At the beginning of this semester I had initially thought that the workings I had been producing would have stayed the same and my abilities would continue to improve in their respective fields.
For the most part this is true, However instead of developing with media I was accustomed to using I decided to practice and experiment with other forms such as pens, paints and in some cases adjusting drawings digitally to allow them to expand further.
In terms of my sketch work and images of the life drawing model I feel that I have slightly improved in terms of my ability with charcoal. At the same time I found myself shying away from my normal points of perspective and started to look from different angles to try and get a fresh new image to try create.
Some I found more challenging than others, such as the series of pen drawings which are created from a low perspective looking up at the model. From my initial first look at the drawings it looked as if her features were rather distorted and moved from where they normally would be. One positive point about this was that because the initial image looked wrong it made me work back into it to try correct my mistakes with one such way being to add tone to the face and showing a direction that the light was coming from all while using a pen, a form of media I am not used to using.
I felt this was my first real success with using pen to create tone using lines and working over what I had already drawn out to create a bolder appearing image. Because of this it made me want to work in pen more.
Over the following weeks I did start to drift back to the comfort of charcoal however when it came time to do the river walk I decided that it was due time to pick the pen up again and try to experiment with capturing a large image with alot of detail.
Some of these were quite successful with the majority of the image being captured successfully and having a deal of detail contained to show what was going on in the environment around my sketches and not just focusing on a small single area and making it highly detailed. I feel the successes were caused because of my reworking into images regardless of if there was an error and in turn made the images seem alot broader in tone and in depth in some cases.
However just as reworking led to some success in a couple of my workings it also led to some becoming a bit flat and messy causing the actual image itself to become lost. One way I could have possibly recovered the image was to add more tone although one issue with adding more lines to a line drawing is that you run the risk of losing the image even more than when you started.
For future I will begin to use my pen in different ways to create tonal value and leave the image still clearly visible as a whole.
One artist who's work I looked at was Alberto Giacometti who primarily is a sculptor but also does quite messy sketches with pens and pencils. ("Alberto G I A C O M E T T I ") When looking at his work the first thing I noticed was that the image itself looks messy and similar to a mass of scribbles on a page but the more I looked the more I realized that he had captured the form of a mans head with details such as eyes, nose, mouth and ears all visible to see under the mass of lines. The lines in his images also give a brief sense of tone and depth to the person that he has drawn. The reason I chose this is because I feel like his style and workings would be a great direction for my to take my own images in purely because of how you can still see the core image yet at the same time it has its own style which distracts the viewer from what the image actually is.
After having been working on my pen skills more I also looked at how I used a pencil for a few of my homework's and sketches during the lectures. Normally pencil is the first form of media I would go to for creating any of my workings although for the last year I had put it off in favor of charcoal. When going back to the pencil I had found that I was struggling to try and create tone in a few of my images as its not something that can be smudged to add massive areas of detail and tone so like my pen drawings I had to create tone using lines and shading for the most.
One image I felt that I had really succeeded with was the part of my homework sketch from during the first couple of weeks. Originally I was meant to spend only 20 minutes on the sketch itself however I found myself getting more and more involved with it, developing tone and adding extra lines to really make the image stand out. Over time I began to realise that I had been adding more and more detail to certain areas which had caused other areas to need developing. This was a good thing though as it made me really observe the source image that I was sketching from and meant that I was looking for tone differences in all aspects of the image.
When I had completed this sketch I was actually quite proud of my own workings for once but felt that it could still be worked on further.
Using my own sense of style and skill set I decided to bring the image into Photoshop and experiment around with a few different colour techniques and tone variations.
This drastically changed my views of how the image had developed as suddenly dark sections were bursting with colour but kept tonal values and it proved that even a black and white image can be brought out with small adjustments and be made to stand out stronger than it had before.
Because of the success that I had had with this image I decided to try and edit another piece of work that I had created during a drawing class. During one of our lessons we had looked at creating a collage of sorts and then cutting out or creating new shapes to make the scene we saw in front of us, As if sketching with paper and scissors. While I found the overall image to be a bit disappointing I did thing that the owl I had made was interesting in both form and pattern. The outline of the owl was clearly visible as well as the branch it was perched on to give it a bit of context and on top of that the way the paint had moved across the cutout had given the owl some tone and dramatic lighting to really show off its shape.
When I had noticed this I had decided it was too good an opportunity to miss so like my sketch work I put it into Photoshop and just had a brief experiment with backgrounds, tone and colour variations to try create a set piece.
This was another success in my mind as after I had created the simple look it had given a whole new appearance and atmosphere to the original cutout. One thing I would change though is the style of how I created the edited image and try to look at more of a 'pop art' style like the workings of Andy Warhol who did many images in pop art form ("Andy Warhol Art"). Another reason for me wanting to make my own work more like his is the variation of bright colours compared to the normal bland ones that most of my work has been produced in.
To conclude I feel like my work has taken a rather large change in style and development of my other skills. The last semester has proven that no matter how comfortable you get with a certain media that it can always be improved and that experimentation can lead to a new result that you never knew was actually possible and that expands on what the original image was.
Owl Normal and Edited Comparison
Friend Sketch Edited and Normal Comparison
Andy Warhol - Pop Art Example Alberto Giacometti - Sketch work
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
In-text: (" Alberto G I A C O M E T T I ")
Your Bibliography: " Alberto G I A C O M E T T I ". Pinterest. N.p., 2017. Web. 23 Apr. 2017.
https://uk.pinterest.com/tfineart/alberto-g-i-a-c-o-m-e-t-t-i/?lp=true
In-text: ("Andy Warhol Art")
Your Bibliography: "Andy Warhol Art". Pinterest. N.p., 2017. Web. 23 Apr. 2017.
https://uk.pinterest.com/explore/andy-warhol-art/
For this homework I decided to try work in charcoal and chalk to create a dark atmosphere but also to show off the colours being projected by the street lights. One of the issues however is that some of the colours are hard to make stand out or mix to the right sort of shade. I used the same area for all my drawings as the area itself has the nicest change in lighting and shades of colours. If I had more time for this project id look to improve it by going back and using a pen instead of charcoal in an attempt to create tone using lines.
