Ephemeral Drawings

"Radiating," approximately 13x13", sticks, moss, vegetation

   For my first ephemeral piece, I was a little too careful in what I made. I wanted to make a circle of items that radiated outward, but ended up making a sort of nest. I do like the colors that occurred, the greens that contrast with the cool grey sticks and warm brown dead leaves and mulch, but I wish I had experimented with this one more.

"Regret," approximately 12x12", aquarium rocks, pinned insects

   For my second ephemeral piece, I decided to use items around my desk in my room, which included three different colored aquarium rocks and a shadowbox with pinned insects. I dumped the rocks out of the aquarium and used them to piece together a drawing of a giant swallowtail butterfly. After that, I took out and organized the pinned insects, and finally surrounded everything with white aquarium rocks. This piece earned it's title because that is the only emotion I felt after the first thirty minutes or so of placing small rocks in the shape of a butterfly. Only after finishing this piece did I realize that, like the first one, it was also radial in shape and was a sort of "nest," although more figuratively this time. It's in my room, so it's like the nest that I come back to, but it also contains aspects from two of my pastimes; fish/aquarium keeping and (found dead) insect collecting.

Eraser Drawings

 "Turning" 21x12", willow charcoal, white plastic eraser, hands/fingers

   For the Eraser Drawing assignment, I started with just the willow charcoal. I started by covering the entire paper with charcoal, smudging it around with my hands, erasing some curved organic lines, and repeating this process. I was particularly interested in the way dragging my fingers over lines that had been erased would lighten dark areas and darken the erased areas. You can see this happening the most on the right hand side of the page, near the center.

"Swimming Solo" 21x12", Rembrandt black pastel, white plastic eraser

  For my second drawing in this assignment, I decided to go with something more representational. Fish are one of my favorite subjects to draw and paint, so I went with a goldfish. I covered the entire paper in the pastel, erased some large portions of the background, filled them back in, then erased the general shape of a fish. I then erased in the fish's details, adding a few lines of pastel at the end.

 "Sinking Landscape" 21x12", willow charcoal, Rembrandt black pastel, hands, white plastic eraser

   For my third drawing, I started out by coating the paper in willow charcoal and rubbing it into the paper with my hands. I erased horizontal lines into the charcoal using my eraser, rubbed in more charcoal, and repeated. I then randomly applied a few large patches of the black pastel and rubbed it into the paper with my hands. I started to erase those diagonal lines in, and I would go back and forth between erasing the lines and rubbing in more pastel. It began to look like an abstracted landscape, so I added some vertical black lines to represent foliage. I later decided that it looked better upside-down to how I had drawn it, so I rotated it.

 "Vortex" 21x12", willow charcoal, Rembrandt black pastel, and gesso all mixed with water; eraser

   For my final piece, I mixed all of the previous materials with gesso and water. I painted the liquid onto the paper, leaving one white shape. I then erased into the wet liquid in a rotational motion, unintentionally ripping the paper. I repeated this a few times, and occasionally instead of ripping, the eraser would just push the liquid, creating a sort of texture almost resembling impasto in a painting.

White Paper Drawings

"White Diagonals" 8x10", gesso and paper

   For the White Paper drawing assignment, we took 21x24" sheets of paper and had to make them fit into an 8x10" space. I started by ripping long strips of the paper and fitting them into the general shape and size of an 8x10" rectangle using gesso as a binder. Once I had the desired size, I cut the piece into four equal pieces and rearranged them so that the edges of the piece were cleaner.

"Grey Space" 8x10", gesso, water, paper, and Rembrandt black pastel

   The second piece for the White Paper drawing assignment. In this drawing, we were allowed to incorporate black pastel into the drawing. I wanted to experiment with the values I could get from the pastel when mixed with water and gesso, but I also wanted to leave the piece more abstract and geometric. This assignment ended up being largely experimental for me.