I've been working and experimenting  on a bigger scale recently while still trying to get a decent balance between the figure and the building and playing around with different kinds of line
One of the problems I've encountered with doing a crowd scene however is that you have to get the proportions and shape of each figure pretty much perfect as a mistake will have a knock on effect which can lead to a figure later having some very noticeable mistakes in their positions or proportions. This means if I were to move on to an even larger scale (which I plan to) I would probably have to use a projector as on a larger scale the effects of slight effects would be even more noticeable and it would be harder to get prefect proportions on a large scale.
This isn't a problem so much when there is only a single figure though or even if there's just a small group. I may do a small  group on a larger scale as there are a lot of issues with doing a larger crowd. The main problem is I can't get a decent picture of a cohesive crowd at the train station. I've took pictures and observed the building at various times of the day, especially between 5 and 6 when I thought a large amount of people would be returning from work. I've never found a large crowd around the station though. I can only ever get photos of people in sparse groups spaced out outside the station. When I try to turn these into drawings however the figures look odd without a background like they are just hanging in space. The lack of a background isn't really an issue in single figures or even groups if the people are somewhat evenly distributed and touching but without a background a sparse crowd just looks odd.
I have been thinking of ways of putting in a sort of background to this kind of work but so far there is nothing that's working to well.

I've been pursuing the drawings of buildings in people idea I had. I've tried using colour in the work by colouring the figures but in a way so that you can still see the building in the figure. I prefer the black & white work though as it keeps a better balance between the picture being of the figure and of the building. This balance is very important to my work at the moment as I don't want it to be primarily about one over the other.
I've experimented with keeping bits of the figure blank from the drawing of the building eg. for one drawing I drew the building inside all of the figure except it's skin. I didn't think this was an improvement on the original idea though as it took away too much from the drawing of the building which became too fragmented.
I'm also finding the amount of detail put into the figure is important as is the kind of line I use to draw it as apposed to the building, I'm currently playing around with these concepts but am als planning to start working on a larger scale and with crowds of people (I've already started experimenting with two figures).

While doing this I'm still trying to do some surveying and creative exploration of the sites themselves (mainly the train station) as the project is mainly about these and I feel I may have rushed into an idea too fast. I find tracing paper is very useful for this project as it allows you to experiment with layering things and saves me from the tedious task of having to draw the building freehand if I just need a quick drawing to test something.

I realised that the work of Marco Zamora must have influenced my idea of drawing buildings within people. Marco Zamora is an artist I've liked for a while. While working on my latest drawing I got reminded of his work. Zamora has a lot of work where he combines buildings with his figures, often he places the buildings on the outside of the figures but he also occasionally works them into the figure as well. It's not like my current approach but does suggest different ways of doing a similar thing.

After a few days of drawing the same buildings over and over again I started to feel a bit of a pointlessness and lack of direction to my work. To combat this I wondered if I would feel differently about my work if I bought figure into it a bit as that is the kind of art I like to do most. I did a few ordinary drawings of people around the train station but had similar issues with the work.

I then had the idea of drawing the outline of people in my photos and then drawing the train station within the outline. To the left is my first piece doing this. I really liked the effect of this and am going to continue exploring this general idea.
I like how the emptiness of the space outside the figure contrasts with inside the figure which is full of information. I also like to think of the figure as a sort of window, one of my course mates said that because the figure is moving it makes you feel like the inside should be moving as well, think looking at buildings outside of a moving car window. I also like the obvious switch of a building being inside a person when usually a person is inside a building.

Originally to try and cope with the amount of architecture needing to be drawn in this project I needed some kind of tactic to make drawing buildings more bearable to do this I looked at a variety of artists who had made drawing of buildings but not in a repetitive or structured way.

John Piper was one of these artists. (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/piper-title-not-known-p05054) He keeps a very rough look to his work which is bold but dark so not too overbearing. I like his use of interesting angles and perspectives (something I could easily apply to my work) especially in his work on Venice. His work also seems surprisingly detailed once you have a look at t but the detail is done in a rough almost gestural way so that it doesn't seem as repetitive as most buildings.









Lucinda Rogers: (http://www.lucindarogers.co.uk/images/london/large/lucinda-rogers-London-Bridge-and-Saint-Magnus-the-Martyr.jpg)

I love Lucinda Rogers' use of line. The contract of the really thick lines and the delicate thin lines makes her work very interesting despite its relatively simplicity. Her work has a bold graphic quality to it which appeals to me and I like the muted use of tone, how she's only used slight grey washes on little bits of the drawing. Her use of line is very strong and definite though which is something that I could try but usually have a lot of trouble with (shaky hands) I should try using a bugger variety of lines though (by using different pens) but usually I get too absorbed in the drawing process and forget to vary the pens I use. I'll keep a conscious effort not to do that in the future.

David Gentleman (http://www.lucindarogers.co.uk/images/london/large/lucinda-rogers-London-Bridge-and-Saint-Magnus-the-Martyr.jpg)
I find something very normal about Gentleman's work. This also means I find it boring. I can't really think of why I feel this way except that it's the kind of thing I would expect someone to do if I told them to do an 'normal' drawing of a place. There are still aspects of his work that I like however like the use of line on parts of the clothing of the people and I can still take away tips for drawing buildings. His use of line for the building isn't incredibly solid like you'd expect for a building (none of these artists have used that sort of line really) and he's gone for more of a nod to the detail of the stone work than actually drawing every repetitive bit in himself. A lot of his lines also cross over making it easier to keep track with where everything is and speeding up the whole process. While typing I think I've figured out more about why I find his work boring and that is that it is just the wrong mixture of sketchy and clean cut, if it were a bit more of either one I think I would like it more.

Valery Koshlyakov (http://lecercledartaucailar.blogs.com/photos/le_cailar_2005/dtailkoshlyakov2.jpg)

I saw Valery's work at the Saatchi a few years ago and loved it because of all the dripping lines and general messiness of the work yet it still being a very good painting of a building at the same time. I always think his work is like looking at the buildings in the rain because of all the bripping paint. Nothing about his work even attempts to be absolutely perfect or rigid. Windows don't line up, lines aren't always even or parallel yet the style he works in means this doesn't matter and on first look it looks like he's got it all very uniform considering the nature of the work. There is still a lot of repetitiveness in his work yet I don't get the sense that he agonised over making sure that two windows were exactly the same or anything.

To start the drawing project we have been given 3 sited in Huddersfield: the Train Station, The Library and Queensgate Market. I'm not very keen on this starting point as I find buildings very boring and tedious to draw as they are usually (and the ones given) very repetitive and symmetrical so your first few seconds of drawing are a lot like the rest of them. The project briefing puts a strong emphasis on the building itself so there isn't really a way to get away with not drawing them. This offers me an interesting challenge of how to get around the repetitiveness in drawing a building.

The one thing I do like about drawing buildings however is the interesting yet obvious perspectives you can get from certain angles, I think this might be what I start focusing on after I finish initial surveying and observation stages of the sites.
I will also try and incorporate figurative drawings into my work as well as that is at the core of my practice as an illustrator and all places are made for people and nothing without them.

Year 2

From now on  all my new posts follow year 2 starting with the module Studio Practice 3, Drawing.