Ben Nicholson and his still life pictures

 

Ben Nicholson had little natural drawing ability, and was pushed toward the study of art largely because his parents could not comprehend that he had not inherited their own talents. Finding himself enrolled at the Slade, he frequently bunked off classes with his friend Paul Nash, also a (self-confessed) draughtsman of ineptitude. Often they would play billiards at the Gower Hotel, where he later attributed the colours and forms of the balls as being an important factor in his road towards abstraction. His sole offering for the Slade’s in-house exhibition was a striped jug, and he left the school the following year.

In 1924, after his first forays into pure abstraction, he returned for a time to the humble jug and mug, which he painted in silhouette, with one or the other form competing for dominance in the space. These were much admired by Jim Ede, then assistant to the Director at the Tate, who as a result obtained several works either gifted by Ben or at a knockdown price.

The chance meeting with Alfred Wallis in 1928 was to have a profound effect on Ben’s approach to landscape, and later that year his painting 1928 (Porthmeor Beach, St Ives) included an architectural feature on the right-hand side (which Checkland construes as a gable end, but is more probably one of the dominant three arches in the pier at St Ives).

The picture is clearly painted over another image giving it additional depth, and is generally regarded as the precursor of these layered landscape/still life works.

Ben’s collection of mugs, jugs and jars was precious to him and travelled with him throughout his various homes during his life. Drawings of these are often simple outlines, often overlapping each other, superimposed onto an abstract background which sometimes have elements of landscape in them. He developed a signature fusion of abstract and realism during the war years, when there was no market for progressive “Modernist” art, and often portrayed views over rooftops and out of upper windows, a device he had previously seen in Cubism, combined with still life groupings in the foreground.

The works showing a more realistic and definite landscape setting he referred to as his “pot boilers”, or “Cornish best-selling schemes”, terms which were designed to indicate how contemptuous he was of the need to be so commercial, and they were produced purely from the need to bring some money in during the early years of his relationship with Barbara Hepworth, who had little time to work herself as she was exhausted from looking after the triplets and in poor health as a result.

Possibly the most prolific output happened in February 1945, when, having secured scholarship funding for the triplets to Dartington Hall in Devon, the pressure was on to raise the necessary balance, and he completed twelve paintings in just ten days, of “fishing boats and flags on mugs and still life generally”. These include the well-known images including Union Jacks, which are often erroneously attributed to a celebration of the end of the war in Europe, although in fact most were painted before VE day.

The series ranges from 1944 with works such as Carnstabba Farm (above), a relatively conventional view, to the late 1950s, e.g. August 1956 (boutique fantasque), in which the background has been reduced to fields of colour only suggestive of the landscape. In between, the landscape sits at varying degrees of tension with the still life elements, a particular example being November 11-47 (Mousehole) (shown below) where the realism of the scenery is at odds with the lopsided panel of still life shapes in the right foreground, and at the other end of the scale the later work 1959 Argolis, painted in Greece, synthesises the tabletop with the sky and sea completely.

 

While Ben himself clearly had a low view of what he achieved in these paintings, moving away from his ideal of total, pure abstraction, there is no doubt that he inadvertently hit on a unique pictorial style, one which has become as recognisable, if not more so, than the White Reliefs with which he first shook the world of 20^th century art.

Lost in Negative Space

Note- this exercise is severely out of sequence in the assignment; despite being a trained horticulturalist my ability to kill pot plants is legendary, so having found the perfect specimen I really needed to seize the moment.
On another note, my main camera has died and the photos here are taken on my back-up compact camera, apologies for the inferior quality.

Amid the instructions for this exercise was this rider: "you may need to add enough lines to make the image readable to the viewer". Well, I know a challenge when I see one so was determined to find a plant which would not require extra "readability". I finally settled on a schefflera, as it has plenty of gaps through the foliage and a complex and challenging shape where the leaves interlace. My initial outline was done in pencil and gone over with drawing pen. I drew in the back of the table to anchor the image to the frame.

Having achieved a reasonable image on my first attempt, I was itching to colour it in. I traced off a couple of outlines onto marker paper to play with. On the first of these, I began to fill in the negative spaces in black ink, starting with the internal shapes. When I ran out of these I realised that the way they were disposed across the page made for an interesting dynamic shape, so I opted not to fill in the remaining background. (Or maybe I've just been drawing too many shells; the shape is suggestive of the central spiral in a whelk)

Next I fetched out the markers and quckly chose a series of pastel shades to scrawl across the area of the plant, before shading the background in a darker tone.

By this time I was throughly enjoying chasing down the many design possibilities in the drawing, and began thinking in terms of printmaking; the silhouette would be equally adaptable as either linocut or silkscreen. I opted to draw a monochrome version cropped through with a trapezoid shape for the background; I was also exploring the lengths to which I could crop or abstract the image before it lost its readability.

I had slightly adapted the shape in this one to improve the line- I had removed the supporting bamboo stick and drew in the base of the stem to give a clean finish to the bottom.

A couple of days later, having had time to think up new approaches, I decided to abstract two sections onto a circle, layering them and applying tone to identify them. I drew my circle onto tracing paper and began with the top section, moving the frame around until I was happy with the intersection around the rim.
For the second layer, I moved the paper over the lower set of leaves and aligned it so that the stem section lined up with what was already drawn, as I didn't want a second stem showing. I changed to a brown drawing pen to be able to identify which lines belonged to which layer, even so it rapidly became a confusing mass of lines, and I had little choice but to colour it in to make visual sense again.

To avoid having outlines on the final version, I traced the design through to a flesh tinted card with an embossing tool, using enough pressure to give a clear outline which could be seen in raking light, before colouring it in.

Sadly the spare camera's software didn't like the colours I used, and the picture doesn't really show how well it worked. If I wasn't a total klutz with image software, I'd happily scan and mask it for flat areas of colour and the ability to try out lots of colourways in a shorter time span. However, I think a week is enough time spent on this exercise for now, and it's time to get back on track and find out where I put my half-finished stipple drawing...

Observing detail in natural objects

Having finally posted off my first assignment to my tutor, and having unpacked from my holiday in Wales, I thought it would be a good time to complete a couple of exercises for the next assignment using objects I had collected on my travels. I had picked up a good selection of driftwood one rainy afternoon at Port Eynon, and picking over it discovered a really knotty piece of what I think is sea pink (thrift) root. It really begged to be drawn in line so was perfect for the brief I had.

I found that having spent ten days using primarily pen in my sketching I was much more confident in using it here, although I did begin by lightly sketching the main shape in pencil in order to fit it on the page.

I think it would be interesting to draw this with tone, as the scale and detail would force me to maintain good points on my pencils- a practice I am notoriously lazy at!

Encouraged by my first effort, I turned to the shells and selected a mussel which had some barnacles attached. I couldn't decide which angle to draw it from, and remembered I had picked up some of the flat soft brown seaweed which looks like a type of soft coral, and having located it (still in my raincoat pocket), chose to arrange it with the shell.

I wanted to fill the page with it so drew a frame and used a perspective viewer to place the objects so that the top of the seaweed and the cast shadow reached the edge of the frame. I started with a line sketch before building up the tone. The shell had the darkest areas so I worked that up first before starting the weed.

I actually struggled to keep going on this, and it took two half-days to complete. I used 3B and 9B pencils, and an F which I found worked well for minor burnishing on detail areas. The cartridge paper I used was medium surface, and I think I could have achieved a better finish on the cast shadow if I had had smoother paper- unfortunately my local art shop is in the process of closing down and had no paper in stock.

Next up I think I need to try stippling- a technique I rarely use as it takes too long, and my eyesight suffers for it, however some of the shells I have will probably be very effective if drawn this way to highlight their surface textures.

Just add water!

I've been intrigued by Derwent's new Inktense products, so today I bought some to see how they handle. Originally intending to buy the 24 block set, this proved to be sold out so I bought the 6 pencil blister pack (red, yellow, green, blue, violet and black) and 3 blocks in sea blue, indigo and bark (sepia). I also got the grippers as handling them in the shop I could see they were readily staining my fingers.

On the way home I stopped at the farm shop and discovered a big basket of squashes, which seemed perfect for a trial subject, and once back in the studio I arranged them with an old wicker market pannier on a table. I didn't have any hessian but draped a sheet over the surface to give some background interest.

I fixed up a sheet of A1 cartridge paper on the easel and used the sepia coloured block to make the initial drawing. I found I needed two grippers on the block otherwise the exposed end was really staining my palm. They have an interesting texture, not quite waxy, slightly like a chinagraph pencil but less sticky, and I needed to go over lines to bring up the tone at the drawing stage.

Next I started to wash over the marks with a large watercolour brush. At this point I discovered how intense the pigment actually is, and in future I'll be using it a lot more sparingly in each layer.

I achieved the basket weave by broad downward strokes followed by horizontal lines in between with a round brush- I quite liked the result and didn't want to make it too fussy.

Next I got to put some colour in. By now aware of how strong the pigment was, I applied it much more thinly, and although only using red, yellow and green for most of the fruit- with a touch of blue on the pale green pumpkin- found it made a nice range of orangey-reds and greens. The brush does pick up a lot of pigment though, and needs to be cleaned almost every stroke to avoid muddy mixing. Another point to note is that any undissolved pigment from a layer will of course disolve when working on the second, which is not always desirable. I found that I could sufficiently erase left-over areas with a plastic eraser to remove the unwanted colour.

Another thing I found was that the drying time was surprisingly quick, so on larger areas you don't have much time to get an even layer of water without using too much. I work with acrylic paint, which I think was a bonus, as unlike watercolour Inktense is permanent once dry. I found that a layer of indigo over the original sepia produced a wonderfully vibrant almost-black in the shadows between the fruit.

Having got to this stage I now needed to decide how to crop the image, as there was far too much background, and eventually, after much laying of sheets of paper over parts of the page, went for a square approximately 50cm each way.

Having altered the format of the picture plane I spent some time looking at where I needed to do more, including looking at it in the mirror. I decided I needed a little more in the way of shadows to ground the basket onto the surface, so I added more indigo to the top left edge and defined the right side of the basket. I pulled this area past and below the stalk of the foreground squash to tie it in to the composition. The final version is below.

I really enjoyed using these, finding it a nice halfway point between drawing and painting. Some of the darker colours look very black when drawn on the surface, and adding water reminds me of the magic painting books we used to have as children. I'll certainly be investing in more, I especially like the permanent nature of the dissolved pigment, and it can be overworked with just about any media which makes the possibilities almost endless.

Inktense are also recommended for use on silk, and I'm curious to find out how well they'll work, especially as I used to find colours dulled when fixing with an iron, and these are permanent when dry, so I'm hoping for vibrant results. Now I just need to find where my silk and stretcher frames are...I'll let you know how I get on.

Loosening up with Squash and Leeks

After spending two days working in very controlled media I needed to work in a much looser way to prevent my work getting "tight". I arranged a couple of squashes in various positions and at different heights. I abandoned the marrow early on but would have preferred to have three or even five squashes to play with- I might buy some more next shopping trip. With only two items there were a limited number of arrangements possible, and I decided that the best approach would be to show an interesting cast shadow and reflected light.

I worked in Copic marker on bleedproof A3 paper, selecting a square frame to best fit the subject. As marker ink takes a few minutes to dry I needed to add some adjustments to the shadows after I had reached what I considered to be a finished stage. In my sketchbook thumbnail I had used a graduation in the background to contrast with the light and dark edges of the fruit, however having laid in the overall blue-violet colour I found it had the right hue and tone without further layers.

I also felt that I had achieved a quite painterly effect with the layered strokes of ink. While I initially struggled with these permanent markers I'm finding I use them increasingly, although they do bleed alarmingly through cartridge paper and I now use a sheet of acetate under the sketchbook page to prevent other pages being stained- a device which has also proved useful to prevent transfer of soft pencil and graphite marks between pages- the acetate doesn't pick up residue, is thick enough to withstand a fair amount of pencil pressure, and can also be used to rest my hand on on the surface where it doesn't block part of the drawing from view which a scrap piece of paper would.

I then changed to ordinary water-soluble markers and did a quick study of some leeks- time was going on and they were destined for our dinner, so I wanted to draw them at least once. I used an olive and a gray-blue colour, the olive was nearly running out which gave some interesting results in the shading!

I liked the overlapping shapes and was sorry I didn't have enough time to do more work with them, this five minute sketch was all I could manage.

Tutti Frutti textures

I jumped slightly ahead in the coursework in order to do this still life with a range of interesting fruit, due mainly because I have limited time to work usually and I know working with coloured pencil is time-consuming. For the same reason I didn't spend time drawing thumbnails but made the compositional decisions quickly in my head- which did eventually lead to areas which didn't work effectively.

The piece took about eight hours in total because of the need to build up colour in layers. While I was pleased with the overall result, there are some noticeable issues.

The backgound was too bland so I drew in the shape of the kitchen hatch behind, only to realise that closed doors would seriously affect the lighting, so converted them to a window, which should have had much stronger tonal contrast with the bright light. The wall also needed to be darker, especially under the window and to define the edge of the table. Also the piece of ginger has a shadow thrown by the watermelon across it which has got rather lost as I struggled to blend a convincing overall colour on the surface. There is quite a lot of white still visible in the shadow- the cartridge paper I used has a more pronounced surface than my usual choice and without blending or stumping the entire area I couldn't get the pigment far enough into the paper, and I chose not to stump as I felt it would become rather flat and overworked.

I felt the more sucessful areas were the highlight on the watermelon and the texture of the Galia melon- for this I used a series of random marks in two tones to suggest rather than define the cracked surface. I alo felt that the pink grapefruit flesh was moderately successful in indicating the juicy cut surface although I would have liked to retain more small sharp highlights where the light glinted across the surface.

Hocus Pocus

For this exercise I wanted to try and group a more coherent theme using my favourite glass bottle, and after an hour of ransacking the house for long-lost items put together a collection loosely based on a Magikal theme. I couldn't find an old book until my husband trawled up a wonderful early Victorian album of his grandmothers.

I started with a fairly conventional viewpoint and played around adding and taking away various items (1). On the second study, as my objects had fallen off the edge, I briefly played with the potential of doing this deliberately, with the vague concept of reaching through the veil between the worlds (2). I took a much higher viewpoint which put the composition into a triangular frame, which I really liked, although the pestle and mortar didn't seem to fit (3).

In the interests of experimentation I fetched a besom and a long scarf of a similar blue to the bottle to try and elongate the picture frame(4). I thought this had possibilities but I was working in a limited area in the window. I had one hook above from which to suspend the scarf (there is no curtain rail in here) and the besom had to be wedged awkwardly and appeared to be too large an item. Rearranging the objects tended to block any light from the crystal ball which I felt should be a main focus of the composition.

I added a glass goblet and tried another sketch (5), but returning to a more ordinary viewpoint was not very satisfying after the dynamic ones I'd been developing. I decided that the third, triangular one had the best potential for further work but used the goblet rather than the pestle. My final sketch was to put the objects and the triangle against a dark background to see how that could affect their appearance.

I really enjoyed working with this subject, having loads of ideas. I have quite a definite idea about how I want a final piece to look, with low lighting and highlights describing the shapes, in the style of some of the Old Master still lives, but it is clear that I have some technical lighting issues to sort out first and probably need to set the arrangement up in a space with controlled lighting conditions. I would also like to develop a second, more abstract approach in a more graphic style, and at present not entirely sure whether either will be drawings or paintings.

However, having decided on the group, I'm in the process of enlarging the outlines onto an A1 working cartoon to allow further consideration once faced with the larger scale.

Izzy Whizzy let's get busy...

Studies on coloured backgrounds

After the trials of Saturday, I decided to take a fresh approach and play around in the negative- i.e. drawing light onto dark. Originally I intended to work on black paper but realised that I could make the background colour work for me on the tomatoes so selected the most vivid red I had. I started working with a normal kid's quality white crayon and soon realised it didn't have the pigment level to produce results- a salutory lesson in choosing suitable tools! I swopped over to my Caran d'Ache set, using only white, pastel yellow, and grey-blue for the shadows, and two tones of olive for the stalks. I liked the graphic quality of the finished study.

Pleased with this attempt, I then turned to the aubergines, which I decided to put on a black plate to really force me to describe them with highlights. This time I did use my black sketchbook as I couldn't find a suitable aubergine starting colour, and probably a greater number of colours as I was cross-hatching and blending in places.

Lots more veg to work through yet, so don't go away!!

A bad day for Ratatouille...

I'm off work this week so am trying to have a major push on coursework. Last Saturday I dashed to the shops and selected the week's fruit and veg on the basis of how interesting it was to draw, came home and immediately set up a collection of veg to work on.

Pretty soon I realised it was not going to be a good day. I couldn't get comfortable, moved the easel position several times, and squinted in vain to see why the left hand side of my study didn't match up. The first failed attempt is above- I decided I had put too much in so removed a few things and tried again.

As you can see I got even less far with this attempt, again due to an inability to reconcile the respective placement of the foreshortened aubergine, garlic and knife handle. My husband intervened at this point to forcibly remove me from the studio (the air had taken on a blue tone) and feed me with bacon sarnies and coffee, at which point I realised that with the sheer amount of hours I'd been working, I should have really taken the weekend off for some R&R before diving in.

However, as I needed some of the veg for dinner, I had to dive back in later, so chose to use my favourite charcoal and eraser technique in an attempt to get past the block.

It's not perfect and I was grateful for some candid feedback from a co-student after I posted it on the forums, but at least I felt I had beaten the jinx.

Valid points raised were errors in the shadows, not defining the back edge of the board, and the enormous negative space left at the top- which I would have trimmed off when mounting. Also I still had a diagonal void between the upper left and lower right halves; the tomatoes intersected with the tip of the marrow and were higher up the board (which is why I hadn't seen the back of the board).

However, even bad things can be learnt from and as this is the first really low point I've hit on the course it probably shows I have a good level of motivation- I'm certainly not going to be beaten by a few pesky veg!



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...

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.

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

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!

Going Back to Basics

Posted by Annaliz McGuire on February 2, 2011 at 8:45 PM (this post has been copied across from an older blog and shows the original date of posting

I'm currently considering returning to study to work towards a degree, and as I haven't seriously picked up a pencil in over 20 years it occurred to me that it would be good to find out whether my observation skills were still any good. I selected this glass bottle and a tray and set them up in my studio.

Pulling out a selection of drawing materials, I decided to use graphite as I have previously mostly worked with conventional pencils and drawing pens. Fairly early on I discovered my first basic error: in my haste to set up I had attached the paper I was using with the "not" side uppermost, and it had a particularly textured surface not especially conducive to the smooth tonal graduation needed for the subject. I had to fall back on a paper stump to do most of the blending.

Although I'm used to holding a brush in a variety of ways, I found it very difficult to hold the stick in any other way than a conventional writing grip. Also, while using pencil I tend to apply tonal areas all at once using different pressure, but I found I was building up layers of tone in between blending with the stump. This was partially necessary as I had started to draw at the top of the subject and worked down, thus requiring some tonal adjustment in the later stages.

My second mistake manifested itself some two and a half hours later when I realised the light had moved around to seriously change the highlights and shadows. I didn't have a fixed light source set up so was obliged to abandon work until the following afternoon in the same time-frame. I did however manage to complete the drawing on the second day.

On reflection, I think a smoother paper, or even possibly illustration board, would have given a much more subtle tonal blend. Although I'm fairly pleased with my attempt I failed to notice the wobble in the front line of the tray until I had applied fixative, despite referring to the image in the large mirror frequently while working.

To summarise, then, I'll fall back on that perennial favourite of teachers: "Could do better".

1 Comment

 Elayne Senn

10:03 PM on February 02, 2011 

I like this drawing very much. It's very strong in detail, line and form. If I was to make any suggestion at all - and it would free you from dependancy on light sources - perhaps you can try much quicker sketches and lots of them - say a series of five minute sketches from different angles, where you concentrate on a different aspect of the subject. It would be really good to see all the background in context too - but again, perhaps drawn more quickly. I understand you were returning to the basics of drawing skills and it's very clear from this that you certainly have them!