No Easel No Excuses!

To all of you out there who think you need an easel or a studio to work, no you don’t! Nice to have but where there’s a will there’s a way! 

I've so enjoyed being immersed in my work from my last open studio I'm loathe to tidy everything away so my easel is still occupied. No excuses! Here’s the solution …… the back of a door. At art school we worked on boards mounted on the walls or placed behind our desks, not an easel in sight! 

I'm back to working on some large vine drawings and enjoying capturing shape and textures, as I like drawing standing up (allows freedom of arm movement) the back of the door is great, it’s perhaps wise to warn those who share your living space that you are working directly behind the said door and knocking is perhaps a good idea. 

Here you get a good idea of scale and detail, while working so large it’s interesting to try out different pencil grips too! Keeping more distance to your paper with a loose flowing grip creates completely different pencil strokes than when the pencil is clamped between your thumb and index finger. 

A word of caution to the door (you can use a wall too, or the doors of a cupboard or wardrobe) check of course you are using something like masking tape that won’t ruin your doors and don’t do this with velour pastel paper and soft pastels. I was using a cupboard door during one of our many moves, it was my first try at velour paper and I was doing a very expressive seascape. The velour was horrible and after struggling I took a break only to come back to find my velour empty and a splodge of pastel dust on the floor. Someone had opened the cupboard door and slammed it shut, resulting in a now you see it now you don’t work, I suppose if I'd been clever like Banksy and his shredder I'd have marketed this as a ''happening'', unfortunately I wasn’t so savvy. 

Velour paper and I have never hit it off, yes I know animal artists do a fantastic job on it but it always reminds me of those terrible dog/cat pictures printed on naff black velvet. Very sorry if you’re the proud possessor of one such hanging, each to their own!