#original drawing

Gabrielle Nowicki 2016 - Detail of work in progress. Houses 1-17 of 72

Neighbourhood, graphite on paper

Six more houses added to the neighbourhood.

Gabrielle Nowicki 2016 - Detail of work in progress. Houses 1-11 of 72

Neighbourhood, graphite on paper

It’s been a very busy past little while. Today is Friday and I’m spending the day working on my own stuff. Here are some more neighbourhood houses. I have 11 of 72 houses drawn which I think is the equivalent to completing ½ an arm, in the realm of sweater knitting.

I’ve included the top image to give a sense of the size of these houses.  

Gabrielle Nowicki - 2016. Rock (1) - Graphite on 12″ x 9″  Paper

My house is a five minute drive from the north shore of Lake Erie. I go for walks there regularly and always find myself scouring the beach for sea glass and interesting stones. It occurred to me that they’d be nice to draw. The different grades of graphite that I use, from 6H to 6B can render surfaces that are from hard and smooth, to soft and porous. I layer these different grades of pencil on the paper to get different effects. I worked the surface until I was happy with the implied weight of the rock. 

I used a rock about 4 inches across, with fossils embedded in it as a starting point for this drawing, but I let what was happening on the paper guide the drawing process so there is an intuitive aspect to this as well. 

Gabrielle Nowicki, 2016 - The Highgate Mastodon

Graphite drawing on paper. 9″ x 12″

The “rock” that the house sits on is a combination of rubbings made from a raised plate, indentations in the paper and textures that I worked onto the surface as they suggested themselves to me. The shadow,  I think, gives a weighty feel to the rock.

One of the rubbings looked to me like a jawbone with teeth, which is the reason I titled it The Highgate Mastodon. 

The Highgate Mastodon was discovered in 1890. William Reycraft, a farmer who lived close to Highgate, Ontario (Canada) was digging a ditch on his Uncle’s farm. He dug up some huge, unusual bones which were, it turned out, from a mastodon. It was the largest and most complete fossilized skeleton of an extinct animal found up to that time. 

It’s really quite a story to read if you would like to know more.  

Highgate is only a 10 minute drive west from where I live. Many of the houses around here are similar to this one.

And that’s your local history lesson for today

Gabrielle Nowicki 2016: An acre in the country. 18″x24″ Graphite on paper

As farming operations become bigger, smaller, old fashioned farms are severed, the house is sold separately, and farmers buy the land surrounding them. The effect is much like little mirages or oases scattered throughout a vast landscape of corn, beans and wheat. During spring planting and harvest times, it suddenly gets very busy and noisy when crops are planted and harvested. The rest of the year is pretty quiet.   

If you look at satellite imagery of farm land, you will often see lines that look very similar to the ones I’ve drawn here.       

Gabrielle Nowicki 2016 - Details of a drawing in progress part 4.

Graphite on paper

Drawing the planter marks 

I taped together some 2mm pencil leads. They are 4B so I don’t have to press hard to make the lines, and they have a soft quality to them as the graphite catches on the tooth of the paper’s surface. The effect reminds me of warm, friable soil that’s ready to be planted.

Drawing the lines takes planning, If you have ever planted a field, this part would be familiar to you. You must plan your headlands, turnarounds and the direction of the rows. You must also plant as straight as you can, and space each pass so the row spacings are as equal as possible. 

The lines I’m drawing are records of the movement of my hand pulling the pencil leads. You can look at them and get a sense of the action involved in drawing them.  I think they look a bit like zen garden raking patterns. 

Gabrielle Nowicki 2016 - Details of a drawing in progress part 3.

Graphite on paper

Roads are placed. Obviously, this isn’t scaled to life; the houses would be smaller. I think that scale isn’t important here and besides, drawing larger houses saves my poor eyes =) 

aquarium date with invisible person, original drawing.

sorry for no activity these days. i’ll try to spew one sketch a day next time!

wip moleskine sketch from when Wolf Alice played Rough Trade

sketch of the lollies I can never resist