Today I ventured out into the garden to explore shapes and shadows. I wanted to gain an understanding and idea of the rough state of the garden and the natural shapes that it provided me with.
Materials I used to create these fast intimate artworks were Oil pastel, Charcoal, Pencil and Marker pen. I wanted to keep the materials limited and not anything that was going to make the artworks anymore time consuming than they needed to be. As I have already stated I wanted this to be a fast fun exercise for me to loosen up and get started with the project.
The shadows and shapes that I came across in the garden were simply fascinating something I had never really properly thought about or appreciated. The delicate structures that hold a plant together and provide structure and support for the foliage is so under appreciated and underestimated in regards to challenging weather conditions and disruption from mankind.
I personally find the texture of the foliage something to admire as it varies so much from one plant to the next. People sometimes seem to forget that each plants genetic make up is to help combat specific conditions and pests etc meaning not every plant is suitable for any location. Hence the reason behind themed gardens some being, French, Japanese, bog, dry and there are so many more themes for your garden!
Going on from the above images I done some drawings whilst I was out exploring my garden. As previously mentioned I used a combination of materials. The artworks are 12x12cm and are extremely sketchy, some artworks take up two pages where as some only use one.
The above six artworks have all been created using coloured oil pastel. This is a material I wouldn’t normally use well I would normally go for black or white but I wanted to depict the idea of the plants life and the energy in the space .
For the final six artworks these are a combination of charcoal, marker pen and pencil. Out of all the drawings I find these rather underwhelming in comparison to the colourful oil pastel works. Although these are a clear representation of what the plants will look like in a few months as we are slowly getting close to winter.
On reflection when writing this I have now noticed that I have subconsciously loosened up and become far more abstract and free as I have progressed with this exercise. I want to further develop this through the form of collage further abstracting the work.