Drawing Workshops

Posted: October 29, 2013 | Author: lounomeat | Filed under: Subject | Leave a comment

Week 1: Life Drawing
During this term, drawing workshops are often run. I have been attending two-hour sessions that alternate weekly between life and still-life drawing.

In the first session I attended, we had a male life model. I hadn’t done any life drawing since last year of Uni, so it was interesting and also challenging getting back into the swing of drawing the human form. I tried to remember how to plot out guidelines, and also the proportions of the human body.

My proportions and general accuracy of this five minute drawing left a lot to be desired. I also find the male form more difficult to draw than the female form. I find drawing females more flowing and smooth; females possess more curves and rounded lines. The male form is much straighter.

We did a couple of other five minute sketches which were a vast improvement on the first, and then concentrated on a longer pose to finish.

I enjoy life drawing, and would like to improve my accuracy. Drawing accurately is the foundation of all art work, and I do believe the theory that you need to be able to draw accurately before you can effectively manipulate and alter forms.

Week 2: Still Life
This week, on entering the life drawing studio, we were greeted with an assortment of various sized and shaped stacked cardboard boxes and flower pots. This exercise was all about proportion, accuracy and perspective. Regardless of whether you’re still life drawing or life drawing, these skills are needed.

Initially, we were told to quickly sketch out the shape of the entire entity of boxes and flower pots in order to gain a general idea of the volume of the objects. After this, we were told to just draw the boxes and flower pots as we normally would.

It was a rough drawing, and didn’t work particularly well on proportions or perspective. Annie showed us some techniques on how to draw 3D boxes and flowerpots by constructing lines and ellipses and working to the guidelines. She also told us about using an ‘eye-line’; wherever your line of sight is, draw a faint line across your paper, and then reference everything to that line.

My second attempt was much better, but there are still a lot of inaccuracies and areas to improve. I always see my mistakes more obviously after the event, and especially if I have taken a photograph of my drawing. Maybe I should stop for a coupe of minutes in the workshop, take a photograph, and analyse where my mistakes are using both my work and the photograph.

Week 3: Life Drawing
This week, we started out the session again with quick five minute drawings. I was quite pleased with my first attempts this week, as they were so much more accurate. I felt more confident from the beginning, and this can only be due to exposure to drawing in this sort of environment.

After these, we moved on to a long pose of an hour or more. I started out by quickly sketching the pose in pencil to give myself a rough idea and feel for the pose before I began on my larger piece.

I have found that I have a tendency to draw quite small, so Annie showed me how to map out my drawing so it would take up more of the paper. This involved cutting the drawing into sections to give yourself a rough idea of what features of the subject should be in what area of the paper.

My final piece was a lot larger than I would normally choose to draw, but these sessions are about challenging yourself, improving your accuracy, and learning new ways of drawing.

I thought this piece wasn’t as strong as my first five minute sketches. I felt the lines weren’t as confident, and the proportions were still wrong in certain areas. I’m also having a tough time getting to grips with charcoal again lately. I should definitely experiment more with charcoal in order to improve.

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Term 1 Project: Venetian Masquerade Ball Skull Mask

Posted: October 23, 2013 | Author: lounomeat | Filed under: Subject | Leave a comment

I began experimenting with this idea using a plain pre-moulded mask I had picked up at the art fair in uni. There is something quite sinister about the plain white mask, and I’d like to keep this slightly creepy vibe for my finished mask.

I started by planning out the design of the skull onto the mask in pencil; outlining sections to cut out and areas of characteristics to define later on.

Next, I started cutting out sections of the mask using a craft knife and a scalpel. I like the Venetian masks where some of the real face is visible beneath the mask, and so I removed extra cheek to define the shape of the skull and expose some of the face. I am undecided on whether to cut out more of the other cheek, as I think there is still too much original ‘mask’ left, but I also don’t want to make the remaining mask too flimsy to work with.

I plan to fill in the pre-existing ‘mouth’ of the mask, and bulk out the ‘teeth’ so they are actual 3D teeth shape. I will then papier mache over the whole skull to smooth out the rough edges. I am still undecided on whether to paint the mask in detail afterwards, or just return it to its white state.

I filled in the mask mouth using newspaper and masking tape. I also created little 3D teeth to stick to the outlined tooth shape on the mask using kitchen roll and masking tape; I then taped these on. After that, I started to paper mache the mask to smooth out the rough edges and solidify the teeth to the body. The mask was a lot less resilient than I thought, and adding paper mache paste made the mask quite flimsy. I’m hoping this will harden out and gain strength as it dries.

Thankfully, the mask did solidify once dried. However, it also became a little misshapen, contracting and contorting during the drying process. It probably didn’t help that I had it half balanced on the edge of a radiator. However, I didn’t mind the deformity. If anything, I thought it added more character to the mask. Once it had dried, I painted a base colour on the mask using Acrylic. After that, I just added a little shading and detail in brown hues.

Overall, the mask turned out satisfactorily. I think I should have shaded in a more stylised, ‘blocky’ manner. I also don’t think I’ve particularly captured the ‘Venetian Masquerade Ball’ idea by shading in the way I have. Maybe I should have added more decorative shading, and left the base colour of the mask as white. I could attempt this piece again, but I’m not sure anymore that this is the direction I want to take the project. I’m currently now far more interested in using natural textures and materials, and simply exploring these.

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Term 1 Project: Wooden Skull

Posted: October 23, 2013 | Author: lounomeat | Filed under: Subject | Leave a comment

Whilst visiting my parents, I again found some beautiful textures in the form of a chopped down Yew tree. The trunk had been chopped into foot long sections, and the ends looked very skull-shaped to me without doing anything to them at all. I particularly loved the varying shades of browns and oranges within the wood. The inside had started to rot in places (hence being chopped down) which added extra texture and pattern, whilst also relating to the idea of the skull; decay and death.

I got my father to chop the logs into one-inch thick sections so I would have a few pieces to work with. Initially, I tried using my craft knife to cut into the wood, but the Yew was too hard and I wasn’t able to achieve very much at all with this method. I decided to try ink again, like with the bone.

I began using brown ink and water. The Yew absorbed ink and water very quickly, turning a deep orange. As it dried, it lost some of its vibrancy. By the time is had fully dried, there was only really a faint trace of the skull. I quite like this subtle effect, but I’m still very tempted to add darker brown ink – maybe mixed with just a touch of black – to emphasise areas of shading and darkness. I will use other pieces of Yew to experiment with these various ideas.

As it dried, this piece gave me the idea of painting the Yew using only water, and then perhaps time-lapse filming the wood as it dries so the skull slowly disappears. As with the papier mache rocks, I am also thinking of trying to film or photograph some of the (eventually) finished pieces as they burn. These ideas, again, relate back to the idea of mortality and decay.

I attempted using black and brown ink mixed together, and blurring them into each other using water. It’s quite difficult to tell how dark the ink is going to appear when dry, as the wood absorbs a lot of moisture and changes colour quite dramatically.

I particularly liked the colour gradient from brown to black but also incorporating the natural tones of the wood. I especially liked the bleed into the wood, which I encouraged using water. I hope the effect when this piece is dry is as vibrant and rich as when it is wet.

I still wanted to try and carve into a piece of the Yew, but I already knew that the craft knife would be no good. I picked up some chisels and a mallet at my parents’, hoping these would do the job.

I lightly drew socket, nose and teeth shapes on the Yew and tried to chisel out the shape. Again, the Yew proved too hard. Instead, I tried using the end of the chisel and banging it with the mallet. This left an indented line, so I started using a series of these lines to form an outline of the shape I wanted to chisel out.

Unfortunately, on chiseling out the teeth shapes, some of the bark and edging of the Yew started to chip off. Initially, this worked in my favour by creating jagged teeth shapes along the bottom of the piece, but eventually proved too much and a large piece of Yew came fully loose around a knot in the wood.

The loose piece should be fairly easy to reattach using glue, or I could incorporate the loss into the piece and maybe add loose separate teeth in some fashion.

If I cannot find a method of chiseling or carving out the top layers of the Yew in the shapes I want, I am considering using chisel edges to create lines and shading using crosshatching.

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Term 1 Project: Bone Skull

Posted: October 23, 2013 | Author: lounomeat | Filed under: Subject | Leave a comment

Whilst searching for suitable shaped rocks at my parents’ house, I came across some old bits of bone lying around amongst the stone. I liked how they had weathered, were covered in dirt and had been stained slightly green by the grass. The bone was really interestingly textured, and I picked them up without really knowing what I would do with them.

I didn’t want to just paint on the bone, and completely deplete it of the natural textures that would compliment my project. I decided to try and scratch a skull into the surface of the bone using a craft knife.

Scratching into the skull was subtle, but it came out quite pale. I then added a light brown watercolour wash over the scratched lines on the bone. This left a more obvious, but still quite tentative, skull shape. I quite liked this effet, and decided to wash over the bone entirely with water, which darkened some surface sections of the bone and not others. It really emphasized the textures and varying hues of the bone.

I wanted to try and emphasize the skull a little more after washing over everything with water, and so I tried to add a delicate line of ink over the scratched lines. On reflection, I wish I had used a more subtle ink than black – brown would probably have been more sensitive here – but I did really like the way the ink bled into the surrounding areas of bone and not stay just in the scratched lines. I think the scratching and the ink bleed give the piece a primitive quality which corresponds well with the early human skull.

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Term 1 Project: Stone Skulls

Posted: October 23, 2013 | Author: lounomeat | Filed under: Subject | Leave a comment

After musing about Venetian masks, I started thinking about what material I could attempt to make the masks from. I may buy a basic plain mask, and start by building up layers of tissue and papier mache to create a skull shape on top of a pre-existing mask. For now, though, I have used papier mache rocks I had made previously, and attempted to turn them into miniature skulls by cutting bits out and painting or colouring in the detailing. I felt they were quite quirky and characteristic, and papier mache would be easily controlled to make the mask the exact shape I wanted.

After discussions with other students and a tutorial with Sue Hunt, I decided to explore the skulls some more before starting the mask making. Taking inspiration from the papier mache skull rocks I had already created, I decided to try painting skulls onto real rocks. I have previously painted on rocks, and oils can be quite fiddly and not very smooth on a rough, textured surface such as rock. From experience, I know that ink flows quite well on rocks. Initially, I started by trying to paint the skull onto the rock – treating the rock as a piece of paper. After this, I felt that working with the pre-existing lines and edges of the rock would work better. I feel that working with the material rather than battling against it allowed for a more natural, yet quirky and characteristic outcome.

I also like the almost-optical illusion that painting on a 3D uneven surface creates; if you do not look directly at the rocks but instead look from an angle, you can’t really tell they’re skulls and just look like rocks with an assortment of random ink lines painted on top.

I have also begun drawing and painting the skulls I have created on the rocks. I’d like to try and make these higher contrast, and perhaps light the skulls in a more contrasting way; emphasizing light and shade more dramatically and creating long sinister shadows. This I will need to explore, and also create more drawings and paintings.

Pondering on the idea of ephemeral life, mortality and decay, I am wondering how the papier mache would react when burned. Especially the one piece that is papier mache over sponge. Will the sponge melt? Will it just burn? I am considering time-lapse filming or maybe just photographing the action and results of burning these pieces.

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Term 1 Project: Starting Point; Early Human Skull

Posted: October 7, 2013 | Author: lounomeat | Filed under: Subject | Leave a comment

The project for term one is very similar to the Summer project. We were told to choose one object, artifact or painting from a museum or gallery to explore, research and investigate. Your chosen piece is intended to inspire and influence your work, but does not have to be a slavish copy. For example, Picasso’s ‘Las Meninas’ was heavily influenced by Diego Valasquez, but is a completely different rendition.

The project does not necessarily have to have ‘final pieces’. It is more a project of experimentation and research, where processes and skills are explored. It may be that these processes fail, which is all part of the journey.

I decided that I would choose one of the early-human skulls I had already looked at during my Summer project. I enjoyed drawing the skull, and I felt there was a lot of scope for experimenting with the skulls even though I was initially unsure of where I would take them. I began by drawing the skull again in various ways, especially focusing on continuous line. I also looked at other skulls (a hippo skull for example) but I haven’t explored this a lot so far.

The skulls made me think of masks, and I started looking at Tribal masks a bit; how they represent the face usually with quite simplistic shapes and colours. I was going to look at the differences and similarities between the skulls and the masks, and how I could represent the skull in a more simplistic form. I might still look at this in more detail but, whilst thinking of masks, I remembered my liking of Venetian masquerade-style masks. I have started by looking at how I could turn a full skull into a half-face masquerade mask. I will be exploring this a lot more; seeing what are typical Venetian mask characteristics and how I can incorporate this into the skull mask.

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