Find an inconspicuous area of a room or small area outdoors where several elements are juxtaposed.  Take photos and make sketches of cropped details.  Make several drawings, lines, repeat motifs, allow forms to come together in unusual ways.  Be as playful as possible with pattern, texture, form etc, whilst still being sensitive to what you are looking at.  You may find that photocopying your drawing, cutting it up and making a collage will help- or overlaying tracing paper to create repetitions of interesting lines and shapes.  As you progress you may find that parts of the subject which feature large in reality disappear completely in your drawing, while incidental patterns of shapes develop their own status.

I wandered round the house with my phone and took random photos, such as these;

I intentionally chose subjects that I would normally never chose to paint or draw.  I also never tidied up first; I wanted the photos to show “warts and all”.  Of the photos I took, I immediately chose these;

I was drawn to the straight lines of the shelves and the repetition of the vertical lines of the books and folders.  I started to draw this area, initially intending it to be a line drawing, however I decided half way through to make it a tonal drawing, using HB, 2B and 6B pencils.

A3 pencil drawing

I photocopied this image and traced the shapes of the letters pinned on to the notice board.

I then coloured these abstract shapes using the colours of the folders on the shelf.  The result was interesting, but not one that I felt I could take further.

I then decided to focus on one of the shelf areas, where the books were all leaning to the side and there was repetition in the diagonal lines.

Photocopy of drawing and tracings

I decided to repeat this more times.  I went over the pencil with black felt tip.  I then coloured in random parts of the drawing with black pen, ensuring each “shelf” was different.

Tracing with black pen

This reminded me of black and white barcodes.  I then tried long horizontal areas.  The first “shelf” was 3.5 cm tall, and with the same Steadler black felt tip I drew in the “books” as a continuous line, making some slant.  I though this looked quite interesting, so I did a taller “shelf”, this time 4.5 cm.  When I was just over half way along, working in the same way with a continuous line, I thought it was looking dull and too repetitive, so I started adding thin lines using a fine black Pitt drawing pen.  I interspersed these with thick lines to add more variety.  I liked this, so added another shelf, 6 cm this time.  I added wavy lines, blocks of black and spaces this time.  Finally, the last shelf was 8 cm and had more of the thin and thick lines grouped together, finally becoming more barcode-like towards the end.

I really liked this last part and individual parts of it work well on their own, such as this part.

Reflection; …Reflect on how far you’ve moved from your original subject.  Is your final drawing still of the object, or is it now more a drawing about the process of looking and being creative?

Reflect on whether you’ve made the best possible use of the space available to you.

I’m very pleased at how far I have come from the original subject.  My final drawing is an abstract image, and this is an are I’ve not explored much.  I think I followed the brief well “repeat motifs,…be as playful as possible with pattern”.  I think the monochrome works well.  I like the repetition of the lines and the contrast between the thick and thin lines.  I like the control and precision, and I also felt that I was working instinctively and that it was a very natural process.  A good start I think.