I liked my large scale ink work I showed in my last post. I am still having trouble taking up space on a scale so much bigger than I'm used to. One of my problems with my piece from the last post is that I started it by drawing a black line with ink around the figure to define and shape him. This lead to every solid line in the picture looking the same and making some parts look too flat. With this in mind I started another piece but this time, after sketching the figure out with pencil, I went straight into shading with the ink using a brush. This should lead to certain parts looking softer and hopefully will give a fuller image of texture and depth.

Here is my first drawing and my second one in progress. I like the effect that some of the marks are making of adding a softness to certain parts and making the lines less uniform. I am having trouble however defining certain aspects of the figure and of making the heavier black shades not look out of place next to lighter lines.

I did more on my 'drawings of people on bus' today. I realised that attempting to catch the sense of individualism and identity that I was aiming for in the drawings was challenging for a number of reasons. For one I mainly only get to see the back of people's heads and shoulders or at angles where mainly hair is visible also the movement of the bus can make it hard to get down subtleties of people's character, finally the people themselves are all quite similar all being students in Huddersfield means they are relatively the same age and dressed in similar style clothes for the weather.

I've also started working on a larger scale. I started with some quick sketches to get used to drawing so big. I found it difficult to actually draw figures that were large, whenever I started off I soon realised the drawing would take up only a fraction of the page. I'm starting to get a better hang of it however and have recently been working towards more complete pieces. Here's an example of one at the moment.

Today there was a guest lecturer in called Chris Dobrowolski. He is mainly a sculptor but in his lecture he mainly focused on videos, and photos, some of which contained his sculptural work. What struck me most about his work and presentation was how everything had a story behind it, It all seemed to have a deeper personal meaning. This is because most of the work we were shown was based around either his car, which has been in his family since he was born, or his fathers time fighting in Italy in WWII. The look at WWII gives an extra layer of meaning to his work because of it's historical context; it's not just got meaning to Chris.
This made me think about the lack of meaning in my own work. I usually don't mind that a lot of my work has little intended meaning as it allows people to give it their own meaning while not excluding anyone who may not grasp the original meaning. I do however think that it would make my work more interesting if their were stories behind them about why I did them and what they mean like with Dobrowolski's work.
Most of the lecture was based around his series of work called 'All Roads Lead to Rome'. This is a series of work and documentation of Chris restoring his Herald Estate then driving to Italy to visit where the car was made and visiting places where his Father fought in the war. Parts of the presentation can be seen here- http://cdobo.com/
 

Here are some of my drawings from life that I've done of people on the buss

These sketches reminded me of an artist I saw at The National Portrait Gallery called Humphrey Ocean. These are from his series 'A handbook of modern life'. This is an ongoing project where Ocean paints visitors to his studio. Like me he does these pieces quickly and he uses gouache as well, although his work is completely gouache and I only add it later.

 (Source: http://www.humphreyocean.com/docs/works/100portraits/thumbnails03.html)

There are quite a few similarities between the styles of our two projects. They both have a certain looseness and disproportion to them that show that they're from life. I think my work is slightly more controlled however as I draw in pen first as apposed to just painting like Ocean does. Something that I like about his work that I think I could improve in my work is how he gets a sense of individualism in each of his pieces. He catches certain details in how the people are positioned or in how they wear their clothes that gives them each a sense of their own identity. I don't think my work quite catches this enough as a lot of the people in my drawings seem the same as the others.

Today in experimental drawing we allowed to draw whatever and however we wanted. I went for a shot with strong perspective as I'm currently interested in perspective from researching liminal space. The sports hall is a great place to draw perspective because it's vast and rather empty but has a network of different lines on the floor that stretch out in front of you at a variety of angles.
When Jill saw my work she mentioned the very mathematical way that I work (something Bob has also previously mentioned). She suggested that looking at artists who use a systematic approach to their work may help me with my process for my own work. I can't think of any artists at the moment but I will do some research and find some.

I've been meaning to start working on a bigger scale and the other day I spoke with Bob and Ian both of them also suggested I do this and use it as a chance to explore how to use space or different types of line making. Ian questioned me on how I plan to tackle working on a larger scale and I said I'd thought of just using my usual method except sketching the image out with pencil first. Ian suggested I just do some quick large scale sketches to start off with. I also think ink would work better than pen on a larger scale as it is bolder and you can get a variety of thickness with your line.

Recently I've been looking at ways to combine my figurative work of people waiting and my more landscape orientated work of liminal zones to do with travel and transport. I've struggled with this earlier in the project as I was unable to  figure out how to put figures into the landscapes I was interested in without ruining my interest in them. Recently though I've found a few compositions, from my drawings of people waiting at traffic lights, that I think could fit into the landscapes I'm interested in without ruining the sense of distance, space and emptiness that caught my interest to begin with.
I think the reason that a lot of these compositions seem like they would work is because the figures have their back their back to us or are looking away. I feel if anything this just emphasises the sense of distance that I'm interested in but could also give the piece an enigmatic feel and suggest a narrative.