…the graver sides of life, the deaths, the partings, the yearnings for love, have their deepest expression in the heart of the fields

EM FORSTER.

So, last August we downed brushes in Berlin and took up a 1 week artists residence in the fields, tracks and byways of East Cambridgeshire, and briefly to Suffolk, sketching, drawing and of course painting. Aside from the obvious need to practice drawing from life, the trip was important for two reasons; This year I will continue screen printing sessions at Cut Editions in Suffolk - and field trips in the English countryside are helping to inform and provide vital new material and ideas for the next screen print editions. Secondly, the lure of and yearning for the English countryside endures and grows stronger with each passing day, and without it my heart feels heavy.

In this blog I will focus on some sketches, drawn or painted with charcoal or gouache, on a Seawhite acid free paper. 

Happily the weather provided strong bright light for most of the trip. The sun would get a little too high around noon, the shadows and contrasts are generally strongest morning and evening, but on an intensive short field trip one must take every opportunity to make the most of the time available. Around Midday I would spend time scouting for interesting areas of landscape, or simply concentrating on little moments, such as the sunlight and shadows on the tree trunk in the image above. I would put down the brushes or take time away from a drawing to commence sketching around Midday simply for the benefit of exercise. At the end of the trip I noticed a number of these sketches had an intriguing 'washed out' quality, which I put down to the fact that much of them were drawn when the sun was at its peak and shadows are less defined. 

I did a number of fast-paced gouache drawings on the trip; here is one next to a charcoal version drawn moments before. I struggle to maintain full focus and concentration after around 5 - 6 hours of drawing, especially on a bright and warm day. Switching to an alternaitive meduim as immediate and fluid as gouache later in the day is a welcome change and freshens up the hand and the eye. 

I drew these two drawings one after the other, I think from the cab of my van. As the trip progressed I could begin to feel more tuned in to how I wanted to approach and use the charcoal. I was drawing predominantly for reference and with a view to develop some of the more interesting or successful compositions and ideas into colour screen prints editions. I wanted to simplify the charcoal lines and smudges as much as possible, to limit the amount the charcoal and paper was worked into each other, to keep the drawings fresh and airy. I found myself trying to subtract and distill as much as possible rather than filling the paper with charcoal. 

Thank you for reading. 

Thank you also to my good friend Alec and his wonderful family for providing accomodation on this trip and invaluable company in the evenings.

In my next blog I will discuss the making of unique five-colourway screen prints, created in December of last year in Suffolk.