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Concepts and Techniques
The Art of the Moment Improvisation is creating ‘in the moment’ in response to the stimulus of one’s immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and new ways to visualize. This invention cycle occurs most effectively when the artist has a thorough intuitive understanding of the story, and has the tools available to express himself. In other words, you have the sketchbooks, sketching materials, camera and a subject.
IN THE ARTIST’S STUDIO Title of Work: Mountain Ruins Artist: Rob Alexander
Media Used: Pencil and watercolour Techniques: The painting shows the adaptation of a real-world location into a fantasy one, so it was necessary to select an initial source that presented opportunities for transformation. Making sure that the real and fantasy elements integrated seamlessly was a challenge. Picking up on the towerlike structure of the cliff edge, I simply extended it upwards, to suggest that perhaps this had once been a much larger cliff-edge into which a tower was built. The band of snow evident in the original was developed and used to create a sense of depth and to establish the perspective of the tower base.
Golden Rule: Draw From Life EVERYDAY OCCURENCES Improvisation is all about engaging your imagination and exercising your mind. When travelling on the tube, for example, notice everything around you – colour, texture, how the light changes with the passing stations, and how people’s faces change with the light. What if they were visible only in the shadows and had extra appendages? Imagine the tube exiting the tunnel into a fantastic city, change the buildings’ appearances, and give the tube train wings. Imagine a forest growing through the buildings, or in the country, visualize a solitary building rising from the forest, incongruous and alien. A similar exercise has occurred in Mountain Ruins, right.
FORCED PERSPECTIVE Try this: Put your camera carefully near the ground, place a familiar object in the foreground, and frame your shot so a landscape spreads across the background. An interesting rock in the foreground will become a monolith. Forced perspective will defamiliarize the familiar and make you think differently.
Sketching Time Observe the texture and lighting details of the real-life landscape that is all around you. Render it as accurately as you can.
Drawing and painting from life is the best way to understand what you are looking at, as well as the details, subtleties and variations, which only reality can generate. Fill your head with a visual library of buildings, places, people, animals; whatever interests you, based on real world observations. That information is what will allow you to create unique people, places and creatures of your own design that look real, plausible and natural. I have always looked at the world with the attitude of ‘it’s only half finished, and I get to design the rest of it’. I am constantly looking at things and adding, rearranging or inventing the missing elements. Let the drawing evolve, try not to force anything, but rather listen to the piece, and let it out.