Tuesday 24 August 2010

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.

Tuesday 17 August 2010

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.

Wednesday 11 August 2010

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.

Thursday 5 August 2010

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.