In this session we had a free drawing workshop in response to an extract from Tanizaki’s text ‘In Praise of Shadows’. In preparation for this session I read through the extract and did some research about it to get some contextual knowledge of the piece. Below is all my research and notes on the author, themes and some quotes:
Here are some details of the Free drawing activity that we did in response to the text, including the purpose, process and tips:
Below are some of my outcomes from the free drawing activity. I explored a few different styles and mediums such as mark making with charcoal, single line pen drawings and oil pastel illustrations.
With the charcoal I was able to create expressive marks that really show the theme of shadows. I really like the piece of the left where I used the charcoal to create the effect of light beaming through a window but with shadows. This has an interesting juxtaposition between light and dark which is a central theme in the text. In the images on the right I combined pen and charcoal. The different mediums contrast each other nicely with the more controlled nature of the pen marks against the rough textured marks made by the charcoal.
These are a series of single line pen illustrations of different things mentioned in the text including a flower, scroll and house. This is a style I’ve worked with before and am quite comfortable with. It’s a go to technique for me when I need to work quickly.
These illustrations are an exploration of combining oil pastel and pen. I’ve worked a lot with both mediums but never tried to combine them so it was an interesting experiment for me. I really liked the strong pops of colour over loose, sketchy style pen illustrations. This is an aesthetic I’d like to work with more in the future.
Overall I enjoyed this free drawing session, it pushed me out my comfort zone as I’m not used to working fast in response to reading or listening to a text. It is something I’m looking to improve and this session helped me feel more comfortable with it so I will explore it more in the future. In regard to the outcomes, I like them as I experimented with different combination of mediums but I was still too literal for most on my images. A lot of them are depictions of objects mentioned in text. While this is a good skill for an illustrator I’d like to try and work more abstractly, looking at the themes and concepts in the text rather than literal depictions of what is being described.
Samuel Green Illustration 