Enlarging an image

I think I was pretty successful in copying my drawing from the smaller squares to the larger ones. I really tried not to look at the picture as a whole, and just tried to focus on each square and what it contained. I was actually quite surprised at how it all came together so well once I'd completed all the squares.

The mug was fairly easy to enlarge, but the handle looks a little bit wonky.

The trickier parts were the more detailed squares like the ones containing the scissor handles for example - I think next time I try enlarging something that has more detailed parts, I would choose to use a grid of smaller squares, to enable more accuracy.

Using texture

I really enjoyed this texture project, but I feel like there's an awful lot more you could explore as long as you had access to more and more materials. I tried out lots of new things to get a textured look. I found the frottage technique a useful and interesting addition to my explorations. I ended up using mixed media for the drawing, to get the right effect for each of the items. I found that soaking a sponge in ink and lightly pressing it onto your paper gives quite a nice fluffy effect so I used that method to depict the woolen texture of the scarf I decided to draw, then used pen and ink to draw each stitch in it's woven pattern. I went for oil pastel for the driftwood because I wanted to show that it was quite a smooth piece of wood after years of being smoothed by the sea. Where the grain slices across the wood I scratched into the pastel with a sharp pair of scissors. The cardboard was the tricky part. I tried about 4 or 5 differing methods in my sketchbook to get the right look and none of them were perfect to be honest, but I settled with using pencil crayon to get a smooth flat surface colour. I then rubbed over some actual cardboard to get the corrugated lined effect, with a graphite pencil. I'm pleased with the end result.
I didn't do any tonal hatching at all, and yet managed to make the forms of my subjects look pretty reaslistic and interesting. Where the scarf's darkest parts were, I basically blotted more ink onto the paper, going over and over some areas. On the driftwood I blended in black, grey and brown oil pastel to show where there was shadow or hollows, and darker areas where the bark still remains. I used graphite and rubbed over the ready made lines of the corrugated cardboard to depict the darker areas of the piece of cardboard underneath the scarf. I also used graphite to just shade under the cardboard  but decided not to draw/paint in the wooden surface all my objects sat on. I didn't want to distract the eye away from the subject, and also felt that it looked finished as it was.
Frottage is definitely something I will use again. Not only is it useful for getting the right pattern or texture of an object, but it adds an attractive and unusual effect too. There's no real limit to what you can use with frottage, as long as it is textured, and that makes for an appealing technique to use when drawing.

Still life

Initially I started this project using glass items, which you can see above in the top left corner of my sketchbook. However, I got distracted I didn't finish and had to start over again in a totallly different house with completely different items! So, I used a selection of ceramic objects, which didn't have quite the same reflective properties as the glass ones but did have interesting shapes and textures. I used graphite pencil, which gives a lovely smooth line and is great for shading.

For the natural objects I chose an animal bone, a bulb of garlic, a small clam shell and a piece of drift wood. They all complimented eachother well in texture and colour (they were all quite light) however not so well in shape, so I struggled a bit to get the composition right. I used a brown pencil crayon for this drawing.

My opinion is that it is easier to suggest three dimensions on man made objects. I can't say for sure why this is but I think this may be because man made objects have a familiar form, a uniform, something that we are used to witnessing and so find easier to replicate. Natural objects are never the same from one to the next. The intricate details of the garlic bulb for example, where the light falls on a scrap of it's fragile peel, will never be the same as on the scrap next to it. And man made objects tend to have far more flat surfaces, or perfectly rounded edges for example, so we can almost second guess how it's shadow may lie on the surface under it.
I placed solidity in the composition by carefully noting where the light was coming from and therefore where the object's cast shadows were falling, either onto the surface they sat on or onto their fellow objects. To get a three dimensional or solid effect, light and shadow are most important.
I found that changing the compostion many times over made a huge difference to my approach. It helped me to look at the objects in a different light, from a different angle as it were. The way one jar reflected the other may not have been noticed had I not moved one more infront of the other, for example. The more you move things around, the more you notice and the more you get out of your chosen objects.
I decided at first to sit above, looking over the objects, thinking that at this angle I would get an advantage over the items, being able to see more. Then I moved the objects further away on the table, so that I was looking at them from a lower angle. It was at this angle that I chose to do the larger drawing, because the compositon was more pleasing - the drift wood stretching across the page to carry you eye, the shell in the background (I was worried this would look a bit like it was floating...) and the bone and garlic filling the space in the foreground. I still think the composition could be better, but think perhaps it is the objects themselves that don't quite work together. The shell is perhaps too small? The bone too angular?

Reflected light

The objects I chose were metallic and therefore very reflective. It was a bright day and I placed the objects on a white surface. I thought a white surface might make it easier to see the cast shadow. The reflection of the drinking flask can be very clearly seen in the metal surface of the tin, as the metals were quite different from one another - the tin very shiny, almost mirror-like, and the flask quite matt but still relatively reflective.The reflected light from the window created white bands across the objects, and these white bands in turn were then reflected between the two. They also cast shadows onto one another. I held the charcoal quite loosely and contacted the paper very lightly to get the the reflected light. I was able to make quite dark lines by brushing the paper firmly with the charcoal to create the darker cast shadows.

The question in the brief asks "What are the difficulties in separating cast shadow from reflected light and shade?" I find this really quite hard to explain in words - too absract a question!? Or am I readin into it too much? Will ask Emma.

The reflections of shadow and light are pretty distorted because of the curves of the objects, but I followed the contours as well as I could by looking carefully and marking the light areas by cross hatching very gently over the paper, or where there was shadowed areas, more firmly.

Research Point - Patrick Caulfield

Whether or not Patrick Caulfield was pleased with his categorisation of Pop Artist, his work without doubt had the credentials to fit into this bracket. He used screen printing techniques in the most part for highlighting commonplace objects, but using bright and often primary colours and black outline so that they burst out of the canvas. The viewer is almost certainly surprised by how striking such a mundane item such as a lamp, can be. (More info in my sketchbook.)
I enjoyed doing the piece in the style of Caulfield. It was a break from my usual style and it was an opportunity to look at the shapes of my subjects in a totally different way. I didn't need to focus on their every detail, just mainly their shape and shadow. It was fun.

Research point; Odilon Redon

Odilon Redon, photo taken from Bridgeman Education

Wow! What an artist. I really enjoyed this research project (it is in my sketchbook). I had never heard of the man before but am so impressed, especially because you can see so clearly through his artwork how his life progressed and changed. He was a quiet man, and it may seem a silly thing to say but I think you can tell through his work that he was so. There's something thoughtful and tranquil about his style. The colours he eventually began to use in his later life are not garish or showy, they are soft and almost serene. His strange and at times slightly disturbing earlier works have a mystical thing going on - they aren't so much scary as they are fantastical and just peculiar. He had some smart things to say about art too. I especially like this quote; "The value of art lies in its power to increase our moral force or establish its heightening influence." It seems that despite his otherwordly, and one could say underground and alternative art work, he felt that art itself was a unifying force. Something for everyone and something that will make the world a better place.

Tone and form

I chose two simple objects - a pear and a roll of toilet paper - and used a pencil to cross hatch the light and shadow. It was quite difficult to get all the tones on the toilet roll, the middle tones especially. I think maybe it was harder than the pear because it is white in colour, so even it's darkest areas are not very dark at all - yet now looking at my drawing, I have definitely made it too dark. However the white of the toilet roll actually turned out to be quite beneficial in terms of being able to distinguish between the primary and secondary light sources, because you could see quite clearly light on the left side of the pear being reflected off the white paper.

In the tonal study of four objects, again you can see the secondary light being reflected off the white book cover onto the mug. I have to admit, it is not something I was very aware of while doing the drawing but you can clearly see it. In hindsight, I need to make sure I am thinking about these sorts of things while drawing, and not just drawing away!


Focusing on the light and shade basically defines the forms themselves, it gives the objects solidity and realism. I've started to notice the outlines of the objects disappearing (it's difficult to explain but bear with me!). Obviously you begin a drawing outlining your subject, but as you focus on the light and shadow those outlines become either a lighter area or a darker area and not an outline at all.

Basic shapes and fundamental form

The boxes and books exercise I actually found quite tricky - it took three or four goes before I got the perspective more or less correct. I think they are all now the right size, and about the right shape but I freely admit to having a bit of trouble with perspective and the idea of drawing 'as if you can see through the boxes' kind of threw me a bit. I found focusing on the shapes between the objects helped a lot more with getting the size and shape right. I tried to see the objects as angles and lines as opposed to boxes and books. I think the objects look pretty solid considering there is no tonal shading whatsoever. As long as the perspective is correct, then a feeling of depth should be created easily, but as I said I find perspective a wee bit difficult (it takes me many attempts) so that in turn makes it hard for me to tell if it is absolutely right. I need a second opinion!

The jars and jugs exercise I actually found a lot easier, perhaps because there weren't so many dead straight lines to have to worry about..? The final drawing I did with pen (I did three pencil drawings before this) and this was actually the best one of the lot. The size and shapes of the objects are pretty much spot on in relation to one another, and again trying to carefully draw the spaces in between the objects really helped to get their shapes correct. All the cyclindrical objects look as solid as they could in a 2D drawing with no shading. The feeling of depth has been quite well created in these drawings - more so than in the boxes and books ones - because you can see quite clearly that there are objects closer to the viewer than others, some things are tucked behind others and the ellipses of the cylinders are more circular nearer the foreground.

In the supermarket shop drawing the objects are more or less correct in size and in relation to one another, except the tomato ketchup bottle ended up being rather squat, which I didn't notice at all until I'd finished the drawing. Also I think perhaps the lasagne box is a bit too big. I wanted the drawing to be quite large, so deliberately drew the objects in more or less actual size. I put the groceries quite close together so there really wasn't much space in between them to worry about. I think the objects look fairly solid but I haven't managed to create much depth in the drawing. I think maybe what happened was that once I'd started adding colour (oil pastel) I got more interested in getting the colours correct and failed to recognise I was losing the solidity of the objects and the overall depth of the drawing.

Van Gogh's pen and ink drawings - Research Point

I chose Olive Trees, Montmajour (1888) to comment on. This is a really good example of the plentiful types of marks Van Gogh made using pen and ink. Stippling is used extensively over the drawing, mostly in the foreground, depicting the short grass/flowers. There is a lot of repetition - dots and lines. You can see lines making up the harvested fields in the far background. Fine lines and broad, dark lines also. There are parts completely filled in with black ink, and some areas left white and empty, where I assume are rocky areas of ground. The drawing is full of movement. You can see wind in the boughs of the trees and birds flying above.

Trying new media

I think the most enjoyable mark making medium for me is ink from an ink pot. You can do so much with it. I dipped the end of a pen in it and used it to draw in a circular motion. I dipped a cotton bud into it and drew thick, pale lines with lots of the texture of the paper coming through. Then a hair grip went in, creating thin marks, deeper at one before the ink begins to run out. For some reason I thought of bamboo while doing this. Using green ink - I think it reminded me of the leaves. The end of a round pencil went in the ink too, producing deep spots of black, fading as the ink soaks into the paper. I tried to dab some ink through some medical gauze using a cotton bud, and it wasn't a very successful attempt (I was hoping to catch some of the hatched webbing of the fabric). It ended up looking a little like an animal print of some sort, like a leopard perhaps. But I didn't want to waste the ink-soaked gauze so I pressed that onto the paper, which left a great fibrous, cross hatched result. I know that water-based materials don't mix with oil-based, so I tried drawing lines with my dip pen across an area of almost solid oil pastel. You can see areas where the ink has not wanted to settle on the oil. Then I used a sponge, which again gave me a sort of animal print effect, all dotty and darker in some areas than others. If you got it right, it could be a really good stippling tool.
I used my mascara and brush, which was quite a nice textured mark, more rich where the brush touched the paper on first contact.
I turned a small piece of soft pastel onto its side and pulled it over the page. This picked up the texture of the paper really well. With two coloured soft pastels I used a tortillon to blend them into one another, which I have never used before. It worked pretty well.
I covered the next box completely with two colours of oil pastel, then used a hair grip to scrape lines into it. It was quite useful actually for pulling off the deeper colour. I think I prefer the oil pastels to the soft ones at the moment.
Next page; More ink examples. I tried to use a ink cartridge from a fountain pen to make some marks, and it burst in my hand! So, I did make some marks alright, be they rather messy ones. I blew over the deeper blobs of ink, in different directions, creating a sort of tree branch on my page. Because the little accident spread across to the next box, I continued with the ink and used a cotton bud to pull the darker puddles of ink across the box, which left a rather nice result. Very intense where the ink had landed, then quite streaky where I dragged the cotton bud. I tried another method with the oil and ink - smearing some petroleum jelly across the box, then drawing curved lines over the waxy parts. The lines are really broken up and not smooth like the normal effect of ink and pen. Then I put a metal button on a piece of string and dipped it into the ink, plopping it onto the paper and really liked that effect.
I used the corner of a credit card to scrape into another oil pastel box. It worked pretty well too but not as well as the hair grip, which is made of harder plastic so more resilient under my pressure.
With a pencil rubber I tried to lift off some of the colour of a soft pastel, which actually didn't work as well as I had expected - a putty rubber would definitely do a better job.
I rubbed over my Nectar card using first an oil pastel, then a soft pastel. The oil was much more effective. You can't see at all what I've tried to do with the soft one. Then I scraped a crochet needle in narrow, spiralling lines across some oil pastel - this looked pretty effective, and leaves a finer line than the hair grip.
I grabbed a couple of things from the garden for the last two boxes - a stone and a twig. The stone I tried to use over some soft pastel, but it ended up just tearing into the paper, so was not good at all. And lastly, I dipped the twig into some black ink and ran some lines over the paper. I remember thinking at the time that it reminded me of Japanese calligraphy.

So ink I believe to be hugely effective for deep, intense marks, be they lines, blobs or accidental spillages blown across the page. It is versatile in that you can dip anything into, or use any random thing to spread it across the paper. But it doesn't mix well at all with oily things - as I knew before doing the exercise but was curious to see what would happened.
Oil pastels are great too. They leave a thick, bold blanket of colour on your page, which you can then go over or scrape off to your hearts delight with whatever implement you can find - except water based mediums of course...
Soft pastels I find a little wet around the ears! They are good for simply adding colour to something and blending it in, but they are not hugely versatile in what you can do with them beyond that. Though they do pick up the paper texture nicely.

This was a really enjoyable exercise and a real eye opener to what you can use random household things to produce, and with what medium.

Line and other marks

I tried to mix it up as much as possible and use lots of different hand holds, as well as throw different marks and ideas onto the page - some worked, while others didn't.
Graphite; held lightly produces long, soft flowing lines, held firmly you can achieve really quite rich marks. Holding the graphite pencil right at its top end, I tried a sort ot stippling effect but found it very difficult to control where the dots ended up.
Dip pen and ink; held at its top, very loosely, it threw ink quite sporadically over the box creating a blotchy effect where the paper had soaked up the blobs of ink. I held the pen as I would normally and produced thick lines, darker where the pen has first set down on the paper and lighter and finer as you continue the line. I also tried some cross hatching, which gave a very effective result, and quite textured. (Next page of sketchbook.) Held only between finger and thumb at the top and loaded with ink, it produced a messy, blobbed mark on the page - good texture if you run your fingers over it (once it was dry of course!). Then I drew some short, narrow repeated lines over the whole box and found it had a sort of rhythm to it. Next I tilted the pen on its side and scraped it across the page, which again was quite messy because of the amount of ink, but it produced a lovely, abstract mark.
Ball point pen; first trying to shade in circular areas within the square box, it really opened up the negative space for the eye. Then, holding it very loosely at the top end I ran it across the page, which created a very nice fine, scratchy line. I made smaller squares in the next box and filled them in using stippling going from very dark to very light, then blocked in stripes of black. This produced an interesting effect on my eyes - it looked quite 3D, like steps or something similar.
H pencil; I swept the pencil lightly across the page with a curving action all in my wrist, as I was holding the pencil right at its top. It looks so soft, fine and feathery, like it's almost not there. Then I drew lines diagonally across the next box, which somehow I think helps the eye focus on the negative space around the lines. You can see why this type of pencil is used for professional drafting, it makes very precise lines and seems to naturally want to go in a straight line when held near its tip. I tried creating a 3D, textured effect by shading around circles. It looked kind of like bubble wrap. I do think a softer pencil would be better for this kind of thing, lending itself more to being blended.
Fineliner; I created a rain-like mark with this pen holding it at its top, very lightly running it up at a slight angle. The marks were heaviest at the bottom and almost transparent at the top. The repeated curved lines in the next example are quite pleasing to the eye. I tried a sort of fine feathered shading on each line, just to add to the pattern. Next I shaded in a quick drawing of an ink pot using cross hatching. The fineliner is pretty good for this.
9B pencil; splitting the box into sections I cross hatched each to create tone. Pencils are perfect for this. Then I held the pncil right at its top and tried to draw a spiral in the box, but found it difficult to draw a smooth, curved line. Instead it has quite a lot of angles to it. I next repeated a leaf pattern, holding the pencil firmly. It produced an intensely dark line - I imagine a great tool for doing quick sketching.
Fibre-tip pen; shaky, broken lines were created by holding the pen at its top. Not much control. With a firm hold you can produce prominent, bold lines. I repeated a zig zagging line diagonally across one box - it was really quite uncomfortable for my eyes to look at it afterwards. An intense effect.

Charcoal exercises

I am fairly familiar with charcoal but certainly not good with it. The exercises gave me an opportunity to practice, and to see what I can get out of the medium.
I discovered you can create an abundance of line marks by using different thicknesses of charcoal, but also by holding it at a different angle or having a different hand hold on it. Obviously the firmer the hold the deeper the line. Also, I noticed that if it is a brand new piece of charcoal it can be quite sharp at the end, despite being a medium or thick piece, and therefore you can produce very fine lines before it starts to wear down. Once it has worn down the marks thicken.
The thicker lines are intense and dark - and can be so easily smudged, as I've noted in my sketchbook. The darker blocks of different shades came out very strong but the lighter shades were rather streaky looking - something that perhaps would depend a lot on the type of paper?
Blending is fairly easy, you can go from as black as the night to really close to white with a steady hand. Charcoal is very good for making something jump out of the page in 3D with the right sort of shading and blending.
The putty rubber is a great tool to lift off some of the charcoal (and only works marginally better than the bread to be honest). It helps to blend in marks and to highlight areas. Very useful.
I was asked to put a small piece of charcoal onto its side and drag it across the page creating curved and straight lines. It worked really well. It picked up the texture of the paper beautifully. The edge of the lines appeared to be darker than the centres, but the centres running down the lines were the parts with all the texture.
I tried one square using a charcoal pencil, which for some reason I didn't find as satisfying as using the sticks. To try and explain it is difficult but I think it may be because perhaps it feels more predictable than the sticks as you seem to have more control over the marks your making. It feels more like a felt pen, whereas the sticks feel maybe more like a dip pen and ink..? The charcoal pencil is very effective for blending though, and a much better cross hatching tool I think.

Exercises - Mark making and doodling

Making marks was a useful exercise to begin the course. Although I'm familiar with most of my materials it is easy to forget all the possible techniques and uses for them. The old faithful pencil has always been my personal favourite because of it's versatility. You can treat it as though it's made of glass and hold it so lightly that you can barely see the marks with your naked eye. But you can also turn it practically on it's side for a thick, deep result (perfect for shading) or simply press as hard as it will allow before snapping if you want to create intense, sharp and dark lines. Graphite is quite special too. It runs over the page so smoothly and easily, and it's hard to imagine anything with a finer texture. Both pencil and graphite are excellent for materials for blending and cross hatching to achieve different shades. Charcoal again is a very versatile medium, and manages beautifully to pick up the surface texture of the paper beneath it. However I have found it is not as effective when wanting clear, defined, straight lines as say a pencil or pen might be. The ink and dip pen is another favourite of mine, perhaps because it looks quite elegant and dramatic on the page. It can be deep and dark at one point and then fine and delicate in another, which is perfect for using lines for shading. There is a lot movement in ink. Fineliner pens are fantastic to use for drawing. I love their kind of thin scratchiness on the paper. In the past I have found them useful for sketching buildings or anything with a lot of fine detail - very good for cross hatching and stippling. Fibre tip (or felt tip) pens have a lovely graceful flow about them and are great for creating bold, brassy blocks of colour but not good for tonal shading. Coloured pencils are pleasant to use, especially for shading as they blend quite nicely. Soft pastels are ideal for a well blended result as I found when using my finger, but they are useless for cross hatching and I imagine similarly bad with stippling. Oil pastels perform equally as well when blending them into one another, but pretty terrible for other techniques. Biro was a nice surprise. Of course it is usually associated with writing, however it produced very nice results when used for stippling and cross hatching. It also has a nice flow across the page. Water soluble pencils are a totally new medium for me. At first I wasn't at all sure how to use them until my partner gave me a mini crash course. However I don't think I've quite got the hang of them yet and will loook forward to trying again with them.
I've always found doodling a liberating experience, because usually you do it unconsciously and allow yourself to drift off, not really thinking about what you are doing. That's why to start with I found it a little tricky to get stuck in with doodling in my sketchbook, because I was conscious of what I was doing, but after a while it became relaxing and I found it difficult to stop. I found it enjoyable to let myself go, while trying to get the most out of all the mediums. I chose an underwater theme for my A2 sheet of paper. I had crabs, seaweed, fish scales, rocks and water in the back of my mind and tried hard not to make anything look too much like those things, but admittedly did find that quite difficult. I tried using some very thin red tissue paper for a different result, and found the ink spreading and blotting all over the place, which was not what I had intended, but I actually liked the effect very much.
The exercises have really opened my mind to what I can achieve when I sit down and pick up some other kind of medium, instead of that old faithful pencil.

The beginning of the next chapter...

Today I sent off my Student Profile, which means I have officially begun Drawing 1: Start Drawing. My main aim for this course is to achieve a better grasp on drawing practice, and to really hone my skills. I want to be able to feel confident that what I am doing is constructive and effective. I would also like to be a little more relaxed in my initial approach to drawing and try not to reproach myself if a drawing is not what i consider 'good' or 'complete'. I understand that if I draw every day I will improve quickly and considerably. Now it's just about putting that notion into practice and proving it.