Research drawings
Posted in Paintings and drawings, Uncategorized on May 28th, 2003 by rsjbarker – 3 Comments
untitled still life 2003
I found living close to the water for the first time in my life was a real breath of fresh air literally and I spent a lot of time on drawing the local landscape and interiors. I suppose this was in an effort familiarise myself with the new environment. I started working with still life drawings and quick sketches of anything that interested me.
View of Bondi from Mark's Park 1997Interior still life, 2003
As this is not a normal way for me to work, many of these don’t survive and are either destroyed or lost. Nevertheless some of them do find their way into the box and eventually into some form of display either in exhibition or on a website. Here’s just a few samples from 2003 when I was still coming to terms with the Bondi landscape. It was by this stage more of an issue with how I was going to work within such a confined space. Up until now, even the terrace houses that I’d rented in Darlinghurst seem palatial compared to the standard floor space availability in the Easter Suburbs.
I’d worked consistently on a scale that I would call a domestic. However I’d also been happy to work on the scale of an A5 sheet of paper. Subsequently, the lack of a huge studio space ceased to become an issue as I settled into the realisation that I was going to be pretty well limited to kitchen tables or the sun room for a while at least. One solution was to go out and draw the landscape by traveling to it, sketching and working them up later in the studio. Trouble is that it took up too much time, energy and effort during a period I was working full time so I didn’t keep that up for too long.
"Untitled, View From Bulli", 1999, acrylic on paper 148.5mm x 210.0mm
In the end I just kept a notebook with me as much as possible and referred to it back in the studio if I felt like I need to. Otherwise I tend to let the work exist in its own right rather than as a study for a much larger painting. I always find that if I take that view it’s not going to work out.
"Untitled - Near Jervis Bay", acrylic on paper 148.5mm x 210.0mm
The pictures on this page is the outcome of the realisation that I was going to have to aim small for a while. Evenually I loosened up and the results are demonstrated later. Nevertheless I didn’t mind these types of drawings for a while and worked quite happily in the medium of watercolour and simple acrylic or water based acrylic paints to produce these research drawings while I planned or tried to figure out how I was going to be able to continue to paint in Bondi.
"Untitled - Spencer - Head - 03", acrylic, pencil and ink on paper
As I found out later there was always an abundance of subject matter when I worked this way. It just wasn’t really the way that I normally worked however and I found it rather odd to be attempting to draw everything that was in front of me, but I did persist with it and while I don’t think these drawings really have much to do with my overall style they were fun to do and I like them for their own particular aspects. In other words, I’m going to just publish them here because they were fun and I don’t really care at this point if they’re inconsistent with my later work. Anyway, if I have a problem with that I can always remove them. That’s the beauty of this stuff.
"Untitled - Spencer 2002", acrylic, pencil an ink on paper
This was really the first time also that I’d taken the opportunity to sketch Spencer our beloved cat. He made the perfect model for me. I wont go overboard here to show too many pictures of Spencer only the ones that I thought would look best in this medium.
