Category: Part 5

I’m particularly interested in the intimacy between mother and child and for me the epitome of that is breastfeeding. I have recently stopped breastfeeding but had asked a friend to take some photos for me to work from during my course so have lots of material to work from! Not quite the same as working from life but that’s a bit of hard ask when it comes to babies. First I chose one of the compositions I thought would work best for a drawing and worked quickly in charcoal. Building on my work in the last part of the course I used some smudging and tried to focus in on the eye contact and repeated curves within the composition.

I love this, I think it might be hard for me to see these totally objectively but this is so emotive to me and whereas the previous drawings were fun doodles giving snapshots of our lives this is much more sensitively done and I think gives a real sense of that bond.

Next I wanted to build on the quick line sketches I’d done before but use a medium better suited to my style so I tried watercolour. I played around with one colour, two colours and multiple colours to see what different effect that had.

I was really pleased with all of these, quite an improvement in child features – these all look very much like Ottilie, recognisable of me too but then I’ve had rather a lot more practice there! The different colours all work nicely in different ways, the orange felt particularly appropriate because the potos were taken in an orange room and so everything tends to have an orange glow to it. Blue and orange is always such a fantastic combination, I’ve come out rather cartoonish in this but I like it a lot – we were in a moment of amusement between feeds and that energy is visible – the bold colour combination feels more appropriate for that than for a more tender composition.

I wanted to spend a little longer and try again with multiple colours – although the first attempt is the least clear of the drawings it has a lovely quality to it that I wanted to explore and build on. I still wanted it to be a quick line drawing though and avoided the temptation to build layers!

I think this was by far the most successful of the bunch. It has all the delight of the popping colours that I love but maintains that tenderness of the charcoal sketch. Partly it’s the choice of image but also adding a little tone adds a softness to it and minimal lines make it less cartoonish. I’m so pleased with this! I like too the watch – there’s something rather lovely about the contrast of the nudity with the practicality of the watch staying on, and of course time being such a feature in the subject – with babies every second brings a whole new era; this is a snapshot of a time already passed. It also looks the most like me of any of these including the charcoal.

My first step was to start getting used to drawing babies – I don’t really have any experience and the proportions are so different to adults I know they are very easy to get grotesquely wrong! I spent an evening doing quick line drawings from photographs of me and Ott together. I had in mind Matisse’s single line drawings where so much is conveyed so immediately and I know that sort of confident line comes after years of drawing so I set to it with repetition!

I like these – I tried to do them quickly and not worry too much and so although lots of individual bits are off the overall combination of shapes is very recognisably us.