Aaron Boughtflower – John Busby Seabird Drawing Course 2022 Bursary Report
I type into my phone “what is “gesso”. Its nearly midnight and I’m in my tent in East Lothian after another Seabirds day. Someone has given me a few sheets of paper to try out that he says, “have had emulsion paint put on, you know, like, instead of gesso”. I know what emulsion paint is but don’t have a clue about gesso.
To be honest, I don’t know much about charcoal, ink or acrylics either. I don’t know a lot about perspective and I don’t know about drawing ‘through objects’. I wonder if this is because I have received no formal art education. I also wonder if this is why I have never drawn with my eyes closed. Or drawn left-handed. Or been timed drawing at 30 seconds, a minute, two minutes and why I’ve never drawn with a continual line. I wonder if this explains why I have never contemplated lying down with my eyes closed and listening and smelling for a bit before starting to draw, which is what we did this morning. Lying in my sleeping bag, I wonder if that sort of thing happens at art college all the time.
I wonder why, before last week, I’ve not drawn on any paper bigger than A3. Why I’ve not watched the same bird, or group of birds, for longer than an hour. Why I’ve not looked for a recurring action in my efforts to capture brief moments of flight or behaviour. Struggling with getting the profile of a Kittiwake’s bill, I wonder why I hadn’t thought of drawing it from the bottom round to the top, as opposed to my more habitual way of starting at the forehead.
I wonder why I’ve not really shown my drawings to anyone before now. Of the work I have so far produced, I wonder why I prefer a lot of the stuff I’ve done left-handed with my eyes closed and I wonder why I don’t really feel any pressure to produce work of an ‘acceptable’ standard when I thought I would. I wonder why you can’t really tell the tutors from the students and I wonder why it doesn’t matter that I didn’t go to art college and do whatever-it-is they-do-there. Then I come full circle and wonder what gesso is, all over again. Finally focussed on one line of enquiry, I press ‘search’.
“Gesso is a white paint mixture consisting of a binder mixed with chalk, gypsum, pigment, or any combination of these used in painting or as a preparation for any number of substrates such as wood panels, canvas and sculpture as a basis for paint and other materials that are applied over it”.
Kittiwake and Gannet studies
The Seabirds course is a microcosm of many things. Seven days of super-compressed learning and realisation, where many years of cumulative experience is condensed and shared freely with no obligation, condition or distraction. Like the seabirds themselves demonstrate when they return to the cliffs and islands of the Forth, it is a very brief period of time when everything is suddenly happening at once.
Satisfied that I have found an answer, at least where gesso is concerned, I am content and sleep.
