For the majority of my environment drawings I quickly sketched in graphite and took photography of the location so that I could add media to it later on.
I experimented mainly with dry based media and in monochrome/desaturated values for the York Christmas Market, as the stalls themselves were not colourful apart from the lights that wrapped around the bare trees and the carousel in the distant background. I enjoyed drawing the crowd amongst the stalls as it was interesting to see how they reacted to different stalls, I saw one person dramatically lean into one of the stalls which I tried to capture in the charcoal composition, and another as they conversed with a person who was selling mulled wine from an interesting van and the structure of which was the hardest thing to capture, I just could not get the perspective right and I did not want to give into using a ruler.
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| York Market - Exterior background |
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| York Market - Exterior background |
Leeds Christmas Market was far more bright and 'in your face' with vivid merchandise and consumables, the stalls were made to look like they had been made out of wood, with quirky decorative additions to the roofs and front of the stall. I experimented more with media for this using watercolours and a combination of black wax and ink. The idea for this black wax and ink composition was to originally leave it with just a
black wax appearance, however I wanted to add colour. I knew that using
watercolour with black wax would either not take due to the wax appeal
to the medium or not be able to contrast much against the darkness of
the media, I knew that marker pens and colouring pencils would not mix
well with the black wax as the marker pen would retaliate with both the
paper and the wax, whereas the colouring pencil would smudge part of the
black wax into the colour, so after this debate, I decided to try out
ink. Using black wax and ink worked well together as the black values of the wax contrasted with the vividness of the ink and made it quite saturated. Whereas the watercolour added a range of subtle and desaturated hues mixed with a few brighter tones, I felt more comfortable using watercolours to fill the composition as I have more experience with this medium compared to using black wax and ink, which was an experimentation that turned out well.
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| Leeds Market - Exterior background |
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| Leeds Market - Exterior background |
The Pickering Castle environment is a mixture of interior and exterior backgrounds as I wanted to record a mixture of both but also show the contrast of the atmosphere of the outside and inside of different parts of the castle. I found that the interior of the castle was eerily quiet, it felt dormant like in any second debris or the sound of the wind would whistle and echo; I wanted to capture this atmosphere by using graphite, fineliner and dip pen, the dip pen was useful for scratchy thick and thin lines made with ink, that was good for crosshatch which aided the dark silent tone of the compositions. Using graphite and shading with it helped to gain volume and depth to the piece, and it was the best medium I knew that I could use to emphasise the perspective of the light emitting from the background door behind the gate.
For the next set of drawings, I used a range of media, watercolour, pastels and colouring pencils to create the compositions. I was wary of using pastels as I had not used the media since high school so I just experimented with the drawing and it worked quite well, I was able to create a desaturated piece and rub away part of the pastel with an eraser to create the illusion of light that was emitted from the window. I remember that when using pastels, not to use white against black to add highlights to the solid colour as it creates a grey blend which would not work well for the colour of the stone work, instead I used a peach pastel which I smudged with the black and dark brown hues. This worked well as it gave more depth to the window structure and more volume to the wooden structure of the roof.
I enjoyed using watercolour and a mixture of colouring pencils for shade in the last few compositions as it gave a subtle contrast to the lineart that I had sketched previously. I wanted to use watercolour as I felt that it was the best medium to depict the imagery, for example the stone wall and bat hanging amongst the uneven wall needed desaturated greens, browns and neutral greys that would give an aged appeal to the drawing, and the entrance encased in grassy hills and the other with the orange mushrooms on the tree had to be encased in a bright yet soft tones, which I knew watercolours would be the best to achieve this.
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| Pickering Castle - Interior background |
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| Pickering Castle - Interior background |
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