Michael Landy

Michael Landy’s weed drawings are very detailed but yet simple as they look delicate and beautiful. 

His work is very liner and also sketchy as only uses one type of drawing material kind of like saying all the weeds are the same because he drew them all in the same drawing material. 

The drawings are all life sized studies of individual weeds that Landy found growing in the street. Landy described why he was drawn to these ‘street flowers’. 

He said ‘they are marvellous, optimistic things that you find in inner London. They occupy an urban landscape which is very hostile and they have to be adaptable and find little bits of soil to prosper’. 

Weeds often live in harsh and cold conditions with very little soil, water or sunlight. They grow between paving stones or on waste ground in the city, I think he drew these because not many people pay attention to them and if they do they want to get rid of the weeds. Landy collected a number of the weeds and took them back to his studio where he looked after them, making studies of their structures including detailed drawings of the roots, leaves and flowers. 

The composition of this work is in the middle of the page as he wants his work to be the centre of attention and the main image.

I found Landy’s work useful in my final major project as I looked at how the artists drew the plants and it inspired me because the work did not have to be massive with a lot of colour on the image but a simple yet effective drawing could hold all the detail in a single liner drawing.