Image Workshop

At the beginning of our Image Workshop, we were given a little sketchbook and we were told to rummage through our bags to find an item to sketch. I dug to the bottom of my stereotypical messy woman's handbag and found that bunch of keys I was looking for. 

After we had sketched our item, we were all told that we didn't know how to draw! We were told to draw the item again but this time we weren't allowed to look at our paper. "One continuous line" he said. Well that was tricky!

I selected one of the many keys on my bunch and started obeying the order. At first I didn't feel very confident, as I saw that my outcomes looked like scribbles of a two year old. As I continued I actually began to feel a sense of freedom. No one was expecting anything from me and more importantly, I wasn't expecting anything from myself. After all, I wasn't even looking at the page! 

"Now with your left hand!" He ordered. And the sense of freedom grew and grew. I was expecting even less from my left hand. It had no control of the pen and just had a mind of it's own. It felt great to just draw what I saw, even if the outcome seemed horrendous. It brought me right back to my childhood, where funnily enough a lot of my scribbles were better than anything I could produce now. This was probably mainly due to complete freedom and thoughtlessness. There was no pressure to produce brilliance, because as a child, no one was expecting anything more than scribbles! Sometimes the lack of thought produces the best work! 

Now looking back, I am glad I was given the opportunity to find this certain sense of freedom. I am actually starting to feel that these "horrendous" drawings are actually quite fascinating and I certainly wouldn't rule them out as artistic! 

We then moved on to task which was called "one thing leads to another". This was the experimentation with the different options for the depiction of the structure of a plain oak leaf. We were given the opportunity to purely experiment! 

Here are the four examples of my exploration...

When I returned home, I decided to continue experimenting. Here is one of the outcomes that I produced. The diagram depicts the connection between various external points of the leaf. 

I recreated the above version and added colour in order to depict an abstract autumn leaf.

I placed two images of the oak leaf next to one another and experimented with the external points of each leaf, creating an intertwined version of the above. 

I recreated the above version and added colour in order to depict an abstract green leaf.

I then decided to continue my experimentation and introduce another image. A pineapple.

This depicts the relationship between the base of the fruit and each external point of the palm. 

As well as the depiction of the relationship between the base of the fruit and each external points of the palm, this also depicts the asymmetrical relationship of the external points of the palm from each side of the fruit.

I recreated the above version and added colour in order to depict an abstract Pineapple.

We then went on to learn about collages. We learnt that the use of white space works really well for collages. White space tends to draw the viewer in towards the main aspect of the collage. 

Here is one of my collages that I put together in the workshop.

When I got home, I began to work on some more collages and attempted to use white space.

This workshop was really successful and I really enjoyed it! It made me realise that having the freedom to experiment is a gift and I will certainly be experimenting a lot more in the future!