Life Drawing 21/2/14
Posted: February 21, 2014 Filed under: Documentation, Field | Tags: Art, Art Student, artist, charcoal, Cross Hatching, detailed life drawing, documentation, Drawing, drawing from life, drawing movement, Drawings, female, female life model, female model, Fine Art, Ink, life class, life drawing, life drawing session, memory drawing, model, sketch, Sketching Leave a commentI decided to attend a life drawing session today. Within my city project, my work is becoming highly figurative which is challenging for me and not something I am used to. I felt that life drawing would help bring me up to speed when working with proportions and drawing the body and it was an incredibly beneficial exercise. We started the session with a few 5 minute poses to get going:
I started by loosely sketching out in charcoal and adding watered down black ink on top, I wanted to get a feel for the figure and the proportions of the body.
I spoke to the life model about my city project and that it involved drawing crowds of people or painting many figures in one piece. She helpfully suggested that we did some quick memory drawings, so she posed for 40 seconds while I observed and then had to draw the poses from memory down on the paper. It was incredibly difficult but a valued exercise as people don’t stay still for long in the city and this method will definitely help me draw them more accurately. It taught me to take more time to observe what I am drawing.
After a few goes, it was really interesting to see how much I managed to remember and draw down. The two pencil drawings above are my two most successful memory drawings in my opinion. This exercise forced me to study the details and proportions of the figure in a lot more depth and has with out a doubt benefited my figurative drawing skills. The life model suggested that I did a moving life drawing, where she imitated walking in two minute poses and I just drew them down next to one another, which created a highly interesting result, shown below:
After I had drawn these poses and gotten more comfortable with drawing the figure, we moved on to drawing 20 minute poses where I had the chance to draw in a lot more detail and I am incredibly happy with the results. I would go as far as to say that these may be two of the best life drawings I have ever created and I was very proud that I could see the development in my drawing skills.
Attending a life drawing session has been an incredibly valuable experience and will definitely aid me in my progression through my city project. I feel more confident about drawing figures. Because the drawings were timed, I didn’t have time to worry about the outcome and it made me consider proportion and experiment when drawing the figure more naturally. For any one who feels like they are challenging themselves drawing figures like me, I would definitely recommend a life class.
A Few Quick Drawings from my Sketchbook
Posted: December 3, 2013 Filed under: Documentation, Subject | Tags: Art, biro, charcoal, Cross Hatching, Drawing, Fine Art, indian ink, Ink, Mixed media, Multiple Media, Pencil, sketchbook, sketches, Visual Arts, wash, Wet-on-wet 1 CommentHere are a few drawings from the sketchbook that I have been keeping throughout this project. I have experimented with a variety of drawing materials and techniques to formulate this book.
I have experimented with Continuous Line drawing, Drawing with ink wet on wet and wet on dry and then drawing into it, Drawing onto grounds, Drawing onto washes that look like mould, Pencil Drawings, and Drawing with Biro, Fine Liner and Charcoal. I have used charcoal pencil to draw into black indian ink and produced some succesful results using this technique. Drawing moulding food is something I have been doing as a starting point to help me move my project forward when I’m not really sure where I’m taking it. I also think it is important to keep drawing as inspiration for the pieces you are going to create. As this project is about TIME, I have been producing some quite expressive timed drawings as well. These time drawings range between 10 seconds and five minutes.
PAINTING AND DRAWING EXPERIMENTS
Posted: October 15, 2013 Filed under: Documentation, Subject | Tags: Art, Color, Cross Hatching, Decay, Drawing, experiments, Fine Art, Fine Liner, fruit, paint, Pen, practice, visual art Leave a commentHere are some images of a few painting and drawing experiments I have produced relating to moulding fruit and vegetables. I have experimented here with backgrounds, I painted a simple acrylic wash in the colours of moulds and drawn and painted on top of them with different sized pens to explore a variety of different effects. Personally I quite like the solid painting with a dabbing technique over the top of a more transparent wash, it adds importance and solidity to the item of food I am trying to portray. I like the idea of starting with a simple background and working on top of it and it is definitely something I think I could work with on bigger pieces further down the line in my project.
The thicker pen lines make the drawings look too cartoony and not as professional in my opinion. The thinner pen line looks much more presentable and fitting for capturing the essence of decaying food items.
I like the thin pen lines in this piece and the way that you can see the background through the strawberry, this is also a nice effect to have within a drawing and the slight highlights make it look more three-dimensional. Cross hatching on top of colour looks far more appealing.
I think adding a background to the work also changes the colour of the piece as a whole, so the darker backgrounds tend to dull the colours you apply on top a little bit which is a highly desirable effect to suit the credentials of my project. I may experiment with more drawing on top of grounds and incorporate other medias like charcoal or pastels.
Rotting fruit: More Detailed Pencil Drawing
Posted: October 9, 2013 Filed under: Contextualisation, Documentation, Subject | Tags: Art, Cross Hatching, Drawing, Fine Art, Pencil, Sketching, tone, Visual Arts 1 CommentHere, I wanted to capture the decay of the food in Far more detail. I have produced highly tonal pencil drawings that I feel capture the essence of the object accurately and show to the viewer exactly how the food looks once decaying.
I enjoy practicing shading and adding depth to an object on paper, it is the only way to improve drawing skill. I tend to focus on mark making within my sketches, favouring cross hatching to add details. I think drawing an object exactly how it helps you to understand it. Without drawing decaying foods, I would have no idea how to progress in my work/practice.
Here, I am practicing trying to make an object look 3D on paper, as previously my drawing style has been quite flat.I looked at the work of M.C.Esher, one of the masters in 3D drawing to influence my tonal shading.
Drawing Hands 1948 – M.C.Esher
TIME: FOOD DECAY: Pen Sketches
Posted: October 6, 2013 Filed under: Documentation, Subject | Tags: Art, Cross Hatching, Decay, Drawing, Fine Art, Fine Liner, Food, Food Decay, Mark Making, Pen, Sketching, Visual Arts Leave a commentDrawings of Decaying foods: I have been drawing with 0.2 and 0.5 Black Fine Liner pens lately, as they allow for more expressive drawing and mark making. Here are a few quick sketches I have produced of mouldy foods. None of these sketches took longer than 5 minutes, I wanted to see how time effected my actual drawing practice, and even though they didn’t take very long, I feel these drawings are rather charming and have a lot of character. I also feel that they capture the decay of the food drawn well.
I drew a variety of foods as they all decay in different ways. I think this sketch of the tomato is the most successful. You can tell that it is decayed and that it is incredibly squishy so I am confident that it is the drawing where I have captured the rotting best.
Decaying foods make for very interesting drawing studies, I found this much more inspiring to draw from than if the food was not mouldy and was ordinary. We take for granted the simplest things in life and I would say that the beauty that can be seen in decay is most definitely one of them. Drawing these under timed conditions has opened my eyes to the fact that you do not have to spend hours on a drawing for it to be a success. It is also a great way of recording things quickly, especially if they are only there for a short amount of time. I will definitely be producing more timed drawings as it links my project to the brief of time even more.
GemmaSchiebeFineArt 
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