Dusting off the old drawing skills... Matty's Wall

So this is the longest small drawing I have ever made. This residency has been about gathering, looking and perseverance It's a funny thing to take two years off of drawing and then try to jump back in. Imaginably it would be hard. It had been so long, I actually forgot and remembered my technique for laying out large scale paintings with photographs as source material. I had been practicing observational drawings and thought it would be good practice to jump from there into an enormous drawing, but no. Not yet. After 4 hours in, I came back the next session and realized time to try something else.

Despite the failure to go BIG last week, small for what I wanted to do was a different challenge. Articulating detail is harder to do small. Less space to define it. Marks must be made with more precision and care. The combination of everything led to this 9" x 12" twelve-hour drawing. I'm pleased with the outcome, and hopeful to bang out another small drawing (a bit faster) this week for Sunday (resident talk/reception).

This is near the scale of the reference photos. I had an old drawing pad with paper that's probably 50 years old, so it has since yellowed. That's what the tint is below. I actually dig the quality of the paper, but will eventually need to scan the image for the true color balance.

After full day session on Saturday.  Progress image from bad camera phone.