Getting tone and depth into detail

Golly - seriously thought I'd bitten off more than I could chew with this one.

I selected a large pine cone to draw depicting tone and depth - using simple pencils and quickly discovered an early mistake of shading too deeply too quickly and hastily rectified this. I primarily used 7b, 2b, H and 3F and became startlingly pleased with the effect of hatching. I've previously really struggled with hatching but am coming to appreciate the control possible instead of clumsily 'colouring in'!

I am not a natural 'detail' person and yet am pleased with the result of sticking with it - I found it easier to work on sections rather than the whole thing and am looking forward to the next project.

Project : Detailed observation

Line drawing detail

I'm back and thrilled to have picked up a pen again! I have spent the last 3 hours simply undertaking line drawing detail of peppers and fir cones and thrilled in it! I was initially apprehensive about drawing with a felt pen and also working with the challenge of trying not to remove my pen from the paper but quickly relaxed into it - and became absorbed into trying to replicate what I was seeing. Couple of pictures illustrated here.

I am particularly struck that I realise that I rarely draw from life - relying generally on photographs, and enjoyed this immensely. I also find it much easier drawing line rather than tone so this has been a lovely re-introduction into my learning. Focusing on the actual detail rather than that which one might think should be there is also absorbing and an aspect that I shall practice further. I find I also enjoy drawing with felt pen - I like the way different pressure changes line emphasis - again another avenue I shall pursue further.

Great stuff!

Restarting!

Despite my awareness that time was more pressured with additional work and life demands I have failed to maintain my learning commitments. The result being that I have not submitted any course work in either my drawing or painting courses. Following helpful dialogue with the OCA however I am back on track and more resolved than ever to complete my work as I am learning so much.

I have not stopped either drawing or painting (or indeed learning) however and continued to do both - examples of which I am posting. Sadly I haven't done as much drawing as I would like but all that I have done has been very significantly informed by my learning so far - suddenly hatching and shading is no longer a terror for me! I've also really valued the introduction of squaring up to help my positioning on the paper - which in turn has helped my painting to be more accurate.

I have also had the marvellous opportunity of visiting New York and viewing paintings within the Guggenheim and Museum of Modern Art. Thrilling and awesome.

I have also just returned from Brittany where I collected some really interesting fir cones and shells in preparation for my next stages...

Assignment One - man made objects

I settled upon using wine glasses and a wine bottle as the subject matter for my man made still life - enjoying the reflections and shapes that these objects create... in undertaking a series of sketches my "Evening Pleasure" turned into "Night in". My final drawing ("Night in...") being an uncomplicated composition suggesting the intimacy of a shared bottle of wine, including a woman wearing lip stick.

I worked hard on creating the right composition including the correct shade and reflection but then really struggled with the correct medium. I was sorely tempted to use ink and line to simply draw the shapes and lines of reflection BUT (and this may be a mistake in hind sight) I decided against that as I had used ink in my natural object still life. I decided instead to use charcoal so as to convey the reflective form and smooth texture of the objects. I balanced the light to shine from behind so as to ensure strong shadow and 'light burst' through the glass.

I am not as pleased as I would like to be with the finished drawing - the glasses and bottle are not symmetrical but I was fearful of over working the picture as I do like the 'rawness' (even though it took ages to do it looks quite fresh) and I keep reminding myself that it is just not possible for my drawings to be perfect - I am learning.

Assignment One - natural objects

I have completed my first assignment! I have undertaken pencil sketches exploring form and composition of both a natural and man made still life.

The first of these being a composition of natural objects - "Harvest Festival". I decided upon the use of vegetables including a pumpkin as they are abundant in Autumn and appropriate to season. As instructed I arranged my produce in a variety of compositions and lighting to try and capture the best image. And, despite my r experiences within earlier projects still made the composition too busy - but happily recognized this before starting to draw and simplified my composition by removing some items ... however the size of the pumpkin obliterates the lighting on others and this was a problem. I also decided that the apples in the first composition were 'lost' and actually weren't congruent to the other vegetables so decided to 'lose' them.

The problem of the pumpkin remained. Sensibly i perhaps should have removed the pumpking from the composition but I enjoy the shape if it's stem and hence wanted it to remain. So, rather than remove this point of interest I decided to try introducing a larger object that would in turn 'balance ' the pumpkin - enter the cauliflower! This change definitely balance the composition better, added congruence to the whole but presented the challenge of how to reasonablay represent a highly complex cauliflower?! I like the texture it introduces alongside the 'flat' texture of both pumpkin and carrot yet this questioned what medium to use to represent the composition?

On having undertaken 2 further very crude sketches, I decided that the composition worked best as a simple one, with few objects that illustrated texture as well as form - deciding to use drawing pencil and ink on cartridge paper (A2). I have discovered that I enjoy drawing with an ink pen very much - enjoying the immediacy and definition it provides. I felt this technique would offer the best textural representation of the 'small rounds ' of the florets of the vegetable - dripping ink in blobs and flattening them in places to create rounds.

I am disappointed by my representation of shadow within the still life and also the positioning on the paper - I should have identified the shadow better and the placed the items on the paper so that the shadow could all be seen. I am also now pleased with the representation of the carrots which I found really hard to draw and despite my best efforts on the cauliflower my daughter could still not recognize it - which cannot be good!!

I will explore my man made drawing tomorrow as I am full of cold and must crawl back to bed!!

more enlarging ...

Having been so taken by the effect of using a grid to enlarge sketches and pictures I decided to have another go! Using a close up photo this time of my long suffering husband Bill I set about a drawing of his eyes. I like eyes - they really interest me, is something we all recognise and yet don't take huge amounts of notice of (I think!).

I used my 2cm grid and drew a 4cm grid on cartridge paper and just using a HB pencil set about translating the squares across. I think I have captured a reasonable effect and for the first hour was intense and interested in my work - I then, if honest started to get a bit bored and wished I had used a drawing pencil for greater variety of mark making and shadow creation! I persevered for another hour and decided to stop - pleased with the accomplishment and the effect. I am reminded however of why I like to paint as I get an immediate effect as clearly I am a bit lazy!! I will definitely have a go at using a grid to help develop some painting work to emphasise accuracy of representation.

Tomorrow I shall start my assignment pieces!

Project : Enlarging an object

Have had a bit of a break due to a great holiday and approached this exercise with a healthy degree of trepidation. Quite frankly I was not convinced that enlarging an image using a square grid would either be very effective or a good learning tool ... how wrong I was!!

Broke the rules of instruction by doing a larger than recommended drawing and with more detail than recommended - this was a. because of my above comments and I am clearly a VERY bad student and b. I was enjoying a glass of wine and felt inspired to draw ... so, my drawing was about 16 cm tall, and like I say not simple as such as it contains reflection etc (good practice from previous projects whilst also thinking ahead to my assignment - may use a wine glass as a man made item).

Then I broke the rules and drew squares 4cm square on an A2 sheet of paper (could not see how 20cm boxes would fit on anything other than a huge sheet) and after creating a 2cm square grid on acetate I set off to draw my drawing! Genuinely surprised at the results! My enlarged image looks like my own smaller image yet I have been able to improve it as I was able to improve the symmetry and introduction of limited colour using inktense pencils has added an extra dimension. (shame I smudged the coloured pencil - lesson there!!).

So, check and log:

I feel that I have been successful in copying the lines and image from the smaller squares to the larger and in fact focusing on just one square at a time helped the creation of the bigger image to feel 'managable' and not overwhelming. Given the complex shading in the glass I would have been put off had I not approached it one square at a time. Plus I would never have considered undertaking such a large drawing of a glass. I really liked the way the grid helped 'strip back' the essentials and simplify the image and is an approach I will undertake many times and will apply to my painting also.

I am surprisingly satisfied with my enlarged image and found it useful to correct errors in the original drawing - not completely but definitely improved. I think next time I shall balance the focus on drawing in the squares against the whole image a little more - continually referring to the overall drawing rather than just the squares - using the squares to gauge the broad positioning then get a sense of how the overall looks (are shapes balanced, perspective right, broad areas of marked tone etc), adjust and then focus in on the squares.

Overall a great technique that I have never done before and in fact never even considered! It has never occurred to me that I could enlarge an image of my own without starting from scratch - it also shows me that could relatively easily make a 'small image' big without losing integrity.

Fabulous!!