Rain at the Bus Stop, Drawn from Memory
Five minutes before the memory drawing paper begins, the candidate - who has a hearing impairment and reads the topic from a printed slip rather than listening - is given: 'A rainy day at a bus stop.' The paper is two hours on a half-imperial sheet in dry pastel. From memory the candidate sets out three people sheltering under the bus-stop roof, a boy running with a newspaper over his head, a bus approaching from the left, and puddles on the road. On the sheet the three sheltering figures have their feet on one horizontal line; the running boy is the same height as the adults under the roof; nothing overlaps anything; the puddles are outlined in bright blue; rain is drawn as evenly spaced straight pencil lines ruled across the whole sheet, including across faces and the bus; and the umbrella the candidate clearly remembers has been left out. Forty minutes remain.
1. Re-plan the composition so that it reads as a space rather than a frieze. Say where each element goes and why, keeping the same subject matter.
Read the worked answer
The frieze comes from one ground line, equal scale and no overlaps. Rebuild on four planes.
- Foreground (bottom third). The running boy, largest, cropped at the knee by the bottom edge, moving right to left, newspaper over his head. He is the nearest thing and he carries the motion. His feet sit lowest on the sheet.
- Middle ground (centre). The bus shelter, placed off-centre to the right rather than in the middle, so the bus has room at the left. Two adults under it, overlapping: the nearer one in front, hiding part of the second, the third behind the shelter's post, half hidden. Their feet sit higher than the boy's feet, on the pavement edge.
- The bus. Entering from the left edge, cropped by the frame, so it is a large shape without competing for the centre; its wet tyre marks lead the eye in towards the shelter.
- Background. A receding kerb line running from lower left to the shelter, and two or three dim buildings reduced to silhouettes.
Why this works: overlap creates depth, the cropped bus and cropped boy create space beyond the frame, and the three ground levels (boy, pavement, shelter step) give the eye a receding floor instead of a single line. Keep one eye level: all standing adult heads should still sit near a common line, and the seated or stooped figures depart from it for a reason. Put the umbrella in the boy's hand - it is the strongest silhouette available and it was remembered, so it belongs.
2. The rain has been ruled across faces and the bus. Explain how rain should be drawn so that it reads as weather without destroying the forms, and how the existing lines can be recovered.
Read the worked answer
Rain is an atmosphere between the viewer and the subject, not a net laid over the picture.
- Direction and rhythm. All strokes lean the same way at roughly 15-20 degrees from vertical. Spacing and length vary: long, bright, widely spaced strokes in the foreground air; short, faint, close strokes in the distance.
- Reserve the light. The rain streak is the light of the paper, so it must be planned as untouched paper or lifted with a kneaded eraser, not drawn in white over dark.
- Negative rain. Darken the background behind a streak and the light stripes read as rain. This is why the sky behind the shelter should be a soft grey-violet, not white.
- Keep rain out of forms. Strokes stop at a face, a shoulder or the bus's side, or pass across it only very faintly. Wetness on forms is shown by softened edges, a dark wet shoulder line and a light rim where the light catches the water.
- Ground evidence. Splashes at the roof edge, a halo of disturbed water around each foot, reflections beneath the figures, and puddles as horizontal ellipses holding a dark reflection, never as bright blue outlines.
Recovery. The ruled pencil lines were laid over pastel, so most can be lifted with a kneaded eraser without damaging the surface; work in one direction and re-soften the pastel afterwards. Where a line crosses a face, lift it and re-state the face's shadow with a fingertip. Then re-establish the direction by adding a few consistent slanted strokes in the air gaps only, so the eye reads one weather system rather than a grid.
3. With forty minutes left, decide what must be changed, what can be salvaged and what should be left alone, with reasons.
Read the worked answer
Must change (about 25 minutes).
- The running boy's scale. Enlarge him to foreground size and crop him at the knee. Scale is the single strongest depth cue and it is also the story's focus; everything else can be imperfect and this will still read.
- Overlap in the shelter group. Move one adult forward so they overlap, and slide the third partly behind the post. This costs a few strokes and removes the frieze effect.
- Insert the umbrella. It is remembered, it is a striking silhouette, and it can be dropped in as a dark shape against the grey sky in the foreground where it will not disturb anything else.
Can be salvaged (about 10 minutes). The bright blue puddle outlines: knock them back and lay a dark horizontal reflection inside each puddle with one or two strokes. Two minutes each, and they stop looking like drawn hoops.
Leave alone. The bus. It is cropped, it is not the subject, and rebuilding it would eat the time needed for scale and overlap. Also leave the shelter's structure; a bent post in a memory drawing is not what costs marks.
The examiner reads composition and memory first: proportion between figures, overlapping, a sense of place. Detail on a bus cannot buy those back, so the last forty minutes go to the three changes above and to standing back once at two metres.