I realise that I struggle to 'see' tone in its purest form - I tend to see the 'bigger picture' and struggle to focus in on the finer detail. This is great for strategy work in my employment but not so good for drawing!
I have so struggled with it that I have repeated the exercises more than suggested in the OCA manual in an attempt to improve. Predictably, the more I relaxed the easier things became but I still have struggled to capture 4 distinct tones. I think I have but even now I cannot be absolutely sure.
Squinting or half closing my eyes helped enormously to see the differences in tone but I continue to struggle. Interestingly I am looking at tone on the Painting course and am struggling there also and I recognise that my paintings that I have previously done are represented with unusual colour rather than 'tone' in the purest sense.
I also struggled to work with a simple hatch ... and not sure that I really have. My focus on trying to simply hatch enhanced my anxiety, so I resolved to just draw in a way that seemed natural...hatching yes, but cross hatching and 'scribbled shading'. I hope that's ok. As soon as I stopped trying to purely hatch things became easier. That being said I tried hatching as a means of trying to simplify things and it did work but not easy.
Exploring tone pushed me on to trying to capture my friend David which I have been struggling with - not very successfully, but more so trying to capture my daughter from a passport photo. Certainly I am more conscious of tone and will apply the learning in the next projects - hopefully with more success.
Th Research Point of exploring Odilon Redon was fascinating! To my shame I had never even heard of him and approached the task with a degree of dread ('why look up someone I don't know when I want to practice drawing...') and have been totally inspired. I had NO idea he existed or his fabulous body of work. Using my ipad I was able to use the 'ART Authority' application and view over 80 of his works and spent a good 2 hours looking at his work - stunning use of tone in black and white but also truly magnificent mythological representations with breathtaking contrasts of colour and tone. The imagination and creativity were breathtaking. I would like to view some in 'real life'. I was stunned by his application of sculptural awareness to create images that were clearly fictional and yet so 'alive' in their own way. I was not surprised to learn that he had studied in sculpture. He also was clearly not afraid of depicting his inner feelings in his work and I suspect that he probably suffered from depression following his experiences in the Franco-Prussian war represented in his charcoal drawings of trees.
So, CHECK and LOG:
I found it less difficult to distinguish between light from the primary light source and secondary reflected light than to distinguish why it was important - they both conveying a different impact on the subject. I could see the difference in tone/shadow/reflected light at the extreme and could capture that reasonably well but on telling myself that I had to see it as different interrupted my drawing experience. I could see the difference but struggled more with the mid tones. So, no it was not difficult but capturing the mid tones was!
Awareness of light and shade definitely affects my depiction of form - it being the means by which the 3 dimensions can be represented ... however I have struggled as previously mentioned. I struggle to see clear differentiation of tones but also as I type I realize that I have struggled to control my pencil as effectively as I would like. Having read much of Ian Simpson's book on seeing and drawing I have been reminded of being brave enough to draw what I see rather than 'kid' myself - this has led to desperate frustration at times. I have been too heavy on my pencil (often because I am not relaxed enough) and then distorted the tone and wanted to adjust the picture rather than my application. This of course has been helpful as I have repeated the exercises with reasonable effect. I am also reminding myself now to work in my sketch book with other images and not focus on 'rushing through' the exercises.
Looking at tone has also helped my painting as I have successfully completed a painting of my friend Jim with the pure focus on looking at tone - so not all bad!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment