Sketchbook Drawings

 

These are some sketches based on my glazed ceramic buildings. On the left I did some bold pen drawings of the forms as a large collection that's closely packed together like a busy city, and on the right I did some rough observational drawings with watercolour and crayon. For the drawings on the left I wanted them to be black and white but decided to give the background a purple wash with watercolour to reference my favourite of the glazes and I think that washiness is a good contrast with the more assertive pen lines. The crayons on the right made a much softer effect but I like how the coloured lines look on top of the watercolour, particularly the purple ones because it reflects the vivid multi-tonality of that particular glaze. 

In the left drawing I used masking tape to create a border and some window-like shapes to reference the buildings, so that after I did the watercolour background I could peel them off and have squares of light. I used the same colours as usual but I think they don't blend very well in this context because it became quite muddy and grey. I did some drawings from my paper and metal flowers using crayon, fine-liner and a calligraphy pen (which was running out) and I had the larger flowers breaking out of the frame to add a sense of energy. I don't really like that page overall but at least it helped me get an idea of which colours do and don't mix together nicely. The page on the right was a kind of inverted version of the previous one where the windows have colour in them rather than being white. In each one I did some little fine-liner drawings of the various imagery that I have been working with, like birds, flowers and mushrooms. I think the colour has worked much nicer in this one but the drawings could be more distinguished.