Still Life

I set up a still life in front of me to work from. In the past whenever I have done this I spend hours and hours constructing an image getting the proportions right, drawing everything exact and making the drawing look very realistic. This can sometimes overlap into how I make images and draw figures and the one thing that I have tried to do since being on the course is free up my drawing; rely less on reference and draw an image as I imagine it and want it to be. So this time, I approached still life with more of an open mind and thought I don't actually have to draw what I see. Or how can I make this image interesting without being completely realistic? I really wanted to challenge myself. I chose ink as my media because I am not necessarily comfortable with it, for me it doesn't feel safe or something I may not have control over. Ink bleeds, it makes mistakes, and sometimes just come across as messy. I painted patches of it on my paper in areas where blocks of colour may be, but not necessarily in the correct place. 

I really liked this process because I was just relying on little bits of the still life and using my imagination for the rest, trying to imply shapes and lines rather than drawing them, leaving more for the imagination and keeping it minimal.

For this one I was just taking symbols from labels or patterns and playing around with those. I think it is vibrant - not the best drawing I've ever done but theres some life to it and you get a sense of juice!

These ones didn't work so well, too focused and the composition was not good.

I experimented with a thick brush and black ink to try free up my lines and then go back into the others. 

This was playing around with proportions making them incorrect to see if it really mattered.

Overall this still life session was incredibly successful for me because it is the first time I feel I've made real risks. I was whipping out so many drawings just doing really quick ink splashes taking parts of a still life adding them here and there and trying to make sense of that madness rather than sitting for hours doing a really perfect proportionally correct realistic yet dull drawing. 

I must try to adapt this notion to my drawing more often selecting important areas of what I see rather than just replicating something