Triumphant: A Very Slow Drawing
the evolution of a big, (very) slow, quiet, determined drawing
I have finally finished the Gentle Giant! I first put pencil to paper at the beginning of May, and the final marks were made just before Christmas. An 8-month process that tells a tale of 20-minutes here and half-an-hour there, culminating in the most satisfying piece of pencil-work I’ve ever done.
Although, really, the story starts in November three years ago. We’d had a rough week of it – Piglet, my eldest who was three at the time, had been poorly with a Nasty Winter Bug; then the littlest, just a baby, caught it. This was the first day Piglet had felt better (I remember the little one was feverish asleep in the carrier on my chest). It was a Saturday, and weirdly warm for November. No coats, just jumpers and boots, and we headed out for a walk. Piglet seemed to be swept up in some sort of post-illness euphoria. His joy was explosive and infectious and hilarious. He wanted us to repeatedly dump piles of autumn leaves on his head and he laughed and laughed. We walked along to Kingfisher Corner (my journal records “no kingfisher but we saw the dipper and huge fish leaping”). We’d made little iced buns to look like toadstools (red icing, white chocolate buttons) and we had a flask of coffee with us. I remember feeling 100% happy. Especially when Trix was a baby, I used to get these little happiness bursts in my tummy, like a good sort of stomach ulcer bursting, that felt almost unbearably nice. Piglet’s reckless energy, a nice wee picnic, autumn colours, the dipper, sweet Trix asleep on my chest with her soft hair smelling of calpol and milk: it was like a cosmic smashing together of happiness. I turned round to see Piglet slightly ahead on the path, gentle pink dusk behind him, looking totally triumphant: Nasty Bug vanquished, zest for life returned, an untouchable three-year-old King of Woods. That was the moment I knew there would be a drawing done of that day. It just took me two and a half years to actually start it.
Nothing happens quickly in Hannah-land – basic tasks, speed of walking, typing, and most especially, drawing. My sketchbook provides a space for some slightly-quicker mark making, but when I work on my big finished pieces, I am so slow it sometimes seems that I might be stagnating entirely. This is the first work-in-progress photo I can find of this drawing, taken in August, three-months in. My method of drawing is to build up tiny marks – lines and squiggles, sometimes cross-hatched – to represent the feeling of the drawing I am trying to capture. I work from top left to bottom right – primarily for the practical purpose of not smudging my pencil work, but also because I am totally addicted to that feeling of watching the drawing emerge from the page. Sometimes it feels like I’m not doing anything, except sitting with the drawing while it grows.
I quite often work at the dining room table rather than in the studio – partly because I like the space and the light, and partly because it means I can pop back for a wee draw in peaceful moments – waiting for my tea to stew, kids playing happily together, twenty minutes after bedtimes before the light fades. I don’t need to be in the zone to draw, I don’t need joined-up hours of alone-time, I can switch into it very quickly. In fact, I think at all times I am drawing in my head, but my hands are busy doing other day-to-day tasks.
A wee push further across in this picture, and a bit more of the ferns tackled. Ferns are really incredibly tricky to draw! I thought the tangle of the trees would be the most complex and detailed part, but the ferns were extremely time-consuming. Deliciously slow! Sometimes when I am working on this scale, it can seem like progress to just cover some ground, fill some areas in, but I try to push myself to be better and dive deeper as I draw.
I often get asked about whether I draw from photos – the quick answer is yes, especially on these big detailed pieces. I tend to have several photos printed out as a reference point. I think there were four different images for this piece. And then I have memories and sketchbook pages to lean on for the feeling and the mood.
A progress photo from September. September is a notoriously busy month in the studio because that is the month we launch the calendar, and it is all-hands-on-deck getting the orders out. But there was a delay this year with a delivery of calendars into the studio – something to do with the factory that makes the paper stock being closed for two months – so I had a strangely quiet fortnight while we waited. That gave me a chance to work on my big drawing and I feel like around this point I got a sense of how it was going to turn out. I felt like I was drawing myself a peaceful world, a place in the trees, cocooned by branches and sky and ferns, where things are simple and safe and happy. I’ve noticed that most of the large drawings I’ve chosen to work on in recent years have this sort of a theme – creating a safe place – which I think is a reaction to how scary and unpredictable the world feels.
I had an interesting chat with a connection on Instagram around this point about how there’s something appealing about an unfinished drawing. They wondered if perhaps the unfinished space allows our brains the chance to co-create – to fill in the blanks, to imagine. I liked that thought and considered finishing up here. But my own brain would not allow that!
This is the point in the process at which I think I am done, but there’s actually several hours of drawing to go. This was November. Tantalisingly close! I had to challenge myself not to rush the bottom corner.
Pencil-work done!
Adding colour is always a stressful moment. I’m always drawn to the grayscale of the pencil work, but the original idea was in colour, so I forced myself to follow-through and add some little areas of colour in the leaves and the sky. I use watercolour – which largely allows pencil work to show through – and then I intensify the pigment with coloured pencils if needed. See detail below.
A lovely way to end the year, with the big drawing finished and a quieter January ahead to start new projects. In a world where AI can create you an image in seconds, choosing to do something that takes months, with hands and graphite and paper, feels like a tiny protest.
I took the finished drawing to be scanned this week, so I am happy to say that there are now limited edition prints of Triumphant in the Woods for sale here (and I’m delighted with how beautifully it prints – slightly inkier looking than the original). And, of course, the original drawing is available. I’ll most likely have it framed and with me at Art at Ancrum in May.
Materials used:
Surface – Daler-Rowney Line & Wash Watercolour Board (except I draw on the reverse of it because I like the texture better)
Pencils – Pentel 0.5 mechanical pencil, HB lead
Watercolours – Schminke (although I had to look at these to check – I’m not too fussy about my watercolours)
Coloured pencils – Caran d’Ache Luminance
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