Draw Rotation: Arts and Crafts

I'm not sure if it was because it was the last week and a bit before the holidays, but this rotation felt somewhat directionless for me. The idea of the project, looking at the past of the building of Camberwell College was great- I never knew it played such a key role in the Arts and Crafts movement, and seeing archive material on both the original building and the Brutalist addition was fantastic, but it didn't make for amazing drawing material. I therefore feel much of my work for this project is bland.

We started with a talk on the history of the Arts and Crafts movement, which was largely a repeat of what we'd heard in the lectures, as well as a review of the rubbings we'd done for the primer task, which I've not scanned because they are so boring. Many of them look the same and while I understand it was intended to give up an appreciation of the many textures around Camberwell, I couldn't think of using rubbing as a method of drawing for anything other than perhaps creating textures for Photoshop (and even then, they'd be quite abstract).

We also had a more in-depth look at some architectural drawings of the 70's development of the building, a Q and A with an old guy who'd worked in the college for decades and therefore knew about both the 70's development and the current development. We also had a tour of the college which was mostly interesting, more for navigation and knowing how much space other students have compared to Illustration, but seeing some of the stained glass windows was enlightening.

We were then sent to draw parts of the building. I chose a lot of staircases as I've always liked the way they're structured and they supply interesting effects when drawn from different angles.

Given that we'd spent most of the day walking around the building and not drawing, I feel some of these drawings were rushed. While they get the message across, some of them could have done with a bit of colour or maybe a more interesting lining style?

I think the looser of these drawings have more character, plus it's far easier when drawing architecture or interiors on location to depend on a less precise style.

I liked the last one- I think if it were overlayed with a bit of colour it would be very busy and interesting, which I might do, But I think the sketch needs finishing at the bottom first (cars kept driving by so it was difficult to draw much of it)

Here's a more tongue-in-cheek one, referencing the fact that Camberwell is less a building, more a building site. I also think it's testament to how I felt a little directionless on this rotation.

We then had a monoprinting workshop. It was the first time I'd done monoprinting and probably the last if I had a choice- it's an interesting technique but had to master and expensive and messy if I were to do it outside the studio. 

The first few I did were a little bland, given I tried them on newsprint. The textures on the second one are really interesting, perhaps if I was doing another Great Expectations ilustration I'd use the texture to create a Gothic affect, but with this project it acts more like noise to the final illustration, obscuring all but the centre of the image.

I found I was happier doing these prints on thicker paper- they came out better and the remaining texture is much more complimentary, even if these drawings are still a bit bland. I could have experimented more had I had more time- some of the other students were doing cool stuff with the style and had I been more au fait with monoprinting, I might have been more adventurous. 

As an example of this, I managed to mess up my thinking on how to mirror images twice!

This project lacked a final piece which I think is what made it directionless. This said, my lack of motivation is my own and I'm not happy with how little work I produced on this project.