Bodies in Ink

After seeing how well the participants at the Life Drawing sessions drew the human form, I too decided to make a frantic attempt at improvement. Somewhere I had bookmarked an article with photographs by Elizabeth Heyert where she photographs sleeping figures in the dark and projects them onto ruined walls in an abandoned town in Sicily. While her results are astonishing, I homed in on them as references for my drawings, seduced by the fact that these were everyday bodies in the nude and were therefore interesting to explore with ink.

My drawings at first in pencil were careful, I would fill in the parts of the anatomies that were obliterated by shadow in the reference photographs.  Then when I began filling in washes of ink, the ink would take over  from me leading my drawings into unexpected pathways resulting in surprising abstractions which I could never have envisaged. 

The textures that resulted were startling, the paper would lump up with the dampness and soak underneath creating a speckled surface and then dry out in shades of blue, grey, black and green which shown through the overall monochrome. The bodies became a result of abstract constructions of strokes, patches and bleeds out of which one could discern the human form suspended within a pool of black ink.  

What I liked a lot  was how the ink bled through on the other side of the page creating a shadow image. It was irresistible to take some diluted ink and fill in the hint of form that was created. This seemed to have a beauty of its own.

Some time in August last year, I sat in Brunton Boatyard and sketched the shore opposite. The drawing done in coloured pencils was rather laboured and did not have too much appeal. Now after ink from the adjoining pages seeped through, it lifted the drawing out of the mundane into something much more interesting.

All the drawings here were done in an old Nightingale sketchbook which is about the size of the palm of my hand, but today I grew bolder and decided to tackle one of the more complex images of a couple sleeping, in my large A3 Moleskine. I was surprised at how powerful the results are. 

I am glad to be able to shift to wet media after working with dry for so many decades. These experiments at getting acquainted are fun and remind me of how I enjoyed playing with charcoal years ago.

There are a few more drawings at Hello Every Sunday.