Large Scale Sketchbook Week 6: Watercolours ,Frottage and Cutouts

My homework from week 5 of Large Scale Sketchbook  was   to  add tonal  values in ink to the original drawings I'd done on  at the Cast Courts   as I'd liked the contrast of the rough dark backs  with the finer, lighter  details of the fronts of the busts. When it came to it , I couldn't bear  to 'spoil' the original drawings so  I used marker pen on a photocopy ( above ) and then made tracings  of photo/drawings and traced those into my sketchbook and  used 'Payne's Grey' watercolour rather than ink (below).     

  While I was waiting for Tony to photocopy  these tonal paintings in different sizes, I had a go at some 'frottage' with graphite around the cut edges from previous  weeks work and then played around with overlaying them over different page spreads.

When I got my photocopies back , I was delighted to find he'd done some combining the tracings with the tonal sketches  with unexpected results  which I stuck in the book, cut out sections and added  further watercolour washes.  

 I then started extending some of the lines  and shapes onto other pages.

 After trying out different places to put my 'frottage' , liking the sparsity  of some earlier pages , I combined it with cut out shapes from photocopies

Getting into cutting out, I  layered a photocopy with a sheet of black paper and a sheet of graph paper and cut through 3 at once then reassembled them.  Having picked out  some of the black shapes, I taped down with masking tape the random collection on the opposite side .

I posted this on Facebook   as it was my favourite  page spread only to have a comment that the left hand page looks like Donald Trump!! That's all I can see now ( it wasn't obvious when viewed as an A2 page)  and it brings poignancy  to the right hand side , a  shattered figure bowed down with horror and shame??

My talk with Tony  was right at the end of the session so we were looking through 2 weeks work. As there are so many cutouts and change of perspective  when you turn a page , he thought it would work well as an animation  (perhaps something to consider filming when I finally bring the book   home ). We also discussed  starting to introduce more detail and variety of mark and change of materials .So far  I've been responding and reacting to the scale of the sketchbook with big bold  marks.  Right at the end of the session we had a  quick look at other peoples (very varied) sketchbooks, a couple of people had contrasted areas of very dark charcoal  with delicate fine lined drawings which I really liked.  The  pages above  from last week show some of these  characteristics   so that's what I'm going to concentrate on  in this week session: more drawing , less cutting.