progress pictures for Drawing 1, with the finished work at the bottom. If you get a kick out of clicking through these in succession let me know. It's like one of those old fashioned flip cartoons and I have to pull myself away from going through the loop over and over.

Hope you enjoy these as much as I did pushing the pencils over the page.

Thanks again for dropping by!

... Now it's back to the drawing board. :-)