Drawings & Sketches - Iceland

When time is limited drawing what is eye catching has to be with a few quick strokes so the sketch is barely there, but even that brings the scene alive to me later on.

Recording the flight lines a bird makes as it soars or swoops on paper can catch the essential essence of that particular bird. Drawing with closed eyes following just sound with pen on paper, of say a Fulmer or Oystercatcher as I did here, is another way of recording and 'seeing'.

Iceland is a spectacular place for anyone but especially an artist.  Fellow artist and friend Birna a print-maker is Iclandic and has been welcoming and a wonderful guide to well known and secret places there.  In a land where in summer daylight lasts for 24 hours I've sat outside at 4am sketching part of a glaciar.

At Art School I came across Richard Feynman’s book ‘Surely You must be Joking Mr Feynman’. Richard Feynman was a Nobel Prize Winning Theoretical Physicist with an ability to communicate clearly and a penchant for practical jokes.

Feynman tells a story of a Philosophy Seminar where one of the participants asked a question about a brick as an essential object. (Linda’s note put in the math link here). Feynman's story helped flick a switch in my understanding about the essence of things. Clive Duncun, a sculptor, teaching at Sir John Cass School Of Art was another whose teaching of the structure underlying everything gave me a clearer understanding of drawing.