Edible Drawing Class with Satoshi Date

On the 26th Jan I went to a great little workshop run by FARM:Shop in Dalston, Edible Drawing with Satoshi Date, a Tokyo born artist, who studied at Central Saint Martins and is now creative director of his own fashion label. 

It was really great actually, I haven't been to a proper drawing class in so long and it really brought home to me how much I miss it! It's so easy to get caught up in just drawing 'how you draw' and forgetting the techniques that make drawings better. It really was like going back to basics. 

Here I am! Blending blending. Serious drawing face.

The workshop was split into 3 stages; first we were invited to draw a piece of fruit in front of us, but quickly, in less than 5 minutes, four times. This was to encourage us to look closely at the object, and draw what we saw, not what we expected to be there. It's so easy to draw things because that's how we think they should look, and not because that's actually how they are. I was drawing a pomegranate, which is actually incredibly hard; all the little fruit pips inside and the way the light falls.  

  

You can see from top left that I started doing what I always do, which is drawing the outline; Satoshi quickly corrected me and reminded me that we should always draw light and shade; objects don't have edges or outlines, they just have where the shadow ends and the light begins. 

 

 

After that, we focused on creating a 30 minute detailed drawing, based on our quick studies and what we'd learned. It's amazing how quickly 30 minutes goes in, I didn't even finish mine. I found it really hard creating definition using just light and shade, I usually go straight in with black lines. 

 

Next was a haptic drawing - that is, drawing something using only the sensation of touch, with your eyes closed. I haven't done this since school! It's so much fun, and actually incredibly relaxing. This was supposed to be an orange. But actually, I quite like it. Abstract, and I think it does resemble an orange. Or a nipple.

Lastly, we were invited to draw the fruit again, but this time by tasting it too - I chose the pomegranate seeds (I hate orange) and discovered 2 things; First, pomegranate seeds (the bit you eat) are actually hexagonal, not round, like little jewels. Secondly, tasting it kind of does help. You get a feeling for texture, and what it is that's inside; even though you're not drawing the inside, it helps with shape and weight etc. Interesting.

It was great to draw food from life too; I usually work from photos I've taken, especially when cooking, because I haven't got time to sketch when things are boiling away. I learned to look at things properly, something which I know I haven't been doing over the years. FARM: Shop itself is an amazing venue, if you're ever around the Dalston area, definitely drop in - "FARM:shop's cafe conjures up some of London's freshest food using ingredients they've grown in house or sourced from local growers.  It's a great place for a light lunch stop, coffee fix or somewhere to relax on a sunny day amongst our indoor allotment or out in our garden polytunnel."