Workshop with Bobby Britnell

Last week I had the privilege of doing a drawing workshop with Bobby (http://www.bobbybritnell.co.uk/) at Art van Go! in Knebworth. (http://www.artvango.co.uk/).
We worked in charcoal, pastels and graphite. The class had 16 people, working at first as individuals, then we worked on a combined piece and then divided that piece up between each group of four so that we all had a section of the one we had worked on.

We began by using charcoal to draw layered shapes. learning how to make one appear on top of another and so on. This was harder than it looked!

The first is mine... can you see the deliberate mistake?

The next is Gina's ... it wasn't dirty, that brownish tinge is a trick of the light in the room.

Next is Lucille's

I don't know the names of the students who did the last two, sorry!

It is very clear that some got the hang of this much better than I did! grin

Next we were given four A2 sheets of cartridge taped together. We were each told to 'Take a line for a walk' and then starting at one edge of the section nearest to the artist and drawing a continuous outline of a section of the articles in the room. This was repeated twice on each section using a different view each time. Thus we ended up with a complicated array of outlines which could then be coloured. We each chose a colour and using only that plus black and white, filled random shapes. It soon became apparent that they couldn't be totally random as the whole piece needed to be  considered.

The following is the finished piece of Gina, Lucille Angela and Myself.

After taking a photo, this was then divided up into four by removing the tape and each of us then had a section to take further. I ended up with the top left hand quadrant of the above drawing.

We then cut out sections from down the side and across the bottom using a rectangular template.

For fun, we then played dominoes with those and began to see the potential of mixing and matching the sections.

Then we selected three sections that in my case looked vaguely like landscapes and enlarged them onto a new piece of paper, thus producing a small triptych. Now we could begin to see the potential for stitch on a large or small, even very small scale. The possibilities are endless.

The next picture is what was left of my starting section and this could be treated in a similar way to produce more designs.

The final two pictures are those that were made by the other two groups of four. I'm afraid I got so involved in what I was doing that I didn't get round to take pictures of their final pieces.

This was a really wonderful workshop and Bobby is a very generous tutor coming round to everyone time and time again to help and advise and discuss where necessary.

I can't wait for the next workshop with her... I am doing a Summer school with her in June.