Another attempt at P1 Boxes and Books exercise

I've concentrated more on the detail of line in this exercise. I can see that the book's spine looks a little skewif but i still think that compared to how I was drawing 3 months ago, this is a vast improvement.

P1 Boxes and Books V2

PART 2 - OBSERVATION IN NATURE - Back to the drawing board!

Got the feedback back on my first assignment. A very honest appraisal which made me realise I have to up my game.

So today, a new approach to the course. Having read the feedack, I realise that the most important thing is to learn from it. So I have decided that I will repeat the Part 1 exercises, taking onboard my tutor's feedback but also as a practice to improve the basic techniques that are taught in P1. Today's repeat exercise was the Basic Shapes and Fundamental Form exercise (Boxes and Books). This time I properly READ what the exercise was about. Suprisingly I found re-doing the exercise was strangely enjoyable and by the time I had finished, I felt like I had done a warm up exercise in preparation for the first P2 exercise - Line drawing Detail. For the P2 exercise, I chose to draw a sliced through red cabbage. It has taken me about 3 hours to produce this drawing. In fact this is my second attempt - I was not happy with the first one, so I re-did it again, this time properly looking at my cabbage. I feel I have done a better piece of work. I hope so!



Assignment 1  Boxes and Books repeat exercise







Assignment 2  Line Drawing detail exercise - sliced red cabbage

Assignment 1 - Tutor feedback

Tutor Report Form

Student name:	Lesley O’Malley
Student number:	506748
Course/Module title:	Drawing 1
Assignment number:	1

General comments

In general I would expect a higher level of work for assignment 1 even with no formal qualifications in art. From our correspondence you seem to be very concerned with your level and in just passing the course in order to do other things. If you do want to pass you need to approach what you do in a fully committed manner. You will have to be brave and try new ways of working with different media in a much more open, expressive and for you experimental ways. Drawing is as much about perception and how we see things in the world and finding equivalents for them on paper.

The reasoning behind how this course is organized is that having done the exercises and projects you can bring the experience, knowledge and know how into the resultant assignment pieces. It is crucial that you remember this concept as you progress. Some of the projects might well be ambitious pieces also. It is imperative that you apply yourself fully to the exercises and projects.

Tone and form are essential elements found in good drawing and are together with mark making, a good understanding of light source and composition the fundamentals to producing effective interpretations of what we see.

From what you have sent me and on the work on the oca website you need to come to terms with these ideas in a thorough and practical way in order to get the most out of the course. You need to improve radically your understanding of these fundamentals of drawing.

I am not going to comment on individual pieces as you have already had one tutor who has done this already.

However, I am going to give you some very specific pointers/ instructions in both practical and perceptual terms that you need to implement straight away in order to increase the qualitative level that you are currently operating on. This is possible with some hard work and the right attitude.

Try outs using different media need to experimental both in terms of outcome and what you are willing to try. You need to be much bolder.

You need to experiment more with the range of tone possible and with a greater variety of marks, hatching and varying line speed. Just press harder with your implement when you heed to. Use softer media at times and be bolder. Respond physically to what particular medium you are using.

Ellipses range from nothing to a full circle. They all must refer to eye level. If you look at a cylindrical object at eye level the ellipse would in fact be a line; looked at from directly above a circle. Ellipses are dependent on this principle and range between the two depending on eye level.

When employing parallel perspective, parallel sides recede to a vanishing point which may or may not be off the paper. Again most artists will not grid up their work with vanishing points but will look very hard and use their eyes to determine correct perspective. This is drawing.

You do need to look very hard when you draw, draw what you see, not what you think that you see. If it doesn’t look right you need to alter, re draw, re look until you get the objects operating in 3 dimensions effectively.

Try not to respect the edges of objects too much especially when working more tonally. Merging these areas more will help the object sit better in space and relate more pertinently to the ground. Let shadows peter out rather than abruptly stopping and break the line between object and ground.

Preparatory work is crucial to an artists practice and needs to be taken seriously in terms of investigating particular subjects through drawing.   They need to be exploratory in how you make them and open in terms of how you interpret what you are looking at through drawing.

Vary the speeds that you work as working quicker can often open up new ways of seeing as can holding your drawing implements differently.

Quickly executed drawings can be good and bad. Drawings made more slowly likewise.

It is the intent and nature of the outcome in reference to what your subject is and the quality of the drawing itself that matters.

Prep work should be done on sheets of varying sizes and in sketch books both employing a variety of appropriate media.

Vary the size of your formats and the texture of your paper. Paper with a tooth is good for charcoal as it will help you achieve more tonal breadth more efficiently. Use good quality cartridge paper mostly. The paper that you used this time has not got any bite to it and it’s a bit shiny, which is not helping you.

Use a variety of media, not just pencil. It is important that you get used to using charcoal on A2 (and pastel in assignment 2).

Your tonal range needs to be much wider in order to establish objects in 3 dimensions. Half close you eyes to make the distribution of tone a little clearer. Then draw them! Map them out without too much detail initially.

Work on the relationships of one object to another and then to the whole, DO NOT concentrate on irrelevant details too soon which can be distracting to the whole composition.

Try to apply the drawing media much more boldly where necessary, for example when making a tonal drawing, work in tone. When working in line allow them to be varied and flowing.

Find equivalents in terms of mark making for what you are looking at especially when not employing cross hatching which you do much less when using charcoal and pastel as opposed to pens and pencils.

Work vertically, especially when working above A3 size, holding your implements between thumb and forefinger i.e. NOT like a pen when you write.

When working in colour, shadows are a mixture of object colour and ground colour and variations thereof. Each coloured object or thing will have an effect on objects in proximity and indeed to the whole.

Layer your colour much more to achieve this i.e. apply more stuff to the drawing, work over, change work again to build up the relationships and the 3 dimensional feel. You have to work here it will not happen by magic especially when using coloured pencils. Pastels, you can build up more quickly just by their nature, but you still need the layering.

It is imperative that you look hard at all times at your subject; look draw, alter, draw again, change, look, you need to build up a dialogue between yourself, the subject and the particular medium that you are using. Different media require different approaches as do different subjects. It is good to build your drawings in this way.

DO NOT be afraid to make mistakes as this is an important part of the drawing, and indeed the creative process. Leave the rectified mistakes in your drawing, this will make your drawings richer and give them a history.

You need to be considering composition at all times when you work. Composition is basically internal relationships sitting effectively within a whole. You need to consider, viewpoint, eye level, scale, overlapping, tone, line and colour.

It is important that if you see something that bothers you in a drawing that you change it visually and not write it in words. Drawing is a visual expression and you need to get into the habit of working in visual terms not literal ones.

You need to be keeping sketch books to augment your work. These need to be full of genuine inquiry pertaining to what you are doing and any other visual notations that you are interested in. I would advise actually using books as they do have a certain role to play in the creative process which is different than working on sheets.

A learning log is a professional document to assist you in your learning and to some extent give you a context.

A learning log should contain objective writings about your work, analytical and comparative is best with comments on ‘what have you achieved’. It needs to have in it the set theoretical studies and research points. Evidence of artists and work that you have looked at and art that you have seen annotated where necessary.  Put images of other artists work in as well as your own. The learning log is there to help you develop as a practitioner. It has to be more than just a narrative.

Suggested reading/viewing

Look at as much art as possible as this will help give you a context in a wider sense. Look at Cezanne, Degas, Durer and Matisse. The drawings of Seurat and Van Gogh will help you in terms of tone, mark making and colour. Look at them as a PRACTITIONER not a connoisseur. Ask yourself. How did they do that? And try to use aspects in your own drawings.

Other

You do have a lot of work to do to raise the qualitative level of what you are producing at the moment. My advice would be to do assignment 2 implementing my suggestions and then seeing what results.

Drawing is a fundamental discipline no matter what part of the visual arts you are involved in. You would most certainly have to do a drawing module if you were embarked on a full time textiles course for example.

Tutor name:	Jim Unsworth
Date	25th February 2011
Next assignment due	1st May 2011

P2 Project Detailed Observation - Check and Log

I made the mistake of peeking at another student's work and then realised how far I have to go to draw well. But I keep reminding myself that I am really a Textile artist and the reason for doing this drawing course is to improve my sketching and drawing skills which I feel I have done.


So what's happened since the last post.


Well I managed to dust myself down and get up again and start drawing. And here we are, someway through Part 2. My latest drawings have been uploaded to the student website and it's now time to reflect on the drawings I have done for this project - Detailed Observation.


In general I am still finding it hard to translate what I see (and I am noticing more detail) to a drawing. The eye to hand conversion is not working too well.


So..


Which drawing media did you find the most effective to use, for which effects?
What sort of marks work well to create tone, pattern and texture?


For drawing a clean outline of an object (in my case the onion), i found the fibre tipped pen really effective because no sooner is the line drawn that the ink has dried. The downside it very unforgiving so great concentration is needed to make sure that mistakes are not made. The limited range of colours these pens come can either be a blessing (great, not too much choice!!) or limiting (eeek, I need more shades to get the look I want!!).


In the second exercise where we were told to use a soft pencil and do a drawing on A3 presented itself with a number of problems. First I misunderstood the bit about the soft pencil and tried to draw a shell in black soft graphite pencils (this is the point I looked another student's drawing and realised mine was just rubbish) and drawing a shell in A3 was just way outside my comfort zone. I became quite despondent and actually left the drawing for 10 days before talking myself back into the course. At this point, I rubbed out most of the black pencil and went over in soft graphite coloured pencils using a variety of shades of ochres, browns, oranges, reds and blue to bring out the tone and depth in the shell. I'm not convinced the result was great but the change to the coloured pencils defintely made a difference.


In the 3rd exercise, I used 2 fine markers (yellow and green) to try and draw stipples and dots to give effect of a bunch of Aucuba (Spotted Laurel leaves). i thought it was going to take all night to fill the leaves and you will see that each leaf has a different effect as I experimented with stipplig with and wihout the help of underneath shading from a soft pencil. I really don't think this technique worked for this example and in future I will leave stipples and dot effects for creating texture in a small area.


Did you enjoy capturing details or are you more at home creating big broad brush sketches?


I am defintely more at home with small scale detailed drawings


Look at the composition of the drawings you have done in this project. Make some sketches and notes about how you improve your composition


I am happy with my compositions so far.


Did doing a line drawing get you to look at space more effectively?


Yes, definitely.

P2 Project: Detailed Observation exercises

Line drawing detail exercise

2. Getting tone and depth in detail exercise

3. Stipples and dots exercise