Exercise - Exploring Drawing and Painting

I gathered together several different pieces of paper to tackle this exercise, food colouring, oil pastels, cheap felt pens, wax crayons, and a ballpoint pen as my media.

Also included for this exercise were brushes, pen and nib, white spirit, water and linseed oil.

I attempted to produce a few drawings of an apple on each of the pieces of paper using cross hatching, and stippling techniques.  What I did find was that my drawings were crude representations of an apple, because either the paper did not support the media very well or the media itself was clumsy to use.

A lot of the paper surfaces were very porous so they soaked up the media quickly, especially the felt tip pen, food colouring and the pastel if it was blended using the linseed oil and the white spirit.

It was difficult to move away from what I am familiar with, but it was a good exercise in experimentation, which I have not done much of in my art work.

It has changed my outlook as to what illustration can be all about, as I had always assumed it had to be based around painting and drawing or computer drawn images.

I am not wholly comfortable in producing an image this way with these materials, but perhaps I may try a different base (paper) for my paint, pencil or pen and ink.

In conclusion a good exercise in experimentation, but not something that I would have chosen to do.