I caught myself reflecting on the number of drawings that I had completed over the past few months. Whilst it is encouraging and motivating for me to see my body of work grow, a little niggle crept in my mind, that perhaps in my bid to create many sketches and drawings to use in my work, I had raced through each individual subject and hadn’t taken sufficient time to explore my subject matter carefully.
I found myself thinking back to my time at art college, one of the things that stood out for me was the number of drawings we had to do and by that I mean the challenge that was set with every project, to draw, design or sketch either 100, 200 or 300 ideas. At the time it always felt like a never ending slog to come up with the goods, sometimes within 24 hours. The method behind this - there is always a multitude of permutations in any one single idea and the need to repeatedly draw will quickly increase and develop your skill. It sometimes felt like a never ending task.
By recalling this task I decided to take one object and look a little closer at what I was doing. My initial illustration was of a giant hogweed, but every time I went back to the photographs I had taken I saw something new whether it was a pattern, a shape, the sizes of different stems, or different forms and structures.
What started out as a simple illustration grew and became more abstract in nature, so whilst I think I don’t need to necessarily commit to drawing 100 different giant hogweeds, I think giving myself the discipline to at least draw the same object over the week resulted in some unexpected results. My designs became more abstract and revealed to me new patterns and shapes that I would never have produced had I not allowed my mind to expand into the creative process and let a state of flow seep in.
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