Studies on a Camera

This brings back memories. When I was studying to paint and draw in evening class at a local art college, we had to do many hours of supervised practical technique. The course was over two years, with on average three classes of two hours a week, plus a lot of reading on art history thrown in. One of the things I had to learn was how to look at an object, and how to draw without any props. By props, the tutor meant no rulers or drafting equipment, as he put it "Your are learning to be artists, not draughtsmen." One of the tasks we had was to paint or draw straight edged objects, and straight lines, without actually drawing a straight line. It may sound like an odd exercise, and it was a real pain to begin with, but it does make you think about what you are doing and how to produce structure by implication rather than by direct physical construct. The preparatory pencil study of the same model shows this concept a little more clearly.

The pencil drawing above was produced as a separate exercise, all the apparent straight edges are produced by small strokes crossing or not crossing each other (white, negative space) implying the presence of a line. The same applies to the circles and semicircles, no props or plastic templates.  Water soluble coloured pencils were not available or at least I never came across them when I was studying. This kind of preparatory drawing was often done before you would begin work on a painting, to make sure you understood what it was that made a two dimensional drawing an acceptable three dimensional illusion.

I dug these out of the storage trunk today, because I intend to do a series of watercolour sketches of old cameras over the next few weeks. I will photograph the progress of development to show the technique I now use of laying out the proportions and components of the picture with a soluble pencil, then layering watercolour paint to build up the texture.