Frames

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Hi and welcome to the reboot of the Drawing The Stones newsletter. The old provider that automatically sent each new post as a newsletter email stopped working so I switched over to a new one. I've also decided to send a handcrafted email each week rather than just sending each post individually. I hope it arrives in your inbox ok.
Lately, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about frames in two senses of the word: composition and mindset.

Composition

Where to put what on the canvas or the drawing surface is always the first decision when creating a new work. I'm still at a stage where getting everything to fit can be a struggle but I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of it. One technique that has helped me a lot is to do a very rough, almost schematic initial sketch, do some measurements and then continue with more intentional marks. You can see how this looks on these drawings here (I'd forgotten my eraser that night so these were drawn without any erasing and you can see each iteration of how I try to get closer to the model's form).

Last weekend, I spent an afternoon taking pictures around Greenwich to practice composition. Photography is such a great way to focus on building that skill and I took some pictures I'm very happy with.

Most of the educational material on composition seems very focused on rules and almost mathematical in its approach. For now, I'm more interested in exploring this area with an intuitive approach. In practice, this means playing around until I see something I like.

Mindset

The other kind of frame I've been looking at is the way I've been thinking about drawing. I've been having a hard time finding the motivation to draw and I think it has to do with how I've been framing this project. While I'm happy with most drawings I make despite their imperfections, sometimes I just can't find a start and I get very frustrated. The picture below shows the results of me trying to draw the view towards Canary Wharf from the Royal Observatory. It's a scene I'd very much like to draw but the day I tried, I couldn't get anywhere close and left disappointed.

One question that seems to be at the heart of this is how important it is for me to get good. On one hand, being better at drawing and painting would open up a broader range of capabilities with which to express myself which I imagine as being fun and interesting, on the other hand, the goal I have for the entire project is to have fun every step of the way and feed my curiosity. I can feel a longer blog post about this gestating inside me but for now, the question remains unresolved.

That's it for this first newsletter in the new format. Let me know what you think and see you next week!

Jan