I took out the same book again from the library at work (‘Extraordinary Sketchbooks’). I wanted to get the name of the nature illustrator who features in it – his name is Richard Bell (pp. 44 to 47). The drawings shown there have a very professional look, and could appear in any number of illustrated nature books.
Partly, I went back to this because ultimately I am interested in studying illustration later. The drawings are carefully wrought, very different to the hurried figure sketches of Mark Gamsu.
But, the main reason I went back to reread the part on Richard Bell was something he said about being very outward facing. That when he sketches in order to focus on the outside world in this way he is not actually making art, in his view:
“I realise that I’m happiest when I’m looking outwards rather than inwards and away from culture rather than towards it. Because of this, I don’t really see my sketchbooks as ‘art’ as they represent a continuing investigation of the world around me.’ (Bell, p.46)
I think this fits with the thoughts I had written about in a previous post about representation and creation, and how other artists had creatively selected certain aspects such as form, tone and texture to represent accurately while other aspects they had presented in more creative / non realistic ways.
I was briefly enamoured with the excitement of quickly drawing to capture the sense of something, as with Gamsu’s approach – but I am not experienced enough I don’t think to pull that off. There’s a place for careful drawing so for the last few days I’ve tried to include at least one careful drawing per day lasting, each drawing lasting from 40 to 60 minutes or so.
Kris' Art Learning Log 