Part 3 Project 5 Townscapes Exercise 2 Study of a townscape using line

Johnston, Craig. Ganvie Outskirts, 2015.

For this drawing, I looked around the area where we live and found that I was totally uninspired by the haptic, concrete jumble of buildings surrounding our apartment. So, I decided to once again return to my husband's photographs of Ganvie, the Venice of Africa. The photo I chose was of a settlement of stilt houses on the outskirts of the main stilt city. What I particularly liked about this photograph was the rhythmic pattern set up by the uprights of the wooden "scaffolding". Throughout the village these structures could be seen. They weren't piers that one could walk along, so I am not sure what the structure was for, unless purely for tying up their hollowed out log boats.

On the day of our trip to Ganvie, the sky was overcast with a slight drizzle. The day seemed so dismal, that we even wondered whether our trip would end up being cancelled. We set out in the drizzle, but, fortunately, the clouds soon parted highlighting the landscape with a fresh glow. It truly was a lovely day. After months with the harmatan dust cloaking the sky, causing it to lose all definition of clouds, this clear, sunlight was welcome.

Benin is a land of contrasts, which is evidenced in the landscape of Ganvie. As a result, when considering drawing this study, I wanted to emphasize contrast and linear rhythm. I wanted the roofs of the buildings to stand out against the backdrop of the sky.

After doing the preliminary pencil sketch, I realized that I wanted to increase the contrast of the buildings on the right even further so that the dark areas created more of a rhythm across the page, connecting this area with the deep shadow of the doorway on the left.

Double spread sketch.

Photoshop enhanced photo.

I also thought that the composition would benefit from being a bit tighter and I liked the elongated format dictated by the double spread of my sketchbook. For this reason I drew this as an elongated format, 15 X 46 cm. I took the original photograph and adjusted the hue levels of some of the hues until I had created a photo with more contrast and emphasis on linear elements upon which to base my sketch.

I did a mock-up of the left-hand side house in inks to see how it would turn out. I decided to use Bombay black India ink for the majority of the picture as it has a warm brown tinge to the greys and blacks.

When embarking on the final drawing, I did an extremely light preliminary sketch, before I washed a light layer of ink into the background using a broad chisel brush. I wanted the whites of the picture to stand out against this light grey sky. What I didn't realize was that the ink would absorb much quicker on this Canton paper than it did in my sketchbook, so I did not get the even application I was seeking. However, in retrospect, this was to my benefit as it helped to add interest into the sky, suggesting variations in the tones of the light cloud formation.

I then worked the house on the left-hand side. I discovered that my slightly damaged medium sized chisel-headed paintbrush creates parallel streaks when moistened with a slight dip of diluted ink. I used these marks in the roof and where ever I had corrugated iron walls. I added definition to details with a 0.7mm uni-ball ink pen. I tried to emphasize the person hunkered down in the doorway, to create a sense of intrigue. I tried to do this by emphasizing the horizontal dark strip of the shadow of the roof and the rectangular form of the doorway. This person is also emphasized by the sweep of the boat tied up under the doorway, as well as the pattern created by the black plastic hanging from the side of the house. The pattern of the slits creates a vertical rhythm under the house that visually links to the vertical struts of the houses across the water gap.

Next, I tried to establish my furthest background layer. I left two sides of the roofs of the houses white, as well as some of the grassy patch of the embankment. A soft wash of ink sets this area off from the middle ground, with a few tufts of the fish traps sticking out of the water for visual interest.

My next task was to draw in the houses on the right. Once again I used my damaged brush to draw in the parallel marks of the roofs and corrugated walls. I tried to emphasize the variations in the wall textures and tones, ensuring that I had a full range from the dark house in the middle to the lightest house in middle ground, which is towards the centre of the picture.

What I enjoyed painting the most was the vertical struts of the stilts and the scaffolding. I tried to allow the organic nature of brushed ink strokes to add to the interest of this drawing. Trying to create different strokes to represent each post, was quite challenging and diverting. A challenge I faced was to create shorter strokes to convey the posts in the distance which support to houses, in such a way that you knew the house were set off at an angle to the posts of the scaffold structure. I left a smidgen of white under the posts before indicating the water level to hint at the idea that there is a bit of turf under these posts.

At this stage, my weekend had run out and I was once again faced with a busy week of teaching. So, it was with a bit of trepidation that I once again tried to work on this drawing, almost a week later.

I decided to make a bold move and to change the ink I was using to a slightly darker bluer tone for the foreground. For this purpose, I used Pelikan 4001 Black ink. When I tested it, it was quite a bit bluer, and I was nervous that it would not suite the drawing. However, I did want to provide a visual contrast between this layer and the rest of the picture, as I feared it would be easy for this layer to appear on the same level as the others.

I started by working on the figures in the main boat. As this is a line drawing, I tried to emphasize the contours of the figures and only suggest the tones of the faces. I left the net purposely white to increase the contrast between it and the posts behind it.

For the boat, I applied a number of sweeping strokes to describe its hull. As the area became wet, these eventually blurred into each other helping to suggest its form. The smaller boat on the right was also created with a few overlapping strokes, which eventually blended.

Mark-making practice.

Creating the ripples in the water was nerve-racking as I wanted them to be calligraphic and yet it is easy for marks of this nature to spoil the flow of the white space. I think I was able to maintain enough white in the majority of the water. After looking at how different the underlying blue tone of the black was to the middle ground tones I decided to add some strokes to the reflections of the left-hand house in the brown-toned black. For these reflection ripples, I once again used the damaged brush to create parallel strokes. I don't know if I completely like these strokes. They do convey the idea of water lapping in a patterned configuration, but as they are some of the only horizontal strokes, they might draw too much attention.

On discussing this drawing with my husband, we agreed that the focal point of the picture is the dark house with the patterned window shutter. This is caused by the fact that all of the figures are looking in that direction and the reflections of the water tend to point in that direction too. It is also the only house which is dark. There is, however, a tension between the detail of the boats and the figure with the white net in the foreground, and this dark house with it corrugated outhouse.

Ink drawing.

I think that I have been able to add to the subtle intrigue of this stilted village scene, through my play between light and dark, and the rhythmic quality of the verticals of the posts.

Did your preliminary sketches give you enough information for your final piece of work?
No, however, it did serve to highlight what my main focus would be in this piece: the contrast between dark and light, and the rhythmic pattern set up by the horizontal posts. My sketch did also help me to explore the forms of the scene and to figure out how to simplify them. In many ways, I think my final piece has maintained some of the essence of my first preliminary sketch. What would be interesting is to take this scene I have drawn in ink, along with my pencil sketch, and to create a new drawing purely based on these. Not allowing myself the luxury of the photograph as reference. I suspect that this might lead to a more expressive, but less technical drawing. However, as time is pressing, I feel I need to move on to what should have been the first project in this sequence of lessons, exercise 1.