Project 2.4: Transitional Spaces

I actually started on my porch. The brief says to draw interiors, but my porch is covered so I thought to decide there. I sat on my steps and drew the transition from porch to garden. From a grey place, to a place filled with light and colour.

I enjoyed this. The ferns of my garden, and the climbing vines. In the background, my neighbour’s car and a stone lion figurine that their kids cover in coloured chalk.

I quite like how I handled the brick and stone here, though the space is a bit hard to interpret. How long is the top stone (in reality, the length of the porch). I think the vines cause it to shorten, visually, here.

Years ago I took a class with a comic book artist, Ty Templeton. I could hear his voice, here, saying thicker darker lines bring things into the foreground.

Remaining where I was, I looked over my shoulder to draw the front door and window. I focused on the brick work, it was of most interest to me.

Its interesting how I completely deleted the porch light, which should be on that wall. Or my house number. This wasn’t intentional, you can just faintly see where I had planned them in. But, I suppose, in my interest at drawing bricks I just forgot to draw the other items.

I intentionally let many of the vertical lines break. Looking at the image here, it makes those areas visually bulge out. Very unsettling. I will avoid that in future.

I need to practice drawing long lines consistently. Or adjust my posture. I don’t like how wavy the verticals are here.

This one came out rather warped. I brought my pad and drawing board down to the TV room. I clearly wasn’t paying too much attention to forms and relationships, as the space here is twisted and warped.

An interesting effect, but definitely not one of my better drawings. If I’d done this intentionally, I’d be happier.

I tried sitting in my home office, as my underdesk treadmill makes an interesting form against the windows. Decided to use pen.

I quickly learned that I have zero interest spending my “free time” in my work space. But this was a useful exercise none the less. I’m not unhappy with the pen work, even if it is rather squiggly.

I really struggled here, trying to get towards something i want to actually draw. This is probably a side effect of spending the pandemic in these four walls and being very tired of it. We had just moved into this house shortly before the pandemic, with the intent of getting spaces set up for entertaining and such. That hasn’t happened. So various parts of the house are weirdly unused, or still filled with boxes.

I began initially with a composition of oil lamps on the picture rail in the dining room. I made it about an hour in before I decided this wasn’t what I wanted. Part of this was that there was little in the way of colour or contrast, and partly because what colours were there I didn’t have in my pastels.

After quite a few random drawings and false starts (a selection to the right) this morning I found a composition I like. And it found me spontaneously.

I was looking at my coffee machine, as I waited for it to finish brewing. Its positioned in an interesting corner, with many overlapping planes. It has a very bright LED lights under the cabinetry behind it. As I doodled ideas, I walked over to it and looked down. I’m quite tall, so I could position myself right overtop of it, creating a really perspective. I could see light leaking in from the front door in the far corner of the scene, down an otherwise dark hall.

I like that there are still transition spaces in the drawing: hallway, front door, cabinet doors. I like that there is a transitional symbol: the coffee moving from me from sleep to wakefullness. Or the cleaning supplies for that matter. Bleach is a pretty strong symbol.

Now I have my scene and reference (bottom right on second image). Now to figure out how to draw this weird angle in a larger format.

I began with a fast hard pastel composition on black paper to help me see the contrasts.