Whenever domestic chores or other distractions leave you with a creative blackout there is a sure way to get started again – copy somebody else! Claire Spencer’s charcoal drawings of the Wyre Forest set me thinking about using a broad tonal medium, then I remembered Georges Seurat used the then newly invented Conté crayon to make preliminary studies for ‘La Grande Jatte.’ There’s an idea – copy those!
In fact Seurat used Conté in a very interesting way on a grainy paper rather like the modern ‘Ingres’ paper available in art shops. The Grande Jatte studies are delicately laid in tonal impressions of figures in silhouette, no detail but wonderfully atmospheric. In other drawings he uses hatching to build up delicate tone but rarely for outline. Yes there is much to study in these drawings which will hold my interest and keep hand and eye working until the muse returns.
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