Audrey Walker's Big Blue Bowl

I decided to visit my 'local' gallery - the wonderfully understated but always interesting and inspiring Ruthin Craft Centre, to see the Audrey Walker exhibition, Observations – a retrospective (21 July – 23 September 2018; http://ruthincraftcentre.org.uk/exhibitions/audrey-walker/, accessed 27 July 2018).

After photographing the pieces that interested me the most, and following some of the advice in Brian's article Drawing in the Gallery, on the OCA Student portal (https://www.oca-student.com/weareoca/fine-art/drawing-gallery, accessed 27 July 2018) I decided that rather than try to draw a little bit of many works, I should focus on one piece and try to capture it in my sketches.

I chose The Big Blue Bowl, 2013, because its simplicity and cleverness really spoke to me . It seemed to represent a new era in the life and work it is maker as was in a different style to some of the more heavily embroidered pieces from earlier stages of her life that I could see in the gallery. I found it fascinating that the artist was able to capture the shine of blue glass, using a material that was so unlike glass, and the simplicity of the running stitch that had been used to make this picture:

I tried to look stop, be calm and still, and take the time to and examine it closely (luckily, there was a chair nearby!) and capture some its essence in my own drawings.

Here, I concentrated on the thickness and direction of the stitches, getting a feel for how Walker had built up the shadows, areas of light and dark and texture of the bowl and fruit in her still life:

I plan to do some stitch experiments to try to replicate what she has achieved in capturing the shine and hue of the blue glass, going from thick and rather woolly thread for dark blue on the right, to fine silky and very pale blue/grey to capture the vertical areas of highlight on the far surface ofthe bowl. I can almost feel the rim of the glass and imagine running my finger around the top of it in a circular motion, captured here with two rows of overlapping running stitch to indicate the nearer side, and one row on the far side.

Here, I focused more on the shapes within the picture, using 5B pencil to capture the various circular forms I could see:

After this, I realised that I needed my sketchbook to be in portrait orientation to fit in the whole of the bowl's shape in!

I found the various circles and ovals of the bowl, its stem and base, and the fruit within, to be quite interesting to draw:

Here, I concentrated on the the circular forms of the bowl on its own, without the fruit contained within it in Walker's picture:

Here, still with the 5B pencil, I again included the fruit. By repeatedly drawing the same thing, I was hoping to observe it better and capture the interrelating forms more readily each time:

Here, I tried the technique of using my 'wrong' hand, in my case, my left hand, to see what this would look like:

Next, I focused on the fruit to the left of the bowl:

Again, drawing with my left hand, still with 5B pencil, trying to quickly draw the direction of stitches:

I tried again to capture using my left hand the bowl and its contents and quite like the squiggly, less uniform versions this creates:

And again using my left hand, this time using continuous line also:

Here I switched to fibre tip black pen, using my right hand and continuous line:

Here I tried, not very successfully to get a sense of the stitches with the fibre tip pen, as I don't think it was the right medium to capture this piece, as it contrasted too much with the paper and did not give any sense of the texture of the original:

Here, I focused on the area in the above photo, looking at the direction of stitch in the glass bowl and the fruit:

Next I switched to graphite sticks and tried to capture different views of the bowl:

Here I concentrated on the shadows captured on the back 'wall' of the still life:

Having only take pencils and graphite sticks with me to the gallery, when I got home I was eager to try to capture some of the vivid colours of this picture.

I think this one captures the quality of the stitches quite well. I tried to observe the mix of coloured threads that Walker had used and use these myself, but I think my blue had too much yellow in, compared to the deep indigo, almost purple, used by Walker in her embroidery:

I tried to mix colours to get a sense of the original, as well as the overall direction of the stitches, rather than each individual stitch:

Here, I used a dot effect to capture the stitches of the embroidery, using Inktense pencils, then applying a wash over some, but not all, areas:

Again, using Inktense pencils, this time on a wet surface in order to soften the line of the pencil and let the colour flow to neighbouring areas of the line made:

As my first attempt at 'drawing in the gallery' I was quite pleased with the sketches I came away with and certainly felt inspired to further research Audrey Walker's work and try to use what I had learned in my own work.