Favourite work from exhibition:

The Jabberwocky: ink on paper

There’s a sense of chaos is most of John Vernon’s art pieces, which I don’t particularly find myself being a fan of. This mostly stems from the fact it’s not something I do in my art personally, and I don’t usually relate to this sort of approach to art in general. Although, there is a particular comfort I find in looking at other artists work which is different from my own, and more often than not it brings me more inspiration to create art after, than the pieces of art I look at which I relate to.

In this piece specifically I enjoy the style in which Vernon portrays the Jabberwocky. The expression and use of vibrant neon green, gives the creature that ‘revolting’ appearance which most bugs usually have in everyday life. Also, quite explicitly Vernon made the human character backing away from the monster, which again, portrays the ‘horrifying’ aspect to be quite literal just like in real-life the first instinct when you see a bug is to quickly get rid of it. At first glance this piece as a whole is quite intricate and it’s something that I get told about my work too sometimes, which I find interesting. The fact John Vernon does a lot of his sketches in meetings and writes down the date and time of them I found is something which I do often too, mostly to track the progress of what I draw but also to reflect on later on, and drawing while listening helps me concentrate more and with so much detail that Vernon puts into his work I would assume it’s something he strives for as well.

Another interesting point I found within this piece, is how he’s able to compress so much context into such small dimensions, because on the contrary I personally would find that quite limiting as I prefer to be more messy and expressive when creating art, therefore I do a lot of bigger scale pieces. A lot of the time I don’t tend to use colour in my own work, even though a lot of Vernon’s work in the exhibition was created using ink only, this piece in which he used colour made me feel like I was watching a world of fantasy due to their brightness, however I take from this that maybe if I used colour in my own work it would give it more character and set the atmosphere more vividly than usual.

The narrative itself is quite explicit in the foreground even though as your eyes move towards the back, that’s when the story expands and the audience is able to make up their own ideas about it, which I really appreciate in John Vernon’s ‘The Jabberwocky’ illustration.

John Vernon Lord Exhibition:

More from the exhibition :

Drawing exercises:

Often I find drawing outdoors a lot more challenging than in a closed studio space that has my desk and a specific source of light, due to the fact that being outside where things are happening, it’s easier to find distractions around me and therefore not concentrate on my initial goal of drawing. These exercises with the use of different time limits and uses of media each time I started a new drawing however, allowed me to explore outside my limits which a lot of the time simply sitting in a studio can have. Being outdoors provides the access to natural and ambient light, which depending on the day and weather may change throughout the period of time you stay to draw in one place. For this example in which I was sketching a tree and some grass I noticed due to the clouds constantly moving and shifting between allowing the light from the sun shine and hiding it other times, every shift where the light was brighter the tones became darker on the trunk as the leaves created more shadows which meant I had to switch to darker tones of colour. It was a process of constantly trying to keep up with nature and I really enjoyed the result of the tree trunk having those subtle changes in tones which captured the movements well, even if I didn’t put much thought into its upper appearance of the leaves. Other drawings, where I spent less time on ended up looking rather mediocre and plain. Although in the bottom one where I directly started drawing blindly, I was surprised at how much it resembled the house I was referencing from because I had previously practiced in the drawing on top for slightly longer, therefore warming up my wrist to draw in a more complex manner.