arty farty musings: drawing again

I recently wrote about the dilemma of wanting to work but still being sociable with family over weekends, and set up my drawing things in the dining room. This has proved a great hit (apart from the fact that guests now have to eat on their laps *evil grin.*) Whenever the mood takes me, it is so easy to do a drawing whilst chatting or listening to music together, and having everything ready and waiting has resulted in me being much more productive, as, even if I just have a small gap of time, I can just get stuck in and get on with it.

I am also simultaneously going through my photos and editing many, to print for sale at the Arts Festival, and it has been fun seeing them from a new perspective. Often what makes a good photo would not make a good painting, and taking a photo for its own merit requires a different type of vision than taking a photo as a reference for a painting. But I have found that, in editing some photos, converting them to punchy black and white images, they make great references for charcoal drawings! So I am re-thinking many of my gazillion photos, which were previously not that exciting, but when seen and treated differently they take on a new life. I'll show you an example....

this was just a somewhat messy snapshot of the new mosque near the spice bazaar in Istanbul, on a rainy evening last April (in fact, by coincidence I see it is exactly a year ago tomorrow!) I nearly deleted it because i had another better one of the mosque. Luckily i didn't, because when I was looking through them with my 'art photo eye' rather than my 'scenic photographers eye' I spotted the potential of the girls with the umbrellas and turned them into a black and white shot....

This in turn inspired me to do a charcoal drawing and a painting of the same scene...

Rainy Night in Istanbul charcoal on Fabriano 123x125mm

Rainy night in Istanbul oil on board 250x250mm

This process has happened with several previously rejected shots, and it has been wonderful exploring possibilities. Here are some of the resulting recent drawings.