Getting Creative
I’ve never been too good at sitting around watching the world pass me by, so when lockdown came I decided to add “re-learn how to sketch” to my daily routine of yoga, fitness and re-learning playing the saxophone.
It’s been some time since I’ve had sketching lessons but my architecture degree was full of creative energy and so way back then there were plenty of opportunities. At one point of my undergraduate studies I had 12 hours per week of sketching classes – ranging from built form, landscape and life drawing. Many sessions were spent at sites around the university or around Auckland city – even at the time it felt more like relaxation therapy rather than classes. We had some fantastic tutors too – the pairing of two successful NZ artists Pat Hanly and Claudia Pond Eyley was particularly memorable, each bouncing of each other’s creative energy and passing that on to us. Assessment was simple and stress free – you just collected your works into a folio at the end of the term and that was it! I almost felt guilty getting university credit for it!
Knowing that I could draw at a point in the past was reassuring, but having moved away from creative architecture into management during my career has called on these skills less and less, to the point where I lost the belief in myself that I could even do it. Or that maybe I would need extensive training and practice to get back into it.
I started off in the familiar realm of architecture, sketching buildings and spaces. I found it a bit cumbersome at times – worrying about getting each roof tile, each detail drawn… but remembering my distant training that sketching is about observation and communication. That is, observe the subject, understand which are the important lines, the perspective that sets it all out, and seeing where the shading and light lies. And then communicate that on paper – ‘constructing’ the subject, creating depth, understanding which details are important to the observer and focusing on the important ones, knowing that the observers’ mind will fill in the rest.
I don’t think I’ve ever sketched a boat before and I was pretty happy with my first pencil sketch of Aroha. Focusing on as few lines as possible, I was really pleased with the resulting depth and form of quite a challenging perspective. I then moved onto my fellow detainees boats, playing with different angles, techniques and also ink for a change.
I also tried sketching the puppies a few times, even though the toughest part is finding a time when they are still long enough to capture them in entirety! So, I’ve done a few ‘studies’ on parts of them, in just a few minutes each. My next aim is to move on to my all time sketching fear – people!
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