Summing up. Assignment 2 and exercises

I have just put together my work for assignment 2 and some exercises and feel I would like to do most of it again.

I am surprised ( perhaps not!) at how careless I have been in not reading the instructions properly. My biggest mistake was in the tonal drawing. I read the project, looked at the image in the book and of I went to draw a still life in pastel. I completely omitted to put in any natural form! The whole of part two is about natural form.
I used an A3 sketchbook, used both sides of the paper and found that, when it comes to presenting work for the assignment, there was a problem!

I am very aware now of how much I see in paint. This is becoming very clear and the minute I start to use colour in drawing, I see everything in terms of a painting. The difficulty of mixing colour with different media was very frustrating to me.
For me, it got very confusing to think in terms of drawing but to use colour which could not be mixed easily. I cannot see the point of trying to use colour in drawing without having a better intention as to what I am trying to achieve. For this reason I would like to do most of the work again and really think about what and why I am doing it. When I did use colour it was too bright, no drama and no atmosphere.

I would like to do far more drawing in black and white, using different marks. The range between charcoal, pen and ink, pencil and graphite is enormous and I feel I have not explored it enough. I would like to spend more time on line drawing as well. Using all the different colours and media took away from the importance of line in my opinion. Line drawing is one of my weak areas and needs more practise.

I found the brightness of fruit quite disturbing in most of my drawings and would like to rectify that by tackling it all differently.
Apart from fruit and veg, the natural objects found on a walk did not appeal to me in any way as I found it difficult to make a composition out of them. They should have been left on the walk, drawn in situ and worked out so that they were part of the landscape instead of being taken from it.

I would love to spend more time on drawing animals and felt that the section on it did not give enough attention to it.
It seemed out of balance to spend so much time doing still life with so many different media but not spend time exploring the anatomy and texture of animals. How to draw animals in situ, combining background, composition of one or many; there seemed a huge chunk that was not dealt with.

The flowers in coloured pencils was a nightmare and it is only now that I realise that I need to spend time using line to draw flowers and learn how to do that before attempting them with coloured pencils. It come back to drawing rather than painting again. If I see flowers in terms of paint, it is going to be difficult to see them in terms of line.

Assessment criteria points

Demonstration of technical and visual skills.

I think I have demonstrated a certain amount of skill both technically and visually except the skill of coloured pencils. Oil pastels I need to work on more.



Quality of outcome

The quality of outcome is not up to my standard so far. Presentation needs a lot more work and in a more coherent manner. I think my communication of thoughts and ideas are just okay but still need improvement.


Demonstration of creativity 

I have not shown enough creativity so far and wish to improve on that.



Context reflection

I have done more research than is shown but I need to get more written up. Critical thought is there but not written sufficiently.