Exercise: A sketchbook walk

I took a stroll through the cemetery just a few minutes walk away from the family home. I thought it would make quite an interesting subject for landscape drawings -it's perched on a hill so you can often see into distant Bristol between the trees. I chose a nice looking old tree as my main subject and used a viewfinder to draw 4 views around it. The hardest aspect of the exercise was getting all the angles of the gravestones correct. There was a lot of information to take in and I had to remind myself halfway through that I was supposed to be sketching quickly - so I simplified parts of the sketches, for example I didn't draw the details of the leaves on the tree, or the soil and grass on the ground. I recognised various shapes that repeated throughout the drawings - rectangles predominantly, but also triangles and a few elipses of circular objects too. I used cross hatching to create tone, and took special care to focus on where light and shadow fell because it's these things that give your subject form. I took simple notes on all 4 drawings, mainly about the light, shadow and variety of tones. The 4th drawing is probably the best due to the position of the tree being central to the view so if I were to develop any of the drawings I'd probably choose this one.

Research point: Pentimenti

I'd never heard of this expression before, I think it's interesting that there is one. It's obviously a matter that art lovers/critics find important to recognise, perhaps because pentimenti makes us feel closer to the artist in a way - they are mere mortals afterall, just like us. Everyone makes mistakes, as 'they' say.

A good example that crops up a lot when researching the subject is Jan Van Eyck's portrait of Arnolfini and his wife, an amazing painting. You can quite clearly see that the painter has moved the position of the model's left foot, amongst other things.

Another example is Velazquez's portrait of King Philip of Spain where you can very clearly see that the musket was intially a lot longer. You can also see that his left leg has been moved inwards towards the other leg.

And another I found of Matisse's where you can see the artist has moved the man's arm and leg and painted over it. I understand that the artist was quite happy to show off where he had rectified his mistakes, to show that the process of painting is not always plain sailing.