Monday 5 December 2016

Week 6.5 : Drawing Strangers

The homework for this week was to go to a cafe or a shared local spot and draw individuals who were sat there, having to quickly get a rough image / form of the person before they get the chance to move on. This was particularly interesting as I had to be quick in capturing the image and didn't really have a great deal of time for my details to be added. Overall it made me think of how to quickly capture the image and key lines to capture.

Sunday 4 December 2016

Essay : Why'd There Have To Be An Essay?

During my time on the drawing module I have noticed several improvements and struggles in regards to my performance and skill with certain media. One in particular I feel has improved is my ability with charcoal and chalk. These conflicting shades normally don't compliment each other as they stand out as much as possible however I've found that when trying to define light areas in my life drawing work, as well as mid tones and dark zones, that they are a great tool for trying to show tone as well as to quickly flesh out an image.
One particular artist I feel shows this is Douglas McDougall who recently travelling around Beijing  using charcoal and graphite to create hyper realistic images that look almost exactly like photographs. * (Douglas McDougall — knight Webb gallery, 2016) In a lot of his specific workings we see that even though those are the main materials he uses to draw they are not the only ones to leave a mark on the page. The artist also uses items such as sandpaper, scalpels and erasers to create his other marks which can leave imprints to create the other textures that are seen on the images.
When comparing my own work to his however there are major differences. His workings for one involve more than just the drawing tools and not only that the amount of time and detail he pours into them is far beyond the time I put into mine. In comparing the technicality of our images though I would say we both aim to capture the mid, light and dark tones in the same ways. Another point to add is that with my images I am just attempting to capture a rough image whereas he is creating a hyper realistic image, essentially trying to pull the viewer into the world of his images, trying to get them to see his characters stories from the marks and stretches shown on the subjects face.
The second artist I chose to look at was Vincent Van Gogh as his paint work is full of bright colours, sometimes complimenting and sometimes conflicting. His work sprung to mind the second we began working with paints and using contrasting colours for dark and light tones, the effect of which made a mass of colours on our pages but still showed a very clear image. Van Gogh's own work is similar in that he doesn't see just a single colour in his work and then add tone, He adds other colours in to act as the tone instead. A good example of this is in 'Starry Night' *(Impact, 2002) where even though the images are exaggerated and we know its set in the night time you barely even see a slight use of black on this painting. The sky is filled with a mass of blue and green swirls from clouds floating past, the light from the stars and the moon pours out into the sky adding in blends of yellows and then finally the actual image of the landscape below is barely even noticed due to the mass of colour and shapes produced in the above section. In comparison to my own work I also used bright colours to cause the image to look exaggerated in terms of tonal value, similar to Van Gogh, however if any of my negative space were to look anything similar to his images I would paint for the rest of my life. Another good point to make when comparing my painted images and his is another artist entirely. Jenny Saville tends to use paint in a more realistic way to create images or portraits of people or models however she still does use a sense of exaggeration, expanding on her colour pallets from the normal pinks and pale colours to incorporate deeper colours and tones. This in itself also seems similar to Van Gogh in the sense that it uses a variation of colours and layers to change the tone of an image instead of relying on the same colour in a slightly different tone. A good example of this is her portraits. *(Gagosian, 2016)

For my next comparison I am going to be looking at Leonardo Da Vinci, Specifically for his pencil drawings, which I will then compare against my own. Da Vinci came from the Renaissance period in Italy, a time when artists exploded out into the world and masterpieces were coming from everywhere. Da Vinci is unique however in the sense that he didnt just do art he was also a mathematician, an engineer and many more. His more famous workings being the Mona Lisa painting and my own personal favorite his flying machine. His sketch work was mainly simple line drawings which somehow showed massive detail which is impressive considering the lack of real effort to blend in tone (for his engineering/ anatomical drawings that is). His Anatomical sketches show off that even though he is lacking a great deal of details and tones you can clearly see the defined shapes and appearances of the individuals giving a clear and crisp image *(Leonardo Da Vinci - the complete works, 2002). Most of my own pencil images drawn will attempt to show tone through shading in different grades of pencils which does vary from the line drawing style Da Vinci did tend to use.
In the future of my drawing work I would like to improve my own skill set and style to incorporate more of these workings in to give a clear and realistic image but at the same time to show a more technical visualization of the human body, to show clearly what moves and what sort of points have stress placed on them.

To conclude, My work will never be finished in terms of developing my style and techniques but if I can incorporate any of these skills or styles I've spoken about then I would be one step closer to being as good as I can be. I will look to do such improvements through practice and self motivated studies.


Bibliography:
Douglas McDougall — knight Webb gallery (2016) Available at: http://www.knightwebbgallery.com/artist/douglas-mcdougall/# (Accessed: 30 November 2016).
In-line Citation:
(Douglas McDougall — knight Webb gallery, 2016)

Bibliography:
Impact, T.N. (2002) Vincent van Gogh gallery. Available at: http://www.vangoghgallery.com/painting/starry-night.html (Accessed: 30 November 2016).
In-line Citation:
(Impact, 2002)

Bibliography:
Gagosian (2016) Jenny Saville. Available at: http://www.gagosian.com/artists/jenny-saville (Accessed: 30 November 2016).
In-line Citation:
(Gagosian, 2016)

Bibliography:
Leonardo Da Vinci - the complete works (2002) Available at: http://www.leonardoda-vinci.org/ (Accessed: 30 November 2016).
In-line Citation:
(Leonardo Da Vinci - the complete works, 2002)

Week 5.5 : Negative Selfies

 For my negative image homework I had very annoying results which began to bug me. Two of the drawings came out with awful scaling and features all over the place however the tone seemed to start working. As a sense of experimentation I thought to attempt making an image of one of my old pictures of me on a climbing wall. it started well and if I had practiced more I think I could have really turned it around but its not a bad stopping point to reflect on. My final full body negative image drawing is the best in terms of scale, placement of features and measurements however in terms of tone and movement the experimental photo seemed to be the best, with variations of mid tones as well as light and dark sections shown clearly.




Week 4.5 : Hands Everywhere

 For the homework this week we had to draw our hands holding different objects, five different drawings to be exact. In a change of pace I wanted to not use charcoal for any of my images as its a material I have the most practice with so I chose pencil instead. For obvious reasons I feel the image with the glass in hand is my most successful purely because of the way the fingers and hand warp on the other side of the glass looks quite nice, especially considering it still holds the lines of light and reflections in it too. I'm also happy with my other drawings and the simple lines I have used for the tone and detail. Simple yet successful!


Week 9 : MUSEUM TIME

 Week 9 was a trip to Worcester Museum and to be honest it's a bit of an ancient building which made it only more interesting. Some of the exhibits date back quite far but even the display casing that some of these exhibits were in were a part of history themselves. Personally the animals on display were a little un-nerving however it was nothing compared to the dummies stood around with all the military equipment on. My best drawing was easily the Magpie, it seemed to call to me with the unique posing and structure of its body so I went straight for it with the charcoal and eraser. Again all of these skills im currently using could do with more practice over the holiday break.






Week 7 : Tone and Colour (Painting time)

 This week we all brought in paint and got into trying to paint tone more, only adding white at the very end. My figure paintings are generally to scale and look correct in terms of measurement however there were a couple of issues with painting in a background and keeping up to speed with the rest of the group in the 10 minute intervals. In future my planning would need to be more well kept to as it cost me the completion of a couple of paintings. I think overall though this was quite successful. One way to improve this would be to practice in my spare time over the up coming holidays.







Week 6 : Wet and Dry (with no wet)




 For the lesson this week we were working on mixing wet and dry materials. Most of my images are mainly focused on tone and varying light and dark areas. I tried a couple of ways to do this such as no real mid tones and just light and dark tones being heavily exaggerated, even in different colours to try add additional affects. My favorite for this is the complete red and blue chalk drawing as I feel the colours really help to not only show light and dark but to also show the heat and the cold areas, the blue really adds to the shadows and the lack of heat / light. whereas the red immediately shouts out that its a warm spot. Hopefully this success follows over into next weeks work!


Saturday 3 December 2016

Week 5 : Negative Drawings

For this weeks session we experimented with drawing on paper covered in charcoal and then erasing away at the charcoal to create an image, essentially a negative image where we bring out the light tones and pay less attention to the dark. This specific task was quite useful at getting me to look at the tonal values of the model differently as it meant that I had to really look and see what was going on and how it varied to other sections. I felt a couple of my drawings reflected my learning well whereas others were let down by my skills with foreshortening.


Week 4 : Foreshortening

 For the lesson this week we began to look at foreshortening and how to draw the body in different sizes depending on what angle we are looking from. I have had experience with this sort of drawing before so I knew what to expect however I did still find it a challenge to get some of the angles right causing me to have to go over certain areas again leaving my original markings behind. Some of these I left in as they add an additional affect to some of the images. Personally my best and favorite image is the one below in charcoal. This is due to the clean appearance of the image but at the same time the other lines that were used for planning this drawing seem to add an additional sense of shape or direction.



Wednesday 19 October 2016

Week 3 : Frustration with measurements

 For the third week we were learning about correcting our mistakes, making sure our drawings were to scale and correct in composition.

This was a difficult session for me, not because I didn't understand what we were doing, or even that I couldn't see the model. It was because there were parts that even though I'd thought were correct were not of the right composition. Examples of these are where I've made some limbs longer or shorter than they should be. One way I started to take note of this though was with the space in between and making sure that the gaps lined up.

Another thing I found with this session was that even though I got annoyed with the fact that I didn't finish an image it started to make me think about how I lay out my work and images. Hopefully this continues to show in the future!




Week 2.5 - Negative Drawing

 Negative space drawings were a bit of a strange topic to come to grips with. Yes its almost exactly the same as normal line drawing but its an attempt to get the viewer to try and look at all the gaps and surroundings of the item instead of the actual item itself. For this project I created 4 simple images as a practice run and then tried to add shading to the 5th in an attempt to add more detail to the simple looking bin. If this has succeeded or not is another thing however I do think its made me look at the spacing between objects more closely.




Saturday 15 October 2016

Week 2 : The Nudity Begins





 The first of the life drawing sessions went quite well. I completed 7 drawings, using different media, different styles and then with different time scales too. The one I enjoyed the most though was my opposite hand drawing (large top left). Because its not my normal drawing hand it made me have to use my pencil in a different way which in turn has made a new style of sweeping lines for me.

Overall I'm feeling that the work and sessions are going well and that soon it will be showing more in the work I'm producing.