Intimacy. Part 2. Project 4. At Home. Exercise 1; Quick sketches around the home.

Exercise 1 Quick sketches around the home

Take your sketch book or larger sheets of paper with a selection of drawing media. Aim to work your way around the rooms of your house, over several sessions draw rooms outside, garden shed, making quick sketches turning around to face different areas in a room. Make fast visual notes without getting involved with detail.

Some areas may be difficult to work on and others more interesting. When you have completed your sketches look carefully at the drawings. Which are the strongest and why? Which did you enjoy the most? What areas do you want to study further? Use this exercise as practice for fast observational drawing for future work.

Here is a selection of drawings from my sketch book of ‘around the home’. I really enjoyed this exercise as it’s made a change from focusing totally on still life subjects.

I was very lucky to inherit this old house, and I live with lots of clutter and furniture. It has lots of dark shadowy places downstairs, but is lighter upstairs. So it lends itself to be drawn and painted. Each of my sketches only took a few seconds to draw and my inky sketches only minutes to sketch out too. I didn’t want to draw the whole view of an area, so I decided to cut or crop some drawings, I think it made it look more interesting as a composition.

I also drew my favourite ‘around the house views’ in ink with a reed pen. I was given some Winsor & Newton inks as a present and so I wanted to experiment with them. The drawings are created on a beige all round mixed media paper, which I like because of it’s colour and smooth surface.

My favourites of all these sketches are Harold’s old chair, the workshop and the sheds. I also like the kitchen sink view too. I really enjoyed being outside to draw the sheds and garden, so I may study this in more detail. I can’t decide which ones are the strongest as I like them all, but I would favour the kitchen views with the garden ones as possibly my strongest ones. My favourite medium is black Sharpie pen as it flows quickly over the paper surface, and I love drawing with ink and a reed pen, as I can water it down to make a variety of tones. I felt the inks expressed the shadows and overall mood of the house.

I didn’t get around to drawing upstairs, which I will do next.

Drawings of upstairs