Dare to Draw

Dare to Draw

Work in progress on a mangrove/tree collage

Once a month I get together with a few local artists for a drawing group. It’s a chance to catch up and chat about what we are working on and spend a couple of hours outside drawing. We have favourite spots to go to and mix it up a bit. Our last location was at nearby Hastings Point, at a picnic table under the shade.

We’ve been meeting together on and off for nearly ten years and in that time I’ve got over my fear of not being too representational. I usually bring along scraps of paper that I haven’t allocated for any particular project so that I don’t get precious about scribbling and mucking around with ink or charcoal.

One time it was raining and I took out my bits of paper and floated them in the mud. This started a whole body of work about floating papers in water. The good thing about being outside is it doesnt matter too much if you make a mess.

Looking out from my seat at the picnic table I started drawing a pandanus tree, very roughly. I used Derwent Inktense pencils so when you add water they become like ink and you can blend the colours with watercolour washes.

It’s a completely different experience than working in the studio. where I spend a lot of time refining works, which can of course lead to ‘over cooking’ the composition. More! More, I keep thinking. I am learning about the value of empty spaces in a composition.

Feeling quite happy with my little drawing, I thought I could turn it into a folded book. A few people added suggestions about having it stand up with sticks so I had to puzzle out how to make casing for the sticks to slot into. I sewed a backing sheet of the same size paper with spaces for the sticks to slot in. The stitching became a drawn line feature on the back.

Making that little object was a good in between time filler for when the collage I’m currently working on, gets pressed between glueings. It’s my biggest collage to date and I get a bit overwhelmed by its scale. Day by day I sit with it for an good half hour before I can commit to the next layering.

I’m using that idea of a silhouette for the tree. It was fun cutting out the twisting shapes. The rest of the composition has been more of a challenge. It’s still a work in progress as I start cutting out leaves and getting a bit looser with the structure. We’ll see how it looks by the end of the week.

Pandanus Panorama 2025 ink and watercolour on paper

White Flag

White Flag

Years of Sundays

Years of Sundays