Preparatory Drawing

All of the drawings shown here were made using mainly ink, charcoal, chalk and acrylic paint on either cartridge paper and large sheets of toned sugar paper.

When it comes to planning a large creative project, preparatory drawings are invaluable as it allows you to explore the many possibilities of the composition to find out what will work and what won't before you get into the serious business of applying paint to the chosen substrate.

Here are the preparatory drawings I made for the painting 'Flown' which was selected for the Columbia Threadneedle Prize Exhibition back at the Mall Galleries, in London back in 2016.

As it was going to be a very large work using a very small primary source object - a skeleton of a seabird - I wanted to explore what could be achieved in chalk on paper first.

I began making a few drawings in a sketchbook before resorting to taping sheets of toned paper together so I could make the drawing as large as possible.

This allowed great freedom in the mark-making and I was able lay down sweeping arch shapes to describe the architectural aspects of the skeleton.

The substrate for this painting was to be a large hand-made wooden panel I had made myself from four 'end-of-life' scaffold boards, rescued from landfill. 

It took me a fair while and a lot of effort to make the substrate, so the margin for error had to be minimal to none.

The preparatory drawings were therefore crucial to the success of the early stages of the painting, as they helped me to get a feel for the subject and plan where and how to scope it out on the panel.