Pushing my boundaries

After spending quite a time thinking about how to push my own boundaries in order to move away from the tight figure drawings, I decided to experiment with abstract marks with pastel. The first was on grey pastel paper and I used a selection of orange, purple, complimentary colours to see how they worked together with white linking and soften the colours.

I then tried a similar thing on pink pastel paper starting with blue, then adding greens and yellows, trying to get more movement into the piece.

 The next attempt was to use the drawing of Kate resting and try to simplify the drawing into a selection of shapes of colour and tone.
This is something I would like to take further and do far more abstract exercises. It seems a good way to experiment with composition and juggling line, tone, colour and marks.









Then I tried some pencil drawing into the abstract shapes to see how it would work.
I put more white on the knee and foot to try to bring it to the foreground.

The next attempt was to use a charcoal pencil to bring more definition to the form. Bottle and wine glass, hinted at, brings narrative into the picture. The dark tone brought across the background to simplify the shapes.
What I am finding now is that I am slowly getting away from the abstraction and getting too nitpicking with detail. Time to simplify again.


Too much drawing, too much white...

The drawing on the left is the latest attempt at simplifying. I feel I have got back to the original idea and pushed the drawing around with the pastels to prevent getting too preoccupied with detail.
Although the last two drawing look very similar, the difference in softening the white and adjusting the tones has made a big difference.
The next step is to try to get back to drawing the figure without losing the overall composition.

What is drawing?

Having got nearly half way through the drawing skill course, I have only just realised, I think, what drawing is all about.

I was reading "Rocks and flesh" an argument for British Drawing, selected by Peter Fuller from the Norwich school of art gallery.

The light slowly dawned as I read " a drawing is not so much the reproduction of the image of something seen, as a record of something made."
Ruskin pointed out that everything we see is like patches of different colours in various shades. This explains why I see everything in paint not line. Of course I don't see line. It is not there!

Lines and contours are concepts. A drawing is always created not just a visual image of the subject.

Vasari said that drawing starts with the intellect of the artist and Zuccari said that what is revealed through art starts with the mind. In other words, the idea comes first.

Ruskin believed that only through observation of nature could one see the visible handiwork of God. From this came the belief that painting landscape would be a means of conveying moral and religious ideas.
This was thrown into controversy when Darwins' Origin of the Species was published. The debate on nature versus God led to drawing dwindling into more mundane expression of forms.

Henry Tonks.. Taught at he Slade and helped change the concept of drawing.


The drawings in this book are works showing the different approach to drawing and how it changed during the last 100 years.

Research/Timelines

After spending time thinking about researching other artists, I realised that my knowledge of history, (of anything) was minimal. I know about the history of music and musicians and a little about the history of costume. ( early years spent doing theatre and costume design)

I found that when I research an artist, I have no idea of their place in history because there is nothing to pin it on. Dates are meaningless to me, just numbers.
So, I decided to investigate doing timelines and found an app on the internet, downloaded it and started with putting in musicians for the last 200 years. Then I looked up artists, found who was around at the same time as Prokoviev and Shostakovitch and discovered it was Picasso. Richard Strauss was around the same time as the impressionists and so began a long investigation into the history of artists and musicians.
Getting the hang of this, I then started another timeline of the Kings and Queens of Britain.

For the first time in my life, I am connecting events in history with artists/musicians. Because it is visual and I can see all in a line, it makes more sense than remembering dates. ( which I have never done.)

This is going to be a long, learning session and will continue in various forms but it is the start of getting better at research into artists.

Reclining figure

The start of another reclining figure. Kate was happy to lie down but I was aware that she hated being looked at for long. No cameras and no long studies.

This sketch was done in a few minutes and her right leg is too short. I did not have time to draw her hands in detail but will try to get them done from memory. What struck me most was the size of her right foot compared to the size of her head. It looked very big and her left knee was very dominant.
Pencil on A5 sketchbook.

The next sketch is charcoal on A2 pastel paper.
My intention is to get the figure to work by lengthening her right leg and make her head and upper body quite out of focus in order to highlight the perspective.
Her trousers, showing the folds, indicate the angle of her left leg and her right foot is going to be the main interest.

So far, her left ankle does not follow the line of her leg, her left arm is too short, her right leg is not joined at the hip correctly and the sofa is not in perspective.











I have now adjusted her right leg, left arm, tweaked a few places and it is looking slightly better.

I then tried using different media to work on the composition more. On A4 grey pastel paper, I used oil pastels, added some turps and then used a bamboo pen with sepia ink. I added the wine bottle and glass.
I decide that the image of a resting figure was not enough by itself and went for the narrative idea.
My intention is to work out how to get the impression of someone resting after half a bottle of wine. The next step is to do the whole drawing on a bigger sheet of paper and experiment more with texture.

This drawing of Barbara reading caused a great deal of problems. Getting her legs in the right place, her right shoulder ( still a problem) and her clothes to look draped, all have to be sorted. I also found it difficult to take this drawing further. The composition eludes me at present.

The face of despair! (self portrait )

Tuesday was a day of despair. My reclining figure did not want to turn into a finished work let alone a work of any kind.
My doubts about being able to draw came to the surface. Despair about why I was even trying took over and I resorted to playing the piano ( scales, then Bach) for hours.



Self portrait sketched in biro in a notebook, ( lined paper) slightly smaller than A4.

Sketch of Barbara reading, in charcoal on lining paper, about A2 size.

The problem with this drawing is that I could not take it further. Every attempt to make a composition out of it failed. Everything was horizontal and so there was no interest. If I made her smaller and put more of the room in, it would become an interior with a small figure on a sofa, in the middle.
If I concentrated on colour, it would not balance and would become mundane.
There was not enough light to create interest.

Negative Space

This belongs in a different month. It was done very early on but I did not publish it.

I used a 4b pencil on A3 paper and it took longer than I expected. It was not difficult to see the negative space but I kept slipping backwards and forwards from positive to negative to keep checking where I  was.
I chose a money plant which was rather complex as there was a lot of leaves, entwined stems and the two pots it was in. ( one in the other.)

I decided to draw the ellipses of the pot without considering the negative space as I found that when I came to draw the pot, I was miles out in my drawing of the plant. To get the ellipses by only drawing the negative space did not work as my drawing was not accurate enough.
Instead, I used the exercise to work on the ellipse. I discovered that if I turned the drawing upside- down it was easier to see where the mistakes were. Also, being right handed, the curves on the left were different to the ones on the right because of the angle of my hand. Therefore, when I turned the drawing, I was then drawing at the same angle but getting it a little more accurate. Still a long way to go but it is improving I think.
My tutor noted that my ellipses in part one tended to go up at the right. Now I know why and how to start to correct it.

Google Hangout Rogues Gallery

This was the google hangout on Saturday.

Noah, Christine, Mary, Ruth and Kate, drawn with a 4B pencil on an A5 sketch book from 

the computer while they were speaking. It was quite difficult as they were moving most of the time and both Mary and Christine were not clear due to bad reception where they were. Kate was quite near to the computer and so she appeared larger than the others.

They are not great likeness or great drawings but I hope they are a record of an afternoon of chat and criticism.

Noah

Mary

Kate

Christine

Ruth