Shopping and still life

I've had a very good day today, having managed to produce three decent drawings, finding some wonderful books in the charity shop and stocking up on sketchbooks at the art shop who conveniently have 25% off everything for the next few weeks.

My first endeavour was one I'd been thinking about all week. Having seen quite a few indian ink studies recently by fellow students, I thought it was about time I tried the medium, as I usually only use disposable drawing pens in terms of ink. I also chose to use a brush, which up until now I've avoided in case I got sidetracked into painting when I should be doing coursework!

I decided to follow up on the reflected light and shade exercise for this and placed two tankards side by side in the window.

I mixed up several strengths of ink in a palette before starting, and briefly sketched the outlines in pencil before inking. It took a while to get the right amount of ink and water on the brush, and it behaved rather like watercolour- a medium I dislike. It was only after i'd finished that I realised how wrong the left side of the left-hand tankard is, possibly because it had a fair amount of light bouncing onto it from the window and wall and I misjudged the profile. The most effective bit is the handle of the right-hand tankard, in fact, the other could have done with some stronger tones on the handle too. However, I was fairly pleased with it as a first effort in ink.

Changing track, I picked out some pieces of pot pourri and arranged them in a loose group. I wanted to practice concentrating on the outlines rather than on what I was drawing, and the only way to develop this technique is to do it over and over until it starts to become second nature. I can feel I'm getting better at it, and was pleasantly surprised how all the elements came out more or less as they looked and in their correct relative positions. (Especially the complicated woven twig ball!) I decided to shade in the shadows in order to anchor the pieces to the surface- they looked a bit abstract without them.

Next up was the shopping trip as I wanted some watercolour paper on which to work with my coloured pencils, and while we were in town I went to a couple of nearby charity shops to scout for useful still life accessories. One shop I find always seems to have a good selection of art books, and I was delighted to find a clearly laid out manual on drawing domestic animals, for a fraction of the price I would otherwise have had to pay.

Also, hidden away on the shelf, was a charming old cloth-bound book "Hints for Sketching Trees from Nature in Water Colours". It's a 16th edition of a guide published by George Rowney and Co, with no imprint page to tell the date of publication, but the catalogue pages in the back state that prices are correct as of April 1st 1919! A red sable brush, size 4, would have set you back 1s (that's 5p in today's money) although there is a rider that sable price was fluctuating. I particularly like the Victorian style of prose, complete with capitalisation of key words, and I'm also sure that some useful advice can be gleaned from it which is still relevant today. There are a number of charming sepia plates in it by way of illustration.

Having arrived back home somewhat lighter in the wallet than when I left, I returned to work with a dragon fruit and soon discovered that the shape was far more challenging than I had at first thought, eventually, after well over three hours, I managed to bring it to some sort of completion before I lost the remaining daylight.

Hopefully I may have enough time to do a colour study of this later this week. And yes- I realise I'm jumping forward into Assignment 2 areas! Watch this space...

TATE St IVES SUMMER 2011

(Please note- the images of the works shown are from Bridgeman and are representative of ones I saw, with the exception of the balloons and the writing on the wall where I was able to take my own photographs)

Ever since I saw this advertised on the Tate homepage, I wanted to see it, especially as we had visited the Simon Starling one early on in its allocated time, and it seemed like an eternity to wait for the re-hanging. (More on Simon Starling at a later time- I have copious notes and impressions of his work, and visited twice to familiarise myself with the completely new animal, to me, of installation art). However, for this latest exhibition, work, study and Geevor project commitments forced me to wait until now.

Although living 8 miles from St Ives, I have been an infrequent visitor to the gallery, preferring to spend my time in the town looking at current artists and their work. (Another topic for another post.) The first major exhibition I visited was the “Dark Monarch” one, which re-introduced me to my (cursory) knowledge of the “St Ives” artists, even though as a child I had met Heron, Hepworth and Leach -possibly others- in the course of my parents’ social and domestic round: in those days St Ives was a small community particularly in winter.

Anyway, enough reminiscing. I was intrigued at the thought of being able to see one artist per room- the gallery is so small compared to the other Tates that usually a cross-section on a theme is offered. I was distracted on the way up the stairs, however, by an abstract acrylic hanging on the landing which at first I took to be possibly a Heron, but proved to be by Breon O’Casey, an Irish artist who had worked as an assistant to Barbara Hepworth, among other jobs. It was a recent work from the last decade- he died in May this year- and I noted his use of relatively recently available red pigments and the fact he had raised the picture plane by glueing cardboard shapes prior to painting, reminding me of an artist in town (Colin Birchall) who has recently moved into abstraction with similar raised surfaces, although he uses thin pine plywood. A later search on Google found that Breon was a late developer in terms of finding his “voice” as he enjoyed playing with and developing ideas he saw in other work- a quick image search can easily identify echoes of Patrick Heron, Peter Lanyon and Roger Hilton in the work he produced.

In getting carried away by O’Casey I forgot to mention the neon installation in the foyer by Martin Creed “The whole world + the work = the whole world”. I really don’t get neon signs (especially words) as visual art as to me they belong in the realms of creative writing or poetry. Also here were 3 TVs showing a total of 3000 images of travel-brochure prettiness- I tried and failed to become engaged and my husband was already through the next door. Unfortunately anything shown in this space tends to be overshadowed by the spectacular stained glass of Patrick Heron’s window.

Room 1- Naum Gabo

Naum Gabo was a Russian émigré who arrived in St Ives in the 1940s with Nicholson and Hepworth (fleeing the effects of war in London). While I have seen some of his pieces before, what made the room special was the amount of sketches and work-in-progress pieces in the display cabinets which enabled me to understand how he played with whatever material was to hand, and experimented with new ones, in order to pursue his personal vision of space. Some of the prototypes for Spheric Form appear to have been constructed from cut-up tin cans.

 There were a number of technical diagrams relating to his stringing method, one of which amused both myself and my husband as we immediately recalled the preponderance of string and nail pictures which littered suburban homes in the 1970s and 80s- Gabo probably didn’t know what he had unleashed! I actually remember a whole shop on the harbour in the late 70s selling various boats, windmills and abstract patterns entirely made of wound thread around panel pins.

The most striking exhibits were Spheric Form, an elegant double curve of bronzed steel which proved frustratingly difficult to draw, and the Perspex and nylon string construction Linear Construction #2 (1970-1), hung pleasingly against a charcoal grey wall to show off its transparency, which shimmered across the room, in fact I wasn’t aware of the Perspex core until I was close to it.

Room 2 (Upper amphitheatre)- Lucio Fontana

Entry to this area always first leads you to what is below in the lower amphitheatre as the impulse is to look out to the sea and beach and then down. In this case it was (another) sea of balloons but I will come back to this later as we opted to see the “serious” art first. When I did finally turn around I was literally blown away by the brightly coloured, punctured and slashed surfaces. I have never encountered Fontana’s work before and it was a very exciting moment. There were a number of canvasses, some punctured with what he called “buchi”, others slashed with long linear gapes, others with a combination of puncture wounds with added sgraffito in the thick paint, and a cabinet with a pair of ceramic gold-glazed ovoids, one slashed, one punctured. I was fascinated, and leant as far forward as I could to scrutinise the surfaces and the interruptions to the picture plane. On the accompanying text was a quote; “people were talking about “planes”- making the hole was a radical gesture, which broke the space of the canvas as if to say “after this we can do what we like” .”

I was so intrigued that later I bought a book on his work. Although initially a sculptor, he integrated painting and sculpture in his pierced plane, and actually took his 20 of his early  pieces to the Venice Biennale in 1950 after being invited to participate for sculpture, which caused a suitably bemused response (“Fontana”, Barbara Hess, Taschen 2006 p8.)

I was also amused to read later in the same book that Fontana’s use of colour- many canvasses use bright, almost lurid pinks and yellows- was what he saw as pandering to the customer/viewer to give them something to look at. A way of softening the radical blow of his piercings perhaps? I must add that I have only skimmed the text so far and am looking forward to reading further, as I am getting the impression that Fontana had a wonderful and mischievous sense of humour in his interaction with the public (his reaction to the Biennale consternation was “I pulled the wool over their eyes”).

The Apse- Anri Sala

The small vestibule that is the Apse was darkened by curtains and today screened a short film “Ghost Games”. By torchlight, possibly two people chased ghost crabs on the sand, occasionally teasing them with toes, occasionally getting nipped in the process, and pronouncing “goal!” each time a crab scuttled between their legs. Periodically a wave would sweep in and re-arrange the theoretical playing field (usually by re-arranging where the crab was and requiring some searching by torch-beam for the next protagonist). Part of this was amusing, partly one wondered vaguely if the RSPCA had been informed, and partly one wondered who dreams up “hey, let’s go chase some crabs round the sand (at night with torches) and make a movie!” Not what I would call a deep and meaningful piece but unsettling and funny in equal parts.

Room 3- Margaret Mellis

I’ve seen some of Mellis’ work before as I was aware of her connection to the St Ives school through previous reading, and I was also curious to view her assemblage work when she moved to Southwold, a place I have strong and fond memories of from visits in my teenage years, when I lived on the Herts/Essex border and weekend camping trips to the East coast towns were common.

I really enjoyed the pieces on view, and sketched most of them. I loved her attitude to her finds that it was “too decorative to burn”. Although the simple rustic nature of driftwood assembly looks thrown together, I also appreciated the amount of decision-making which had gone into each and every placement- I especially liked “In the Night” (1993) which I hadn’t seen previously, which comprises variously weathered black-painted sections with one splash each of red and green- presumably for port and starboard – as I can see enough knowledgeable reference in her work to the ways of boats to guess at this. Another work was playful, titled “Jungle” (1996) it made use of a carved piece from a stern post and various broom handles and long thin pieces of lumber to conjure up totems, spears and palisades with ease. A piece such as “Red and Yellow”, while loving the colours used, had more abstract shapes and the title gave little indication to the route inwards to understand the piece, although having a recognisable section of ship’s rudder included.

On one wall were a number of collages which Margaret had produced in her St Ives days. Like Naum Gabo, I had the impression she had used whatever happened along, as some of them appeared to use writing paper and greaseproof paper in the layers, although to be fair the years, and possibly the adhesive used, have yellowed them so much it is difficult to be accurate. One piece she had made for Naum at his request- he later returned it to her. They are interesting but personally I much prefer her driftwood work as she has stronger shapes and colour in these.

Room 4- Agnes Martin

I was already aware that this was an American artist and therefore possibly somewhat disconnected in the overall theme, however I always try to approach a new work with an open mind. I was somewhat mollified to discover that an established artist also had apparent difficulty with laying on a smooth wash of acrylic when dilute- only one work displayed definite and intentional brushwork, but while the wall text enthused about the quality of lightness in the work I confess I was unmoved. Pale pinks and blues are definitely “twee” in my book. Or else emulate faded deckchairs- equally passé.

The lone contrast was a two-tone grey which seemed to have no relevance to the other works on show- it stood out like a sore and rather depressed thumb.

 My husband was extremely less charitable and muttered darkly about “5 minute bits of rubbish” at which point I found myself defending the probable journey the artist had gone through to distill her work to this point -entirely off the cuff as I know nothing about her life or work- (I occasionally face the same reaction to some of my abstract work particularly when he hasn’t seen, or understood, the process whereby it evolved into its final form). 

I have since done a little research into her life and work, and now begin to understand the largely Taoist philosophy which informed her.

There is a lovely interview with her on You-tube which a fellow student posted the link to- it is well worth watching here , where she talks about where her inspiration comes from.

Room 5- Roman Ondák

Mapping the Universe 2007 seen from the upper window by the cafe

This gallery space began life as a blank wall and over the course of the exhibition has undergone an amazing transformation as each visitor is asked to choose where to step against the wall, be measured, and have their name and the date written. Over time the wall has filled up and now has a definite “average” band over which new names are daily inscribed.

The experience of being invited to take part I found strangely overwhelming; the ego kicks in and the human asks: where do I go to stand out? I’m slightly taller than average but I could see that my head would be firmly in the darkest band whichever wall I chose, so eventually I chose a spot facing the door (consciously the fight-or-flight position). Even though the gallery assistant who wrote my name gave me a reference point from a taller name, I spent several minutes trying to find it again before taking a photo (cameras allowed in this room- a liberating experience for the Tate- although my name is lost in the massed hieroglyphs) My husband, interestingly, chose a spot beside the exit door, I haven’t yet asked him why.

(Editor's note- I finally (31-7-2011) got around to asking him and after considerable thought he decided that he always looked back in life to see where he had got to relative to the starting point, so looking back while adjacent to the exit was the equivalent)

What I found most interesting was on close-up examination of the photos that the remaining white space on the walls gives an interesting reversed negative space, something I’m going to examine more closely, plus playing with and inverting the few pictures I have.

Back to the balloons (Lower Amphitheatre)- Martin Creed

The premise of “Half a given space” is to fill each selected space exactly halfway with the contained air within balloons. This is not the first time Martin Creed has done this-  it’s been done in many locations world-wide, but it does give adults (and kids) a chance to play and interact in the biggest ball-pool you’re ever likely to get into.

On our first arrival at the top level, I took the opportunity to ask the curator what specific problems the installation had generated in terms of practical maintenance. She replied that it was currently down to about a third to a quarter of the space as they were waiting on new supplies of balloons from the American manufacturer-who was currently out of stock. (Later enquiries revealed that burst and deflated balloons required total replacement at the rate of once per week). In addition I learnt that the static created by the latex balloons grabbed hair and dust, so was a nightmare for the cleaners, and that special infra-red equipment had been brought in so that staff could check whether any living bodies remained under the balloons at closing time. (They didn’t mention dead ones!)

I also found it amusing to read possibly the longest Health and Safety warning I’d ever seen attached to an artwork before- involving the risks of latex (allergies), talcum (asthma), claustrophobia and general discombobulation. Not to mention a special fire rescue plan involving staff entering with ropes if the alarm went off- didn’t specify if they were going to use their infra-red equipment to check for hidden bodies. (All this of course in an area immediately above a trapped pool of radon gas in the undercroft- a fact made public thanks to a photographic work by Simon Starling in the previous exhibition.)

Anyway we took the plunge and entered- once again this was an area where we could use cameras so we both took a lot of joke shots of each other, played a little balloon basketball, and (by then the kid thing was upon us) fought our way to and fro in the morass of white, in between trying for arty shots between balloons of the outside world. What I found particularly funny was the reaction of the children in the area at the time, here was I having trouble stepping (er-shuffling) out without tripping up on a partly deflated balloon, and these kids were fearlessly charging up and down and only put out when they collided unexpectedly with an adult (they were mostly underneath the surface level so running blind)- the facial expressions were saying “why are you in our play-space?”. Didn’t become aware of a face-plant from any of ‘em.

Presently we became embroiled in an impromptu adult meet-and-greet; one of the visitors had dropped her mobile while filming. My husband volunteered to ring the number- to no avail, so the next few minutes entailed about six adults all swimming around on the floor fishing for a phone- amazingly it was eventually found intact despite several low fly-pasts by children during the search. (I’m supposed to check You-tube on Wednesday to see the results- as the phone was recording the whole time- and we all got a credit at the end!) P.S. the best search terms to use are “Tate St Ives Balloons”- plenty of people have uploaded their footage if you haven’t been lucky enough to get there yourself. I’m planning to go back and shoot some myself- hopefully when more balloons have arrived!

The whole experience proved to be social- I’m not naturally a person who makes contact with strangers, but I found it really easy to talk to people in the area.

As an addendum, we finished off our visit by having lunch in the café, which I can thoroughly recommend, while overlooking the historic rooftops of Porthmeor Studios, Alfred Wallis’ cottage, and old St Ives, and watching the fog drift in and back over the Island.

All in all I found this to be one of my best gallery visits so far. The strange thing was that the most impressionable piece was the Breon O’Casey, in that it is possible to rework other ideas until you find a definite direction calling. I also enjoyed discovering Fontana’s work, and I think the two are linked in relevance as I had got to a point in my painting practice where I wanted to move out of the flat picture plane without moving into full-on sculpture, but wasn’t sure how to approach it. I now have some ideas and a direction to research what might be possible, and also definite questions with which to engage other artists that I know, for their feedback and insight.

I still struggle with installation and interactive work, although I’m finding I do have an open-minded approach (which actually surprised me in the discovery). I do think that these types of work demand a specific and immediate emotional response which of the viewer’s necessity is limited to their experience to date. My advice to others finding new approaches for the first time would be- “question everything. Why do I feel this way? Do I like/dislike it? Why? Do I know where the artist is coming from? (If not, make a point of finding out- documentaries, interviews etc- all usually findable online).

I'm planning a second visit soon, as I also want to return to Barbara Hepworth's garden which I haven't visited for a couple of years, so I'll add any new insights in a later post.

Tate summer 2011 doodle

As I haven't actually done a big doodle yet I thought that my first impressions of the summer Tate St Ives exhibition would be a good subject to try and record.

So- there's a bit of everything here, from the Breon O'Casey on the stairs, Naum Gabo's wonderful studies and models, a Lucio Fontana (complete with an incised strip for authenticity), a Margaret Mellis assemblage, pastel stripes from Agnes Martin, and the black streaks on the lower left are a quick impression of Roman Ondak's Mapping the Universe work, which involves every visitor being measured against the wall and their name and date added. And of course Martin Creed's balloons nestling below the Porthmeor sea , the lichen covered rooftops, and the fog bank lurking offshore. Lastly, not forgetting Anri Sala's video Ghost Games, a torchlight game of tag with ghost crabs on the sand, shown in the darkened space of the Apse (have you found the crab yet?).

Actually I've seen so much today that I think this helped to put it in a manageable perspective, I'll be writing on my thoughts on each artist very soon.

Beachcombing finds

Well I'm back from the beach, and picked up a handful of things all with different textures, so sat down with my sketchbook this evening to draw them. I used a drawing pen only- no cheating this time with pencil guidelines!- and drew all the items at about one-and-a-quarter life size.

The piece of partly burnt rib was the most intricate as there are some incredibly detailed ridge and hollow formations, and I opted to try to suggest these rather than attempt to put every last detail in. The centre shell fragment was difficult too, as the striations were mostly bands of colour rather than surface texture.

Time to call it a night now, as I'm planning to wade through balloons at Tate St Ives tomorrow, as well as taking notes on the art...

Further reflections

I took the opportunity whilst shopping to grab a few interesting still life items from the supermarket, as although we have lots of clutter at home most of it is either too fussy in shape or heavily patterned, and not ideal for practicising the tonal exercises I'm working on at present. I found a black cereal bowl, a delightfully shaped plain white jug, and  a silver-finished ceramic bird objet. Having dumped them on the table in the studio I decided to draw them just as they were, looking down at them while working at the easel. I worked in charcoal on A2 paper, starting with a toned ground and used a plastic eraser to lift out highlights.

Having more reflective surfaces than the tankard I drew earlier this week, I found it much easier to distinguish between direct and reflected light, particularly the ones inside the bowl thrown by the silver bird. I had the most trouble with the handle of the jug, it still floats a bit above the surface, and I've also just seen that the ellipse of the neck is too flattened in comparison to the bowl. No doubt I'll improve as I draw it more often and become familiar with its shape.

I liked the bird so much that I thought it would be fun to draw it next to something coloured. There was an over-ripe mango in the kitchen so I put the two together and opted to work with my new conte pastels to see how they behaved. The paper is a grey shade of Murano.

 Scaling down from A2 to A4 paper threw me off a bit and the mango shadow has nearly fallen off the paper. I tried to remember not to overload the surface and build up thin layers, and also tried to resist the urge to blend each stroke to within an inch of its life!

I'm reasonably satisfied with the way the mango came out although the red-yellow divide line isn't correct for the foreshortened viewpoint. The highly reflective bird really needed more fine blending and building up of definite hard edges to show its surface quality but the reflections of the mango (and my purple shirt) do at least describe the shape.

Anyway, the sun's out, the tide's out, and I'm going to take a break and take my sketchbook off to the beach now.

Reflected light and shade

This has taken me a while to start as I couldn't find a suitable metallic surface, until I unearthed this tankard from the depths of the sideboard. I used charcoal on A2 paper and stood at the easel in order to have a higher sightline than previous drawings. I tried to use a putty rubber but have always found the crumbly nature of them difficult, and reverted to a plastic eraser to achieve the highlights.

I enjoy drawing reflective surfaces but I found it hard to categorise which was direct and which reflected light- I tend to study the shapes and then apply relative tone values. In hindsight I think I should have started on a toned surface, so I'll have another stab at this as soon as time allows.

Platonic solids 2

As promised here is the cross-hatched version of the platonic solids, using an 0.1mm sepia drawing pen.

I found it easier to decide on relative tonal strengths having the graded boxes above for reference. The light source was very close and I couldn't at first make out very subtle differences in the lit surfaces. Having been forced to wear my reading glasses while using the pen, I then discovered that as the objects were then just out of focus and it was easier to discern the very faint differences towards the edges of these areas.

Life/Still Life

OK. This is where it gets sad. Telfer is one of the family- even my husband talks to him- and he has a loyal following on FB (being an ordained priest of Dudeism and requiring much meditational time on duvet...) Anyway he's a stuffed dog (yes, mine-) and as he'd volunteered to be a life model I took him up on it.You'll probably see from the pics that he's well loved and has well-worn creases- he also poses beautifully (without breaks), and I needed to get over the ever-increasing stress build-up of drawing in the life module. Or still life in this case especially if there's a duvet handy!

On the plus side, I was pleasantly surprised at how far my observational skills have come on- these are all 5 min (if that) line sketches and reasonably accurately describe the pose and shape- so I actually feel a lot more confident about going into a life class or workshop and getting a positive experience from it.

Comments welcome provided not spam- he's getting an increasing amount of unsolicited stuff via FB and quite frankly it's getting a bit OTT!
Liz

Tonal study of Platonic solids

I've had these lying around courtesy of A&I magazine for a few months as an accessory to a tonal painting exercise. As I couldn't otherwise put my hands immediately on "simple shapes" I thought that these would get me started on the exercise.

I drew the double pyramid (octahedron) first, and used a lot of blended shading. As is obvious, I used more cross-hatching in the other dodecahedron. I had set them up on a white card base with a table lamp to give directional lighting to the right-hand side, and it was surprising to discover how much of a double shadow was created by having the light source so close. Not having much knowledge of what these shape's properties were they proved quite challenging to draw- I moved the dodecahedron from its original position in order to relate it to the double pyramid shadow as I found I couldn't get a sense of scale without this. After that I learned quite a lot about the relative measurements sighting various measurements with my pencil at arm's lenght, especially the common measurements which proved to be not (too) far out in the final accounting.

Later that evening I made myself use a drawing pen (and my glasses) to develop the required tonal range in cross-hatching- I haven't done it yet but will do the cross-hatched Platonics yet!

Quick sketch

This little chap (or chapess) came out of the hedge at work and climbed up the cow parsley to collect a floret of seeds. He looked so funny with the seeds so much bigger than his face, I drew him from memory when I went in, much to the amusement of my forklift driver!

Shopping still lfe

Having done the shopping early I had no excuse not to take some of my purchases and get on with the next exercise. I arranged them on a tray which was then put on a box on the table to raise the level up in relation to my working position.

I'm not fond of plain white paper so I lightly toned it with pale terracotta and naples yellow pastel blended with a paper towel, and applied fixative. This was a risky strategy as I had never worked on top of a fixed surface before so had no idea what problems I might have.

I didn't want the outlines to dominate as I was using colour, so I sketched in the main shapes lightly with a 2H pencil before pulling out my old watersoluble crayons (so old that I barely have the complete spectrum left among the survivors-which was to present its own challenge).

I worked up the different items in no particular order, starting with the bag of pasta, and leaving the ketchup till last as I knew that without a dark red or warm brown crayon I was going to find achieving the colour difficult. Eventually I layered up various reds, purples and browns, but needed something to unify it so had to change to a Ruby Earth pastel pencil. Likewise in order to get a good black tone I also used pastel.

The highlights on the box edges were lifted out with an eraser, but because of the ground colour I couldn't get a clean white, so used a couple of touches of white conte just on these areas.

My favourite bits of this picture are the bag of pasta, whose highly reflective surface made it very difficult to define shadow and light areas without a lot of squinting, and the lid of the jar, where the only two colours I had were yellow ochre and olive green, which I think produced a better result than if I had had the obvious choice of neutral warm grey-browns for the metal.

The weakest area is the top of the juice carton where the domed top proved difficult to get right- I over-judged the width ratio so it is a little bit wider than it actually is.

This is the first time for years I've used coloured pencils and I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed working with them, much more so than with pastel. I did realise that I had fallen into my old way of working and was being shy with the strength of tone, and I didn't have a burnisher to hand to work the colour into the surface which would have improved the appearance of the ketchup bottle's surface. Still, I've realised that I need to replace my old Caran d'Arche pencil set, so I'm off now for a little on-line retail therapy!

Variation on cylindrical objects

I'm probably getting a bit carried away with cylinders but my original intention with this was to use contour shading. Having drawn in the basic shapes in pencil I sent a pot of markers flying while hunting for my drawing pens (serendipity) and decided to go for a tonal treatment instead, as I have a graded set of 5 cool greys, with the black provided by a (self proclaimed) Manga brush pen- it's a Pentel goodie I picked up in my local art shop and has a true and very sensitive brush tip made of synthetic fibres- still getting used to it for drawing usage but the ink is the densest black I currently have.

Having decided to leave the labels and markings off all but the small round pot, which looked a bit bland without any, I really enjoyed doing this, so much so that my husband came to see why I wasn't downstairs watching the run-up to the British GP (The one sport I follow!)

Although there are some visible wobbles I'm quite pleased with this as a whole, and including the table with its angular shapes gives a nice contrast to the objects used. The wall pattern is invented just to break up the area- I've painted the studio matt white for maximum light.


(thought) I'm probably getting a bit ahead of myself in the assignment sequence- oops, back to the shopping still life.

The cylinder theme will be continued shortly, as while at work I remembered that an endless supply of differnet sizes are available from our label printing room (cardboard roll centres), and I have great ideas of stringing them up to form a still life after painting them white...so I robbed out the rubbish bag tonight, I always did have a thing for abstracting designs...although I may digress into sculpture in the process...maybe this can be carried forward to printmaking...

The end result from a long day

I was supposed to have gone to a life class today, however, due to having worked 50+ hours last week I was too tired today to be going anywhere. I also found it difficult to settle to anything and in desparation decided to go and draw the steps in our back courtyard to practice perpective, by way of a follow-up to the drawing of boxes. To shake myself up a bit I grabbed a silver metallic marker and a sheet of dark blue Murano paper.

I found the sloping sides of the old oil tank to the right to be quite a distraction in getting the step edges correct, and as I was using an indelible pen I had to really concentrate. I didn't quite get the upper steps right, and got carried away drawing the shelf of tiles that I forgot the doorway of the logshed bisected them.

Feeling rather dissatified I went back in to type up a commentary on a van Gogh drawing. Having done this, I began to look online for some further information about van Gogh's drawing techniques, and found myself on the website of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Their interactive kids zone included an online doodling app so inevitably I started to try it out. I find digital drawing difficult and frustrating, this only gave you 4 line widths and black, which I think simplified it no end. I produced a suggestion of a landscape- interestingly drawn with the mouse using my wrong hand- I use a mouse with the right hand but write and draw (mostly) with the left. I then noticed you could print out your mini masterpiece so here it is below.

Feeling rather more motivated at this point I went to try out a new set of conte pastels and produced a doodle which started to turn into a still life, though of eggs or loaves I'll leave you to decide. I worked on Murano paper which although it has a textured surface seemed to get saturated with pastel quite quickly, despite trying to apply it thinly in layers

At this point I was forced to abandon work as shopping, cooking and my son turning up unexpectedly used up the rest of the afternoon, and it wasn't until after dinner that I decided to tackle a subject I see every day- the saucepans lined up on the shelf above the range. As they're cylindrical they made a good subject for my next required exercise. I used a 3B pencil on cartridge paper.

They proved quite difficult particularly the ellipses at the bases, as some protrude over the shelf edge and others don't. Having established the basic shapes they looked quite bland until I had outlined some of the shadow and highlight areas on them.

By this point I really had the drawing jag going and went back to the studio as I realised that I had more than enough cylindrical shapes in there. I gathered up paint cans, masking tape, paint and mediums and arranged them on a table, adding a brush to unify the objects.

I decided they looked best in a square frame, and pencilled in the main shapes before inking with a disposable sepia indan ink pen.
I've left the arrangement as it is because I want to try a version using cross-hatching and contour shading. I also think its a nice group to practice negative space observation, so if the weather isn't kind enough to go out tomorrow I will have no excuse not to draw something!

Line drawing of box shapes

This exercise required a line drawing of a group of objects which were blocky in shape, so I assembled some books, two boxes, two vases and a box of ink. I soon had major difficulty in aligning the various items correctly in relation to each other and was not happy with the angles of the book edges as they do not appear to be sitting solidly on the box below.

In an attempt to loosen up I decided to draw the objects again by drawing the outline as a continous line first and adding some detail later. The horizontal line of the rear table edge threw me out so the bottom lines of the shape have been pushed upwards. However, I felt I had solved the lines of the books as they now appeared more connected to the other objects.

I realised that having set them up at the other end of the table they were actually too close to me, and the slightest change in my viewing position was significantly changing the perspective. I transferred all the items to a separate table further away and drew them again (below)

I spent much more time in this attempt at pencilling in the overall construction of each item as well as guidelines for their positions relative to each other. Having slightly changed their arrangement I had now removed the space between objects and found this a much more satisfying result.

I actually found this quite challenging as I haven't worked with these shapes for a long time, and struggled to remember the most basic rules of perspective. I am going to read through a couple of reference books and come back for another attempt shortly.

Glass bottles

I did this sketch over two mornings while getting my head together waking up. I have a collection of glass bottles on our bedroom windowsill which due to their mouldings have quite challenging shapes- the spiral in particular. This was done with a self-propelling pencil (claiims to be HB but has a pleasing dark tone while retaining fine lines) in my cartridge paper sketchbook. The amaryllis and its pot are not quite the correct proportions, and I will be drawing these bottles and the plant again until I achieve greater accuracy and tonal quality. I love the challenge that glass gives as it is both transparent and reflective, it is more challenging in colour (all the bottles are different colours) so I will probably have a go at it with full-spectrum media soon.