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Looking Through Sketching & Frottage: Image
LOOKING THROUGH SKETCHING AND FROTTAGE
Looking Through Sketching & Frottage: Text
Inspired by group visits to local places of interest and walks around the city. This can stretch across multiple visits to different places
Looking Through Sketching & Frottage: Text
Workshop Description
Participants will explore new places and be encouraged to look more closely at their surroundings using pencil in personal sketchbooks and making graphite rubbings on large sheets. These can be used later to as the inspiration and source material for artworks about their experiences of the city. Can be run on just one visit or over a series of group trips.
Looking Through Sketching & Frottage: Text
Workshop Aims
1. To look more closely at places we visit by keeping a sketchbook. Over several visits this book will be a record of the places they have discovered.
2. Exploring a new place through making rubbings (frottage) of a variety of surfaces in special and/or historically significant locations
Looking Through Sketching & Frottage: Text
Workshop Activities
1. Organise a group visit to a local place of interest such as a cultural, historical or heritage venue, place of natural interest, or a walking tour of the city and landscape. As part of the trip leave plenty of time at multiple locations to stop and sketch the surroundings.
2. Issue each participant with their own sketchbook and encourage them to use it to record sketches of places they visit and things they see. They can also make notes and stick in flyers etc. Over several stops, or a range of different visits, the sketchbooks will document their early experiences of their new city and places of interest within it.
3. Select a location as part of the tour where there are a variety of interesting raised surfaces with different textures, such as plaques, signs and markers; leaves and bark; floors and walls. Give each participant a large sheet of paper and a graphite stick and show them how to use the graphite on its side to create a rubbing (frottage). Place the paper on top of the surface they would like to capture, hold in place with one hand and capture the texture by rubbing over it. Ask them to explore the place they are in and fill their page with the surfaces they find. They can either collect as many as they like or choose to fill their page in a creative way.
4. Bring the group back together to share what they have done and see which surfaces make the most interesting rubbings.
Looking Through Sketching & Frottage: Text
Materials Required
Simple sketch book for each participant
Pencils, erasers and sharpeners
Graphite sticks
Large sheets of sugar paper or similar quality paper
Looking Through Sketching & Frottage: Text
These can be used over just one day or spanning several sessions.
By drawing and making rubbings it is possible to notice details of our surroundings we might not take in while walking or taking photographs. It provides a stronger connection to the places we visit.
Drawings can be used as the starting point for subject matter explored in later workshops with other media.
Graphite rubbings can be kept as a finished piece of art or cut up and used as a material to add to collages.
Looking Through Sketching & Frottage: Text
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