Lines Made By Walking

~ LINES MADE BY WALKING ~ A Drawing and Walking Workshop, June 2018 ~

Today was our second ‘Lines Made By Walking’ workshop! 

We had a very different day - warm and often sunny but with dramatic clouds above us and a steel grey sea down below the cliffs. 

There was again lots to see and draw. The steep cliffs and archway were very striking again, and especially with the constantly changing light conditions. We spoke of different ways to get our impressions quickly down on the page, and how to build up tone quickly. An option was choice of media - I started to use charcoal which allows you to use broad strokes and to blend areas of tone, though some detail can be lost. Gilly made beautiful sketches using pencil and ink, which brilliantly allows the drawer to quickly sketch in a distant hill, or the grey tone of the sea, but also to record detail. Gilly is an artist and maker living in Shetland, and you can find more examples of her work here: https://gilly-b.com/

All of the participants had interesting and different approaches to sketching out in the landscape. The fourth image here (the first image of an open concertina sketch book) shows how a series of small drawings of little ‘moments’ can be a very lovely way of recording thought on a journey. Each little sketch sets off a memory in the mind of the drawer (or an impression in the mind of the viewer), and the whole open sketchbook almost gives the impression of a map - a journey in thought as well as in landscape and time.