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| 7/19/18 My finished sketch from the workshop |
A
discussion of Graphite is the Matter, the workshop I took with Eduardo Bajzek, requires its own post
because I am so intrigued by the process he uses that I want to document it
thoroughly as a reminder to myself.
As happened
with nearly all symposium activities, Eduardo led us on a steep, lengthy hike
to his workshop location. A relatively quiet, pedestrian-only alley had tables
for a small café and, as always, tightly stacked buildings forming a canyon.
To
begin the workshop, Eduardo encouraged us to relax and prepare for the work
ahead by sitting in silence for two full minutes with our eyes closed. He
didn’t call it meditation, but he said he begins his own drawing and work
practice this way to relax and quiet his mind. After the physical exertion of
hiking uphill, my mind buzzing with thoughts about the symposium and
conversation with other participants, it was a surprising and delightful way to
begin.
Eduardo’s
method involves three aspects:
- The
technique of using simple tools –
pencils, erasers and a blending stump – to build forms with the matter of graphite.
- The approach of
focusing on masses instead of contours and shapes instead of lines. (This
approach brought to mind the #30x30DirectWatercolor2018 challenge that Marc Holmes recently initiated to
encourage watercolor painters to work directly with paint instead of relying on
line first. I didn’t participate in that challenge, but I read several blogs
and social media commentary by participants, and as I worked in the workshop, I
immediately saw parallels with some of the challenges the watercolor
participants had struggling with. Eduardo even called this method a painterly
approach to using graphite.)
- The concept of
working from the outside in – from larger shapes to progressively smaller ones.
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| Workshop location |
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Eduardo showed us many examples of this
technique in his sketchbooks. |
Because
his method can be time-consuming and he knew he wouldn’t be able to demo a complete
drawing large enough for all to see easily, Eduardo prepared for the workshop in
an impressive manner that I really appreciated. Several days before the
workshop, he scoped out his location and then spent more than two hours on a
drawing. Another day, he came back to the same location and started a new
drawing of the same view, this time stopping after about an hour.
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| Eduardo's one-hour sample |
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| Eduardo's two-hour sample |
For the workshop
participants, he pulled out a clean sheet of paper and started a fresh sketch –
again of the same view. The demo itself lasted only about a half-hour, but
because he could show us two more versions of how he might continue working on
the drawing, we could see his additive process of honing the work
and shaping the matter of graphite.
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| Eduardo during his demo |
At
each stage, the drawing looked relatively finished, and the main difference
among them was the level of detail added. If a composition is strong and the
values read well, then a drawing can have very little detail and still look
finished.
Before
beginning to draw, he talked quite a bit about observing closely to select a
strong composition, but defining the drawing’s focal point is not important
early in the game. This surprised me a bit, as I always find myself honing in
on a focal point almost immediately before starting a sketch, as it’s usually
the first thing that catches my attention.
Several
more things surprised me as I watched him demonstrate. I always view Eduardo’s
finished drawings as being very tight and controlled. Yet he applied the
initial scribbles of graphite very loosely and quickly. The idea is to cover nearly
the entire page (except large areas like the sky that would be left white) with
a light, even tone of graphite. At this stage (and for quite a while after), no
“drawing” of lines is allowed – none! Do you know how hard it is to resist
putting down a meaningful line to define the side of a building, for example,
or a roofline?! This is when my head started exploding, because up to this
point, graphite in my hand has always expressed itself as a line – not a mass
or shape. (I think some charcoal artists work in this manner, but given my avoidance
of all things charcoal, I hadn’t experienced using this method at all.)
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| Eduardo applying graphite for the initial tone |
Another
thing that surprised me was the very specialized material he used for blending
large areas of graphite once he had scribbled on the initial tone: toilet
paper! This tool hadn’t appeared on the supply list, but he laughed as he
explained how handy it is. (If you’ll recall, I said in my workshop prep post that I already own so much of
everything that I didn’t have to buy a single item for the symposium. It turns
out that I was also prepared with this item! I’ve had enough experience
traveling outside the US that I always carry a partial roll of TP everywhere
for its more conventional purpose in public restrooms. I never thought I’d use
it during an urban sketching workshop!) The purpose of this step is to blend
and unify the composition by making the tone as solid and even as possible.
I
was also surprised that he used a Staedtler 3B grade for this initial scribbled
and blended tone. I would have guessed that a slightly harder, lighter grade
would be used initially (with gradually softer, darker grades used later), but
he prefers using softer grades to avoid making inadvertent indentations in the
paper and to make the application of tone go faster.
The
final surprise? After he finished putting on this initial tone, he started defining
some of the lines – the edges where rooflines met the sky, walls, etc. – but not
with the pencil’s point. He used a
kneaded eraser. (Can you see the contents of my brain continue to scatter in
the street? It took me quite a while to stuff all the pieces back in!)
After
that, the process was continual repetition of the previous cycle: Add more tone,
this time more selectively; smudge with toilet paper and, when a finer stroke
was needed, the blending stump; use the eraser to sharpen edges and continue to
shape the forms. In a half-hour, he had produced a sketch that wasn’t quite
finished but that had enough clearly defined forms and values that it “read”
easily. The one-hour and two-hour samples he had prepared previously helped us
visualize how he might have continued many more cycles of tone/blend/erase with
the addition of sharp details to provide the focal point.
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| The view I selected. |
Now
it was our turn. I chose a relatively simple composition of the main canyon of
buildings on either side of the pedestrian alley for its lack of detail. I
thought this would keep me from being tempted to fiddle with too many lamp
fixture curlicues. I also avoided identifying a focal point.
As
I mentioned, resisting the impulse to “draw” the building contours was similar
to resisting gravity – it felt very physical! I had planned to photograph my
sketch at each stage as a reminder, but I don’t have a photo of that initial
laydown of tone because I was too busy fighting my own arm, hand and pencil
point. By the time I thought to take the photo below, I had already begun defining the
shapes with the eraser and later the pencil point (that’s allowed, but only
after the eraser has done the initial job).
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| Early stages of my sketch: Tone applied; shaping with eraser and pencil point begun. |
When
Eduardo came by to check on me, he encouraged me to use the TP more often to
unify the composition. I said I didn’t want to smear the areas I had already
started darkening, but he said not to worry about that until I was ready to
work on fine details toward the end. At this stage, it’s still all about value and
tone, and the nice thing about graphite is that the darker areas will always
remain darker, even if TP’d, because of its layered, cumulative nature.
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| Smudging with TP begun. |
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| Some darks picked out. |
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| Eduardo suggested more use of the TP to unify the composition. |
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| It was this late in the game that I finally decided to put in a lamp fixture with fine detail as the focal point. |
Using
nothing but a Mitsubishi Hi-Uni 3B (which
is slightly softer than a Staedtler of the same grade), I worked for about an hour and a half on this drawing. (I
meant to switch to a softer grade as I worked on darker areas, but I forgot.) I
stopped before the end of the workshop because I was afraid I was going to start
getting fiddly if I kept going. Perhaps more important, I really liked the way my
sketch was at this point (top of post). I mentioned in my previous post that I often don’t like work I produce in workshops because it
tends to feel like exercises or reflect the instructor’s vision more than my
own. In this case, I was using an approach and technique that are distinctly
Eduardo’s and not my own, yet I ended up pleased that I could follow both and
still end up with a sketch that I like.
The
challenge with learning a distinctive technique that is clearly associated
with an instructor who teaches it is that I don’t want my sketches to simply be bad imitations of Eduardo’s work. 😉 That remains an issue for me –
I want to find a way to use this technique and make it my own.
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| 7/19/18 Torre dos Clerigos |
Once
I finished stuffing my brain back into place, I went out immediately and tried
using what I had just learned on a very small sketch of the Torre dos Clerigos (at left).
This is exactly the type of building that I would normally draw with a fountain
pen, initially enjoying all the tiny details but then getting lost in those
same details. Using this tonal method, I was forced to focus only on the broad
shape first. On this small sketch, I used the stump to blend, and I also used
the fine edge of the Tombow Mono Zero eraser to define lines instead of the kneaded eraser.
A
couple of days later during a sketch walk in the Vertudes neighborhood, I was
attracted to the light on some trees that looked like it would be just right to
practice the technique again (below). I used nothing but the 3B pencil again, but in retrospect,
I should have used a softer grade later to bring out the darks more.
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| 7/21/18 Vertudes |
Several
days later in Coimbra, I made a sketch that turned out to be my favorite of the
entire trip (below). You’ll see this sketch again later when I talk about my trip highlights
(and lowlights), but I wanted to show it here because this time I remembered to
take a photo of the initial toning step.
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| 7/25/18 Coimbra |
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| Initial toning for Coimbra sketch at left |
You can see how scribbly and loose it is and how I’ve resisted (though barely) “drawing” the buildings. This time I remembered that I had several other pencil grades in my bag, so I used a Hi-Uni 6B on the darkest spots. I erased out the white umbrellas with the kneaded eraser (and successfully resisted “drawing” them first with the pencil point! Wahoo!). When I posted the sketch on Instagram, Eduardo commented as follows:
Wow! That’s great Tina!!
The buildings on the background are just perfect. You know, once one very
experienced artist said to me: connect the dark shapes... make a path with
them. Maybe this suggestion could be apply here, connecting the tables/people
marks with a shadow on the ground. Hope you don’t mind 😉
The
workshop was long over, but I got free feedback from Eduardo! You can bet I considered
his suggestion. I put in a quick shadow exactly as he suggested, and it made a big
difference. (It’s that unification thing again that Veronica Lawlor mentioned.)
I
don’t expect many of you to have kept reading through this lengthy post, but if
you did, I hope you found this process as fascinating as I did! Thank you,
Eduardo, for a mind-blowing workshop!
