Rolling Over

A couple of drawings that I made a little while back.

Originally, I made a similar one for the branding and logo of a yarn shop.

 I think 'yarn' is what the serious knitters call wool.

But, I have no clue. I don't knit.

 I just draw.

 I really enjoyed this subject matter though. That's why I made a couple more drawings when I'd finished the job. There's something quite abstract about these. And calming.

I guess that's what both knitting and drawing does. It calms us down.

They are also both for sale in my shop HERE. Plus, there's 20% OFF all originals and prints until the end of the week.

urban sketching and beyond

Last year I created the illustrations for a children's book called Towers Falling. My drawings were meant to be the drawings created by one of the main characters, a boy called Ben. Just thought I'd show the process from my urban/observational sketches to the final illustration.

 As soon as I got the brief I knew (in my head) what I wanted the sketchbook pages to look like. I'd spent a good couple of years filling up these small cheap sketchbooks with quick drawings of buildings and people. Mainly people. These pages were my starting point.

I really liked the layout of the one above, with the different size faces.

I also wanted all the people, to be authentic; to be people that I'd sketched from life, on trains, planes and in cafes.

The brief here, was to illustrate a couple of Ben's sketchbook spreads, that he'd made of commuters on the subway. I chose this girl, above, to begin with - mainly because it was one of my favourite observational sketches. It's so much easier when they're asleep.

Starting with her, I then worked in the other characters around her, filling up Ben's sketchbooks with characters from my own (get's confusing, doesn't it?).

 A few friends, and people I sketch with, ended up becoming people on the subway too. And, I squashed another girl, from one of my favourite train sketches, below, in on the bottom left. Sure, it's not exactly like her, but that's why we have our artistic licenses.

I love how these random people have made their way into the story. I find myself creating whole new characters for them, as I draw them commuting on the New York subway. They take on a whole new life, out there in the world.

Urban sketching, observational drawing, whatever you want to call it is something I do to improve my skills. I don't associate myself, or my work, with a specific genre or group. I don't consider myself as an 'Urban Sketcher', it's just something I do a lot of. But, it's just a part of my work. I like the way I've embroidered it into my book illustrations here. I like taking it a step further.
Dunno why. Just do.

late at night, when the world is dreaming

No matter how much I try to change (and believe me, I've tried everything) I'll always be a night owl. I just love working at that time of night/morning. It seems that at any given time, I'll have a million and one ideas, never focusing on one and seeing it through, swimming through my head too. In last night's midnight creativity session I was playing around with the idea of making a pop-up sketchbook filled with upside-down portraits of women who have left their mark on this world and on me. I know, I know, it's just so predictable. Everyone, and their mother, is at the pop-up-sketchbook-of-upside-down-drawings-of-inspirational-creative-women thing, right?  Erm, oh, just me then?

a new affair

Recently I've had this urge. An itch to scratch. I just cannot get enough of colour. Specifically watercolour. It coincided with the landscape stuff I've been doing (in my last couple of posts), and has pretty much taken over all of my work.

 I've always known that urge would come knocking on my door one day. My watercolour set has been patiently sat there, like a book that you're really excited to read, that's been in the pile of books by the side of your bed, just waiting for it's time to come.

 I'm not impatient about stuff like that. I totally believe that you shouldn't try something because it's the thing to do, or cos everyone else is doing it or because it's there. I wait.

 Until I really really want to do it. Until I have no choice in the matter.

 Now, you see, I LOVE ink. I am head over heels with it, but lets face it, ink is a pain in the ass. It's a pain to take out. It's high maintenance. I'm not talking about just taking out one colour, that's fine, but if you want a full palette it's just an impractical pain in the butt. And, believe me I tried to make it work.

 So, after a year of juggling dip pens and three or four bottles of ink on a street corner, or scrubbing the table at your regular café because you'd spilled the bulletproof black ink, again, the watercolour set caught my eye.

 Sure it isn't quite as dramatic as Mr Ink, he's more subtle, but, you know, more reliable. True, he's not as intense either, but, you get twelve colours in one set and he doesn't leak all over your bag. And, anyway, I'm kinda enjoying his subtle flatter tones. Plus, it doesn't show you up in your local café.

Yes, I have started falling for watercolours.

 I haven't got a clue what I'm doing yet, but I don't care. The fun bit is finding out where this new affair will go. And, if that turns out to be nowhere that's okay too. I'll have new stuff in my locker.

I've always loved monochrome drawings but it feels liberating to not be tied to that black line.

Prints of my new landscapes now in my Etsy shop

(sorry to be peddling my wares but I have bills to pay. Lots of bills).

how green is my valley

Okay, I'll stop with this soon, but I'm really enjoying this work right now. All of these recent landscape drawings were meant to include a signal box (you can see it in my last post). The white space, on the right hand side of this one, was left so that I could squeeze it in. Now I'm not even sure if I'll put it in at all. It's been a bit of an obsession for me that signal box. I think if anything could become my Monte Sainte-Victore (for those not in the know, Cezanne painted it over and over again, in every season) it would be that signal box. I love it and have done since I moved here. I've wanted to draw it for the longest time, but never got around to it. But the other day it was just calling me. I've been back each day since. So far, it's only made it into one drawing.

that's where you'll find me

 I have this thirst for landscapes at the moment. I don't know where it has come from, I try not to question it.

 I adore the British landscape. It's so beautiful and green and lush.

 I've done quite a bit of travelling in the past, and been to some stunning places, but I think that the colours of the UK are my favourite. There has to be some pay off for all that rain. I always knew what an inspiration it was to me, even though I was drawing lots of man made stuff. I'd drive through these hills and imagine I was breathing in the beauty and that somehow, even though it wasn't obvious, it would come out in my work.

 I've a long way to go before I produce anything I'm really happy with as I'm playing around with a whole new medium in watercolour. My attempts are a bit dull and dirty looking, but that's because I'm a messy worker.

Anyway, I am just enjoying playing in the fields right now.

i've seen that road before

This is one of my favourite recent drawings (or urban sketches as they now have to be called). I made this at the end of a long day. I thought I was all drawn out, but I found a window seat in a café directly across the road from this lovely pink building.

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about how much my work has changed and in the comments somebody (another Andrea) said "There's a certain element to your style - organicness (? if that's even a word) which does link it all (old and new work) together." I liked hearing that. From the very beginning, and all of the drawings that I made came from an authentic place, and even though I wouldn't want to - couldn't even - draw in that way anymore, it still is very much part of me and my work. I wouldn't want to deny it or try to erase it. So it pleases me to know that others can see that link. I do. 

I think then, and now, I was always trying to achieve the same thing; I've always been trying to make the drawings that I would have loved as a kid. The kind of drawing that would have made the young me want to draw. That's always my in my mind. Well maybe not my mind, I'm not consciously thinking about it, but that aim is somewhere inside me. I think that this drawing is a favourite of mine because, I reckon, the young me would have loved it.

Somebody also recently said to me "there is no such thing as art it's all nostalgia". It's quite a bold and perhaps controversial statement. It's something I've thought about a lot since hearing it. I think I agree. 

the streets are ours

For one reason or another, I seem to have been talking, and thinking, a lot recently about how my work is changing/has changed. And it is/has. It's changed dramatically.

There are a few reasons for that, which, if you're interested, I'll share with you now. If you're not interested please take a look around at some of my pictures.

1. The first reason is that I went on this ink workshop. And I loved it. It felt I'd been reunited with an old love. Way before I ever believed I could be an illustrator, I used to play around with ink. Mainly just cheap fountain pens, but I also bought a whole load of those little bottles of Windsor and Newton inks back in the day too. I'd paint with them, like in this old children's illustration, and loved the intensity. I kind of forgot about all that as time passed. But, it was taking the ink workshop that woke me up to the possibilities all over again. It truly was like coming home.

I should also mention, that just around the same time I inherited a load of old inks - a huge box of bottles of all different kinds from acrylics to Indian ink to luminescents - when an art studio was closing down. Half of them were so old or crusty that there was no way of opening them. I threw all of those away, but what was left, coupled with the W&N ones I'd bought twenty years ago (which incidentally were all still in perfect condition), became my new palette.

2. So now I'm armed with my new weapons, but I'm really stuck. I'm really...well...bored. Bored of what I'm doing. I'm still running my Drink & Draw series which I absolutely adore, so that's giving me lots of practice on the life drawing front, I'm still going out and doing lots of observational drawings, but I'm still stuck. Now, I don't think I even noticed this. Not quite. Not until my next change, but I see it now. And it's not always a bad place to be. In fact there's something quite exciting about being in that place.

Cos change is gonna come.

And, I love that. I love just knowing that.

3. One morning I woke up and just had an incredible urge to draw the Buxton Opera House. This surprised me. It surprised me because the thought of doing that before that point would have bored the pants off me. The place had been drawn and painted by every artist within a fifty mile radius of it over and over again. Quite rightly too, it's really beautiful. REALLY beautiful. But it's been drawn and painted to death. The idea of doing it just felt soooo predictable. So obvious. But this day I got up and I had a need to draw it. So, I did. Then I drew the town hall. Then the Palace Hotel. Then some of the gorgeous flats that overlooked the Opera House.....

And so I drew Buxton (I haven't got around to scanning them yet, so that's another post) until I'd drawn all of Buxton. It is only a small place. But now something was awakening.

4. And then came the Urban Sketchers Symposium, that just so happened to be in the city I work and the city that I see as a spiritual home. Manchester, the city where half of me is from (my mother's half).

Now, I've been a part of an urban sketching group (Yorkshire) for around four or five years, in fact, I now draw with two (Manchester), but I've never felt like much of an urban sketcher. My favourite outings were always the coffees shop ones. I'd always end up drawing details or people. So I always felt a bit of a incidental urban sketcher.

What the Symposium did for me was open my eyes to our amazing city and to share that and show off Manchester with people who love drawing as much as I do. I also discovered so many drawing opportunities. Around every corner there's a little surprise, a little gem, and I intend to draw them all. It was wonderful to share that with other sketchers. I've learnt a lot about the city. And about where I want my work to take me.

So, yeah, my drawing has changed. And for the first time in quite some time I'm loving what I'm doing again. That's a good feeling.

Just go with the flow kids. Don't get hung up or frustrated by your drawing funks. It'll all come around. It'll all come back around.

how to draw a show revisited

Here's a post from the archives. It's from July 2010. The first thing that goes through my head is how things have changed! I would never use this method these days. My drawing is so much more instinctual now, but back then I was learning. I was teaching myself to draw. And, for me, that makes it a valid exercise, but then any sort of drawing that you do is valid. It's all about practice, and no matter how much we'd love magic pens the fact is that if you want to get to a place where you're confident enough to become instinctual you need to put the learning in first. And, what I have found also is that drawing is all about looking, seeing, and that is something else I was teaching myself to do here. Look. See.

 

 The other thing that has changed is an obsession with drawing shoes - where did that come from??!Anyway, here's

How To Draw a Shoe by Andrea Joseph 2010

Over the past few years I have worked through many different processes, when drawing from still life, to get to the one that I am happy with. As I'm self taught it's been a process of elimination to find the ways that work best for me. I have narrowed it down to a couple of methods actually. I'll show you both in the next two posts, and demonstrate with my favourite subject matter; shoes.

 

Above are the tools I have used. They are; a cartridge paper sketch book; tracing paper; pencil; rubber (I believe that means something different in the US?!); three blue ballpoints; one red ballpoint. I want to stress at this point, because I'm asked so frequently, I use ANY kind of ballpoint pen. No special makes or brands. Any. As long as they aren't blotchy I'll use them.

Step 1. I am pretty obsessive about getting the shape 'right', so if I'm sketching something, for eaxmple an Adidas trainer, I will do the sketching stage on tracing paper. I realised, a while back, that I do not have any 'sketchy' books as such. I only ever produce finished drawings. I do, however, have huge amounts of roughs on tracing paper. Doing things this way means I can work on the shape I want to achieve and then transfer it easily to paper. It also means that, if I should want to, I can reproduce the same image (in different mediums). Which is something I do quite often.

Step 2. When I've got shape I want I transfer it to paper. In the image above you can see the ballpoint outline. I would obviously start with a pencil outline, but the scan I did for that was rubbish - you couldn't see anything. So when the pencil outline is put down on the paper, I go over it faintly with a ballpoint.

Step 3. I have started to add some shading (values?) to some areas. I work out where this shading should be by observing the shoe and where the shadows and light fall. Excuse me if all this sounds really patronising, it's not meant to. It's just how I have learnt to draw. Step by step.

Step 4. Here comes the cross hatching. This is the part where I feel I can really get into the zone with this drawing. I love this bit. The shoe is starting to come alive, and more texture is being added through the hatching.

Step 5. A continuation of the last step. More building, more hatching, more texture. Also at this point I'm starting to add the detail. That's another bit I love doing.

Step 6. The finishing touches. My most favourite bit. Details, a bit of extra hatching and a splash of red. In this drawing the final finishing touch was to outline the shoe with a bolder line, using a ballpoint that has a bigger nib.

And that's it!

That's how I did things back then. Actually, this is the way I'd work these days for an editorial or book illustration job or for something that needed planning and page layout. So, I learnt quite a lot from that period. Mostly, I learned about seeing. And, funnily enough, I went on to teach a Sketchbook Skool course of that very name ('Seeing') five or so years later.

More demonstrations and things from the archives all month, here, on my blog.

But for now, that's all folks!