P4: Exercise 4.1 Description and Depiction

For this exercise I went to my favourite café on two separate occasions and sketched from both view points.

I really enjoyed this exercise and found myself really immersed in trying to capture the atmosphere both inside and out. It was fun sketching all the elements and also coming up with descriptive words and where to put them on the drawings.

I do think quite a bit of my presence comes through in the way I approached this exercise. I tend to go into my own world when I am at the café and enjoy people watching and thinking.

Using my library card I created the frames for each section and a simple graphite mechanical pencil to sketch with. I am most comfortable with this type of pencil and I wanted a fine point to get the details in a small space.

I really enjoy writing so this was a very enjoyable exercise for me. It wasn't hard for me to write to my imagined friend 'Sally' and I liked thinking about what words to use to describe what I was seeing, experiencing and feeling.

Attempt 1:

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Attempt 2:

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This exercise has taught me a lot about what I enjoy, which is adding in a narrative or meaning to my drawings. Creating stories are fun for me and give my drawings more depth. I will definitely keep this in mind for my future work. It'll be interesting to see how this develops in the future for me.

Whilst I liked coming up with descriptive words to add to my drawings, I think I prefer to have the writing as a separate part of the work, for example underneath the drawing as part of a narrative instead of within the drawing itself. I've never been keen on using words within my sketches, preferring to keep them as separate works. For me I think the words almost clash or conflict with my sketches, It's hard for me to make them fully part of my sketch, I'd rather try to communicate through sketches alone, or words alone.

Coming up with the words first did have some influence on how I drew the next sketch, however I'm the kind of person who notices little details that others miss so in this case it didn't impact the sketch a great deal as I already knew how I wanted to describe the place.

The words did act as a stepping stone to the overall emphasis of the final sketches. I didn't really realise it at the time but I can now clearly see that the first sketch was very influenced by the weather, the cold feeling and warming up in the café with the cosy feel of the place and the hot tea. The second version clearly emphasises more about the smells and taste experiences of that particular day.

It's great how you can sketch a place and take a different focus from each time you visit. This was a really interesting exercise and something I would be interested in exploring further.