Alice Mann.: Drawing - Refinement of Ideas.

Looking through my ideas and evaluating the compositions I have used, I think that the arrangements that focus on the shapes and movement of the crowds, rather than the city structures surrounding them are most effective and eye catching to the viewer. These more gestural ideas allow the spectator to make their own assumptions of what is being represented as opposed to me telling the viewer what to see by adding in a city environment to the people which almost takes away the movement, in turn producing a static image. As refinement to my ideas I have been continuing with the idea of stretching the paper, gradually increasing the size to see how effective it is, if it works or not.

With my drawings I have been looking at showing just the movement with subtle hints at people and crowd density. They could be drawings of the sounds or shadows that the people create in a bustling city environment. Also due to finding my use of colour effective, creating a more uplifting atmosphere I have been refining on my application of this. I found that the use of blue was most interesting and complementary to my compositions as it added temperature to my ideas and whilst improving my work I combined the use of blue with the black ink to help produce tone. I have also continued to use charcoal and graphite sticks to the drawings to help define the shapes and tones produced. One other material I have been using is varnish. I used it previously on a couple of ideas and I have found that applying it around the charcoal lines helps to enhance the shapes produced and also adds a contrasting texture to the ideas which helps to attract the attention of the viewer to look in close at the intricate detail. In terms of layout and positioning of my ideas I have been playing around with both portrait and landscape compositions. I find both interesting however the landscape ideas allow me to exaggerate the shapes and depth of my idea enhancing the idea of movement and shadows.