I made several drawings of the celery root on four sheets of paper, all from a slightly different angle. I tried to depict the complex pattern of the core root and the dinted surface of the object. These drawings were a real challenge. The amount of concentration required was enormous and I had problems with my vision. The main difficulty was that I constantly lost track of the point where I was drawing. Each drawing took several hours to complete, with many pauses in between.
After the first sheets I wasn’t satisfied because I thought that I had only repeated the attempt I had already made in my sketchbook, I saw no progress. On the second sheet, I tried some more unusual angles, like from the side or bottom, where the root pattern was less dominant. My main aim was to create three-dimensionality and be as accurate as possible, but I felt disheartened by the complexity of the task.
The third attempt was with coloured pastel pencils on medium gray paper. The idea was to use a a restricted palette of only one lighter and one darker colour and focus on creating the three-dimensional patterns. This drawing remained unfinished, because I got bogged down by too much detail. I think the effects are exaggerated and I wondered whether it might work better if I used dim light. Somehow I’m not able to judge the intensity of shadow effects when drawing in full light.
The fourth drawing was in coloured pencil. I chose light blue, dark blue, and dark gray, again focusing on the root pattern and the dented surface. Later I added dark red to the background to make the object stand out better.
A fifth attempt was made on dark red paper in coloured pastel pencils, but that one failed, because I wasn’t able to concentrate any longer, so I threw it away. I’ve still got to learn a lot with pastels, in particular how to incorporate the paper colour into the drawing rather than just overpainting it.
What have I learnt?
While I was working on the exercise, I felt like repeating the same approach and not getting anywhere. Each time I started with a fresh mind and tried to follow instructions to sketch the outlines first, then add shadings and surface details. But each time, I got very quickly caught in the complexities of interwoven root elements, rather than perceiving and depicting the object as a whole. I was not able to approach the subject in a looser way.
I interpret this as a necessary step in learning. It felt like if I kept trying, it would become easier and at some point, I might resolve the knot. And it may not be immediately visible in the drawings, but I think some minimal learning has taken place. Maybe at this point it’s only learning what doesn’t work, but I felt it was a valuable experience.
I think it is now time to proceed to the next exercise and try a deliberately different approach, but I might get back to this kind of drawing and see whether it becomes easier with practice. Maybe I should get some additional practice with drawing textured surfaces. Somehow I didn’t master the skill while working on part 2 of the course, and it might be a good idea to work on this.
Another idea is to do what I constantly wanted – reduce the complexity of the task by drawing only sections. I wanted to follow instructions about drawing the whole object from different angles, but in view of the complexity it might have been more appropriate to draw just sections and try to get them right. That said, I nevertheless found it a very valuable experience to draw the entire root, even if it was beyond my current skill and ability to concentration. I think I need to take a more flexible approach and also try more different viewpoints and experiment with media.
For the delicate shadings, I’d like to get to the point where I’m really working with the media. I have already experienced this, it feels like making a sculpture and seeing a three-dimensional object on the paper. I need a medium that I can rework and correct until the shapes and tones look like I want them. In my drawings for this exercise, I think I just made a first attempt, which did not properly work out, and then left it at that because I was scared to spoil what was on the paper. I think I can do better, but it’s difficult to get to that point of really working with a drawing.