Drawing personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

Drawing is the part of art that I keep returning to when I am not required to. Painting and printmaking interest me, but it is the act of looking closely and recording what I see, badly at first and then a little better, that holds my attention. I want to study Drawing as a subject in its own right because I have realised how much it can do beyond preparation for something else: it can record, measure, argue, hesitate and change its mind on the page.

What pushed me towards a specialist course was working on a single subject for long enough to get past my first impressions. For eight months I have drawn the same stretch of canal near my house, and the drawings that came out of the fifth or sixth visit were nothing like the tidy ones I made at the start. I began paying attention to reflections, the rhythm of railings, litter caught in the reeds, and the way the towpath changes when the mist sits on it. The subject did not change much; my seeing did. I want three years of that kind of sustained attention, with tutors who will push me harder than I can push myself.

I am also drawn to how open the discipline is. Seeing the Prunella Clough works in a touring exhibition last year made me think differently about industrial edges and ordinary material, and I was struck by how much she left unresolved. I would like to work larger, to draw with unfamiliar materials, and to learn to talk about my work without apologising for it. A course based in studio practice, critique and independent research seems the honest way to get there.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

I am studying Fine Art, English Literature and Geography at A-level, having taken GCSEs including Art, English and Maths. Fine Art is the core of my week: two long studio sessions plus whatever time I can take in the studio at lunch. My coursework project this year looks at boundaries and thresholds, using observational drawing of fences, hedges and gates as a starting point before moving into charcoal and chalk work on a larger scale. Keeping a working sketchbook has taught me to record failures as evidence rather than tear them out, and my tutor's habit of asking what a drawing is actually about has made me plan less decoratively and think more clearly.

English Literature has been more useful to my drawing than I expected. Studying poetry taught me about compression and about leaving space for a reader, and I now think about a drawing's edges and empty areas in similar terms. Writing essays under time pressure has also improved my ability to defend a reading with specific evidence, which I use in group critiques when I am asked why a decision was made.

Geography gives me a vocabulary for the landscapes I keep drawing: post-industrial sites, canals, land use and the way places are altered by economic change. Fieldwork sketching along a local river for a coursework investigation overlapped directly with my art practice, and my field notes ended up feeding both subjects.

Alongside college I attend an untutored weekly life-drawing session at a community arts centre, where the timed poses force me to commit to a mark. I have also read John Berger's Berger on Drawing, which helped me think about drawing as a way of understanding rather than a finished product.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

On Saturdays and in the holidays I work at a garden centre, mostly on the tills and watering the outdoor plants. It is ordinary work, but it has been surprisingly useful. Standing outside for hours in different weather has taught me a lot about how light behaves on wet surfaces and how colour flattens under grey cloud, and I often photograph or sketch the stacked trays and coiled hoses during breaks. Dealing with customers who want detailed advice about soil has made me better at explaining things clearly and at staying patient when someone disagrees with me, which is much the same skill as taking criticism in a group critique without going quiet.

At college I help run a weekly informal drawing club, which mainly involves setting up a still life, badgering people to come along and printing off reference images. About eight of us attend regularly. Organising it has taught me that a shared studio needs someone willing to sweep up and put the boards away, and I do not mind being that person.

I also look after my younger brother two afternoons a week while my mother works a late shift. It means my studio time has to be planned rather than spontaneous, so I work in shorter, defined sessions and keep a pocket sketchbook for the times I cannot get to a desk. He sometimes draws alongside me, and watching how freely he works has genuinely loosened up my own mark-making.

Outside of art I walk a lot, usually with a sketchbook, and I have spent two summers volunteering at a community litter-pick along the canal, which is partly how I came to know the stretch I have been drawing so well.

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