Well, in an attempt to keep updating my blog regularly, or at least a bit more frequently, I’d like to share my latest sketchbook doodle – drawn predominantly ‘from life’, very quickly, with coloured pencils.
I really love the result.
Perhaps it is because my son made the wee model, and the character he has created is obviously child-like (my son is 7) and a also bit ‘wood-fairy’ like because it’s so, well, bio-degradable.
Coloured pencils are currently ‘my thing’, my medium of choice. I have just ordered a book on how to do ‘hyper-realistic’ drawings using coloured pencils. Of course, I have absolutely no intention of drawing ‘hyper-realistic’ anything – but I reckon I could learn a thing or two about technique. I have been playing with a burnisher and a blender pencil – lots of fun, but I’ve not yet worked out how/if they can help my work.
Anyway, part of the reason I am excited by this is that I feel ever closer to discovering my ‘authentic voice’, my ‘visual language’. I know that coloured pencils are part of that language because when I am using them, I find myself utterly absorbed, they seem magical; I want to put down marks in certain ways. I feel there is a way, using pencils, for me to describe the world that feels ‘right’ to me. It still isn’t there yet, but you know, I’m on the road…
I have some more to say on the theme of one’s “authentic voice”; of how many people use the term ‘style’ and why it is banned on the MA – and how I have come to understand why. But that will have to wait for now…
Natalie Eldred 