ASSIGNMENT 5: OBSERVATION IN NATURE

Before I even read the brief for the Assignment 5 final piece I knew I wanted to achieve two things - 1. to produce something that was fun to create and not a chore, and 2. to leave alone the pencils and other delicate mark making tools. They might seem like obvious aims and you might wonder why I've even bothered pointing them out. But it's basically because I feel like throughout this course I've been trying to learn how to draw beautifully, and have had a (so far unfulfilled!) desire for someone to look at my drawings and say "Wow, that's amazing Fran" - but only recently have I learned that this desire is completely irrelevant if I haven't taken any personal enjoyment from the work I am producing. I've so often come to hate a drawing and its subject, and frankly I got fed up with that. So this assignment sees me letting go of any outside desire, and taking my work in a direction that was completely natural, unrestricted and with no particular end in sight.

I started by looking at other artists' depictions of the skull. Such variation! Some with a typical theme of death and mortality (theVanitas), some of a sinister and macabre scene, and some simply showing the skull in its natural environment as no more than an object. The designboom website has some great insight on the image of the skull and its meaning to us as a race http://www.designboom.com/history/death.html


This Vanitas by Philippe de Champaigne is fairly typical amongst its kind although the ordered composition is unusual. The Vanitas paintings always contained obects symbolic of time and mortality so the hourglass was common, as were flowers (with their tendency to be cut, popped in a vase and then wilt away) and more often than not the skull features heavily for obvious reasons. A cold reminder of the undeniable path for all of us.

Toulouse-Lautrec's representation of a bullfight had me gasping at how simple but honest and shocking it is. Such a pointless and atrocious sport that obviously sat heavily on the artist. It's a wonderful point he's making here - almost a Vanitas in itself - the fragility, and often futility, of life.

Above is a couple of Steven Gregory's Skulduggery skulls - beautifully crafted with real human skulls and precious stone or shell, and fitted with glass eyes. Frightenly sinister but with an air of ridiculousness about them I think - perhaps the over-embellished, bejewelled skull makes me laugh because it makes me think of how ridiclous we are in life when it comes to these vain adornments.

Adolphe Duvocelle clearly likes to give us nightmares with this creepy ghoul, like it's peering over you as you sleep. There's a real horrific appeal for artists to include eyes inside the skull's sockets. It's so frightening, you wouldn't want to gaze at it for too long or it really will make an appearance in your dreams.

 

Here the image of death is used in a propaganda poster to represent the threat of the Bolsheviks in Germany - a very real threat, and so the need for a powerful and frightening image was necessary. And what better than a skull.

 

'Albert Houthuesen's 'Yew tree and sheep's skull' is really quite beautiful. Simply set against a likely background, the skull loses any of its macabre symbolism and becomes a lowly natural object in its natural environment.






I gave this idea of a skull in its natural environment some thought. My Mum took some photos of dry stone walls in and around her garden in Cumbria for me - the first whole skull I ever found was a huge ram's skull, and I found it lying next to a dry stone wall in Cumbria. It seems natural for me to associate the two things.

I planned a composition to include the wall and my skull, with the idea that I'd be creating my own simple Vanitas.

I wanted to draw using my newly acquired drip-drawing method so had a practice run first. There is always an element of chance with this method, sometimes I made a complete mess of it and had to start over, but sometimes I was pleasantly surprised by the outcome. I painted a colour wash over my paper first and used oil pastel to add colour once the drip-drawn lines had dried.

And for my final drawing I was more careful over the composition - I shrunk my skull to a more realistic size (compared to the one in the preliminary pencil study above) and ensured there was a good wall to grass ratio. I used the torn paper collage method for the skull itself but found it was quite weak against the strong background of thick black line, so I used the drip-drawing to outline the skull hoping to bring to the two aspects together more successfully. The result is a vibrant representation of my skull in its natural environment - perhaps more of an illustration than an accurate drawing? The palette of colours in the dry stone wall have been accentuated to bring it to life. I didn't want to create a cold Vanitas reminding me of the sad inevitability of death. I wanted to create something warm and comforting - this may seem silly but we can't escape death, so why target the morbidity and misery of it when you can show it for what it really is - just a fact of life and not something to be afraid of.

Wow. What a fun assignment. I'm genuinly surprised by where it has taken me, and I've produced work that I didn't know was in me. I'm so accustomed to being literal with my work and so discovering that I can do and enjoy work that is unscrupulous and accidental in a way, is a wonderful surprise.

PART 5: OBSERVATION IN NATURE: Exercise: Torn paper collage

I really enjoyed this exercise - although it took forever! It's such a good way to 'draw' as it forces you to look so closely, and it's great that when you make a mistake you can just cover it up. There's something really blissful about working in this way for me - it's slow and deliberate but kind of messy, and sticky too - a good combination. I did the collage quite literally in a way - a direct representation of the different tones - without making it more abstract, because I felt the close up image itself was abstract (and elephant-y!) enough. It would be nice to incorporate some collage into my final drawing.

PART 5: OBSERVATION IN NATURE: Exercise: Looking closer

I focused on an area of my drawing with the most dramatic tonal differences, around the eye socket. I used oil pastel and acrylic paint for this blown up drawing on A1 paper. Weirdly (or not?) I found that this drawing took on it's own personality and began to look like something completely different - especially because I chose quite vivid, garish colours. There's something elephant-like about it, the boney brow perhaps, and the eye socket becoming an elephant's great ear. I was certainly surprised by this. I was aware beforehand that the drawing may take on a more abstract look but wasn't prepared for it to actually remind me of something in particular. It also made me think of Georgia O'Keefe's close up paintings of flowers...

... which then led me to find this by the amazing American artist... What a coincidence!



PART 5: OBSERVATION IN NATURE: Exercise: Introducing colour

I began this exercise by simply adding colour to the 'don't look down' line drawings with pastels. They work quite well I think. I did some with red ink and dip pen then used oil pastel while the ink was still slightly wet, which gave the skulls a really nasty, kind of monstrous look - like the skulls still had remnants of bloody flesh attached! This was a complete accident.

I moved on to do some studies of both my badger skull and the sheep skull with colour washes, charcoal and chalk pastel in my sketchbook, then a large scale colour study with oil pastel. I found the pastels in general excellent for the sorts of shades and textures I wanted to achieve. Again I placed my skulls on offcuts of slate, which seem to me a clear choice of surface for a skull to be seen with.

In some of the studies I found myself exaggerating the colours I found on the skull, accentuating the cold blues and purples, or the golden reflections of my lamp. It's not that I hadn't seen these colous and was just pulling them out of the air, they are all truly there - I just found that exaggerating them slightly gave the skulls a lease of life that they seem to be missing in the cold light of day.

PART 5: OBSERVATION IN NATURE: Exercise: Tonal Study

For this study I chose to use pencils as I thought they would be the most appropriate medium for a tonal drawing. I used a hatching technique throughout but once I was happy that the drawing was complete I used a finger to rub areas of hatching so that those areas became less graduated and more shaded. In my earlier studies of natural objects I had drawn a pine cone held in my hand and I thought it was quite a nice touch, so I tried that again. Something about the skull being held like that gives the drawing a certain power that without the hand and outstretched arm, I'm not sure it would have... A personal opinion anyway, I don't know if anyone else would necessarily agree! Drawing on such a large scale (A2 paper) was excellent for really looking hard for those differing tonal values and noticing every little nook, cranny and blemish on my skull. It was quite a leap to do this drawing from the simple line drip-drawings I'd been doing previously, but it was a welcome change as it made me revisit the skull in a way I might have been overlooking for a wee while, caught up in the fun of making a mess (...or experimenting rather...)!

PART 5: OBSERVATION IN NATURE: Research Point: Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Charles Rennie Mackintosh is a household name for anyone who has an appreciation for beautiful design. He studied at the Glasgow School of Art and became successful in his endeavours right from the beginning, frequently winning awards and competitions. It's probably safe to say his architecture and furniture designs are the most well known - the familiar straight lines accompanied by pretty rounded roses here and there - but he had to start somewhere and it was with his brilliant ability to draw and paint that kicked started his career.

Beautiful and delicate, his simple line drawings with watercolour were a major indicator of how far Mackintosh could go with his work. No fussing over any unnecessary detail, he focused on the line, the shape and colours, the overall design of his subject.

Mackintosh used his ability to draw in this unique way to design and make an abundance of gems in the architecture, textile and interior design fields - and was incredibly successful throughout his career.

PART 5: OBSERVATION IN NATURE: Exercise: Line Drawing

I thoroughly enjoyed this exercise, as I thought I might. I remember doing it at Bristol UWE when I did my foundation course but we had to draw the person opposite, with hilarious results. It certainly worked at loosening me up and helped me become familiar with my subject in a totally different way to what I am used to. You have to really trust your eyes and observational skill. Looking down even once feels like you're cheating! It gets easier the more you practice, as with all things.

One thing I noticed was that because of my subject - the skull - the drawings started to take on something that reminded me of illustrator Ralph Steadman, who's work I have always admired for being so grotesque and sinister, and often with a humourous or at least satirical quality. Below is his illustration for the Weekend Magazine, "I wouldn't be seen dead in a seal fur coat".

Something about the scruffy ink and macabre subject of my drawings made me think of Steadman and look back at some of his work. His drawings seem to me like a snapshot of some horrible thought or image in his head he might have had, one like any of us might have but we brush away and force it out of our minds - but he just turns those horrible thoughts into works or art. Brilliant I think.

After this exercise I began basically messing about a bit (or experimenting if you like) and moved out of my sketchbook and onto large paper, which in the most part I covered with a colour wash. I did a drawing in the style of Steadman, and then decided I'd try something I'd never tried before - mixing acrylic paint and PVA and literally squeezing or dripping onto the paper. It was good fun but also produced some interesting line drawings too, some of them retaining the grotesque label associated with the skull, and some ending up simply looking more abstract and almost jolly... It's pretty tricky to direct where your line goes, and can sometimes end quite disastrously but almost always ended up being at the very least a decent representation of a skull, and at the most, being an exciting, decorative and fun drawing.



PART 5: OBSERVATION IN NATURE: Exercise: Different angles

I drew the sheep skull from 4 different angles while it sat on a slab of slate (my boyfriend aquires bits and bobs through his work, quite handily for me!). I used a range of pencils and 2 differing types of paper - later learning that sugar paper is not a great surface for drawing on with pencil because it rubs off easily and is actually just quite difficult to see... I focused mainly on the varying tones on the skull and only really noticed afterwards that this skull has so many interesting shapes to it with just a slight alteration to its angle. From some viewpoints and once drawn onto paper in 2D, it's almost unrecognisable as a skull - perhaps an advantage for a more abstract direction but not so great if you want the viewer to understand what it is you are drawing. I suppose what struck me most during this exercise is how grotesque this skull is - and I know it is only grotesque by association, because I know it belonged to a living animal that died, then decomposed and left behind this only remnant of its life. But even so, the teeth and the hollow of the eye socket is macabre. The image of a skull is macabre and there's no escaping it. Or is there? I guess I'll find out.

PART 5: OBSERVATION IN NATURE

I chose to go back to observation in nature for my final assignment. I really want to discover and develop what interests me about certain natural objects - what exactly is it about them that interests me and where can I take this? I have a small collection of animal skulls and bones that I've been looking at and I'm hoping to create some interesting work with them. For as long as I can remember I've had a slightly morbid fascination for dead things but particularly the bones that they leave behind. Bones, and skulls especially carry a lot of significance - death and mortality, but also if you want to look on the brighter side, a connection or unity between all natural things.

For the first exercise, 'Draw and Select', I started by drawing some objects I hadn't drawn in the previous natural observation assignment. I was particularly interested in the shapes of the large sheep's skull, but also found drawing the pine cones and decaying leaves a real pleasure to draw too. The fragility of the leaves went well together with water soluble pencil and watercolour paint, and the repetitive patterned pine cones were replicated, I think, most successfully with ball point pen. I also drew a collection of snail shells that a friend picked up for me from a beach in Cornwall - such a huge variety of colour and pattern in objects so small, the sort of thing people would walk right passed without even looking twice. Luckily my friend knew I'd be interested in them.

What struck me whilst doing these drawings (particularly with the skulls and bones and the maple leaf) was that I really enjoyed doing the quick sketchy observations. I think in the past I've had a tendency to spend hours on the same drawing, painstakingly attempting to get all the detail precise and meanwhile losing interest in the object and forgetting the point of the drawing in the first place. I really want to escape from this trap. I'm beginning to understand that it isn't a direct imitation of an object that makes a good drawing, however precise it may be - it's the essence of the object that's important, and it's finding a personal meaning or point behind it that makes a good drawing.

There's a lot of routes down which I can take these first drawings - more studies of the changing Autumnal leaves, some decorative studies of snail shell pattern, more intricate studies of pine cones, etc - but by far the most interesting objects in my collection is the skulls, and what an object to begin a project with! I'm really looking forward to the Line Drawing project ahead because I think this will help me loosen up and become more experimental.

Really interesting stuff... (click on me)

I found this article about the Art by Offenders show on the We Are OCA website  - I'm going to try and get to the exhibition next month when I'm in London. It should be really interesting... And maybe it will plant some interesting thoughts/discussion about Art Therapy (which is what I'd like to study once I've got my degree).

ASSIGNMENT 4

1; Line and shape

I chose myself as a model - I have to say that I think finding a friend or family member happy to pose for such a lengthy amount of time (2 hours just for the final drawing, not including breaks!) is a bit unlikely and if they do agree, a bit cruel - but fortunately I am always readily available. Although, I did come across some practical difficulties using myself as a model, like not being able to measure myself to get proportions accurate while looking at myself in the mirror, and my arm getting in the way of seeing myself while trying to do so!

I really wanted to make this drawing personal - I was drawing me after all. A lot of the self portraits I looked at by other artists really inspired me - particularly the kind invoking a feeling of our mortality, or where the artist has involved something of importance to them in the background. I allowed myself to indulge a bit in memories of recent life-changing misfortunes and tried to somehow incorporate these emotions into my drawing. To me, I think it worked, but if you merely looked at the drawing without knowing me and what it was about, then I think you might believe it's a bit dull. And that's not to say there's not enough to it - in fact I think it may be a tad overworked, mainly because of the torn paper surface - is it a bit distracting? The idea behind the drawing was being watched over by my Dad, being kept in check in a way whilst I work at being 'creative'. There's something quite sad in my expression, which makes sense but I admit was not a conscious thing, it just ended up looking like that when I stepped back from the drawing.

The pose looks a bit awkward, and it bloody well was in all honesty after sitting there for several hours. Sadly I had to cut off the lower part of the drawing, partly because I made a mess of my toes, but also it looked too busy with my foot and all those stool legs so in a way I was happy to see it go. However, I do think the composition could have done with something... despite all the preliminary sketches. It was a bit tricky getting the painting on the wall and myself in the mirror at the same time. And also should I have painted the wall behind a different colour wash to make it look more distant?

2; Tone

Again, I used myself as a model. I began by thinking about ways in which I'd never seen myself, or personality traits that aren't naturally linked to me.  Started thinking along the lines of vulnerable and meek, or sexually overt, strongly opinionated and vocal, etc, but then thought quite simply that I'd never actually seen myself asleep! I took some photos of me on my bed, with a direct light source, so lots of light and shadow. I took many and changed the pose every time. The most interesting pose and the one I chose to expand on was one where I am clutching my feet but because of the large amount of shadow, all you can really see is me as a triangular shape, almost curled up but not quite.

I did some preliminary sketches and thought only about my form and how the differing tones shape me in the photo. I didn't delve too far into any meaning behind the drawing this time, I just wanted an interesting drawing with plentiful tonal values.

I really liked the way parts of my body are out of shot, it keeps the composition simple. In the end I chose two colours (yellow ocre and burnt umber - I wanted to keep the almost golden tones captured in the photo)) and used acrylic paint. I mixed the yellow ocre with some white to make the lighter tones, and mixed the yellow with the burnt umber for the darker.

I think it's a more succesful drawing/painting than the line and form drawing which I think I inadvertently overcomplicated. There's definitely something about keeping it simple sometimes.

PART FOUR: DRAWING FIGURES: Project:The moving figure

I've been working on the moving figure project here and there throughout Part 4 - there have been good days and bad. My local park is a good source for people, it being a popular park and also thankfully the summer holidays at the moment but saying that, children are really hard to draw because they just don't stop! I took my little sketchbook to WOMAD festival and managed a few quick sketches there - lots of interesting people to watch, much stiller than children in the park, and crowds gathered together becoming a mass as opposed to individuals. I tried to draw from people off the TV one morning but had trouble with that - I think not being able to see their body as a whole moving this way and that made it quite tricky to make a decent imitation of their movements. Cafes are good places to draw I found - people sat at tables chatting away or walking by in their own worlds.

The main challenge in drawing people as they move so swiftly is trying to gain an idea of their actions and gestures in as few strokes as possible. In some drawings I managed this well, in others not so well. I did quite a few drawings of people on or pushing their bicycles, and just indicating the bike itself by drawing the round shape of a wheel helped to indicate what the individual was doing. I'm always tempted to introduce more elements into these drawings, as opposed to keeping it simple with a few descriptive lines, and this can be a problem with such little time. I always found that I'd start with the person's top half of the body, usually the head, and by the time I'd got to their legs or feet, they'd moved on, walked past or the angle had completely changed, so this produced some pretty hilarious looking legs! Or no legs at all. I seem to want to encapsulate something about that person, not just the movement they're making, for example the way they hang their head, their glasses or the fact they're rummaging around in their bag, or on the phone. Catching the moment is clearly something that is important to me, and focusing on that helps to explain the narrative. It's a fun past time even if it doesn't produce any amazing drawings.

PART FOUR: DRAWING FIGURES: Project: Self Portraits

In terms of drawing materials and best results, I think ball point pen was pretty successful for my own self portraits, but pencil was almost on a par. The ball point pen enables you to get fine features quite accurate, like the shape of the lips or nostrils. The pencil is good for getting overall tone and therefore creating a more three dimensional look.

The first self portrait I did in soft pencil - does it look like me? Kind of! There are aspects of all three that look like me, and aspects that aren't right at all. In the first my face looks too narrow at the chin area and my hair too short. The second portrait I decided to do looking down my nose at myself which was an interesting angle and actually quite tricky, but out of all three it probably looks most like me... I noticed while doing these portraits that I purse my lips when I'm drawing, something I was not aware of at all until now! The third portrait I did for fun more than anything - I wanted to see how I would cope with pen and ink. It's not as dramatic or telling as it could be and the eyes are too large, but like I said before there are aspects of it that are fairly accurate - like the shape of my hair around my face and those ridiculous pursed lips!

I asked my boyfriend Paul to comment on the three drawings - he agreed with me that the second drawing (the one looking down my nose) looked most like me but said my features looked a little too pinched. The third drawing he said looked like a haggard me in 40 years! But he said it might be because of the way I've hatched with the pen ink - it looks like wrinkly skin. The first drawing we both realised together that there is too much face and not enough head - I added a little more to the drawing while we talked and already it looked far more realistic. See below.

The preliminary drawings were more helpful than I could have imagined, and really urged me to be a bit more experimental - I think I need to let go of my fear of producing something s**t and just go for it. The sketches in my sketchbook pave the way for feeling freer with the larger scale work. They enable you to take those scrappy bits of ideas and details and turn them into something more interesting. (This idea, I know, still needs work and I'm determined to come out of my shell...)

The portrait from memory was unbelievably hard! I was shocked by how difficult it was to remember the features of my long term boyfriend who's face I see every day! It took several sketches to get those features anyway nearly there and even then the 'finished' portrait is still not Paul... But it's a really interesting exercise because it teaches you to dive into your imagination, and not rely on what simply is front of you. (I just hope Paul never sees his portrait or he'll surely cry!)

PART FOUR: PROJECT: SELF PORTRAIT: Research Point

Like I mentioned earlier, I've been reading the National Portrait Gallery Insights book on Self Portraits by Liz Rideal. The most interesting bits for me were the explanations or interpretations of the artists' self portraits - vanity, self-promotion, self-mockery, self-discovery, etc. I'm interested in the idea that, in a self portrait you can be whoever you want to be, as well as who you truly are. There are so many possibilities.

Above, a very self-deprecatory self portrait of Edward Lear aged 73 with his cat. He was clearly OK with mocking himself, no need for fancy adornments...

Helen Chadwick's self portrait brings into focus the vanity of the artist. The feathers, the drapes and the naked breasts are all symbolic of self promotion and a showy nature, and the way she looks directly at herself in the mirror reminds us of the narcisist in many or all of us. But is this a kind of self mockery too...? Is she being tongue in cheek?

This is Rembrandt's depiction of himself as a young man - it's honest and simple, and in it you can see the older well known face he became.

I've never heard of Tara Mueller before but I found this while 'googling' - it's on her blog - and I thought it was great. It has humour as well as something of a 50s horror movie about it - really clever. You get a sense of the sort of person she might be - talented, but able to laugh at herself perhaps?

I really admire Freud's honest but intense painting style, he doesn't mess about.

I discovered this Jane Lewis portrait on Bridgeman Education and it caught my eye - not especially because it's an amazing painting in my opinion, but because of the repitition of circular shapes throughout - it's really nicely composed.

The book I mention above talks of the word 'vanitas', the Latin term associated with a fashionable genre of still lifes in the Netherlands in the 16th Century depicting in short, our mortality. It's a subject that everyone can relate to. I'd be interested in exploring this concept, having lost my father last year - especially as I think of him a lot when I think of creativity and my attempts at strengthening my own, because he was an artist and sculptor as well as a free spirit. It was effortless for him.