Artist: Drawings
Claire Leach
“My art practice encompasses drawing and painting. I’m most inspired by landscape and nature with a particular focus on woodland. I utilise different processes depending on the materials used, with ink and brush I build the drawing up with several layers of ink and water, adding and taking away before using a fine brush to draw in details. With fine liner pen I work in a meditative way, building the drawing up with tiny details. I like the immediacy of pen and ink and the intimacy of working small which draws the viewer in.”
More about Claire Leach
My process starts with a walk through woodland to immerse myself in nature and take photographs to use as source material for drawings. I’m attracted to pathways as well as the tangly undergrowth of ferns, branches and grasses.
I use the photographs I’ve taken as a compositional starting point using pencil to sketch out a rough outline. I have two main ways of working, either using a fine liner pen to draw intricate details or ink and brush to create a looser, more atmospheric drawing.
With fine liner pen I build the image slowly, mark by mark in a meditative way. Details are painstakingly captured, tiny leaf shapes, lines to depict grasses, circles and ‘squiggles’. There is an obsessive process to making the drawing, it grows over time.
With the ink and brush drawings the process is entirely different. Washes of ink and water are put down, allowed to dry and then scrubbed away. The process is repeated several times until finally details are drawn with a fine brush. The material allows for a looser and more atmospheric drawing.
Each way of working is different but what ties my work together is the eye for detail and a unique way of capturing light. In my work I hope to translate the pure magic of being surrounded by trees in a woodland on to paper.
“Claire's work is ethereal and utterly beautiful. Her renditions of woodland are so intricate it seems as though you can hear every hoverfly and the rustling of every leaf. Her drawings would bring calm to any living space...”
