It is always hard, after a week of working with 5 and 6-year-old children, in a core subject classroom, to get my mind back into art gear. Today I looked at the trace drawings of Sue Gilmore, whose drawing was selected for the Jerwood Drawing collection. (suegilmore3blog, 2015) Her drawings appear to be subtle in their soft layers, but I must admit that I find it hard to imagine how she goes about creating these charcoal explorations. Her forms are simple and yet at the same time enigmatically complex in their double exposure layers.
From her blogsite I was lead to the video of the residency of Katie Surridge - Observatory Artist in Residence. (KATIE SURRIDGE - Observatory Artist in Residence, 3 Sep 2015) Since commencing this course I have been intrigued by the notion of doing a residency. I found it interesting how Katie Surridge went about drawing inspiration from the environment of The Observatory, Lymington. I find her playfulness and inventive creativity quite inspirational. It leads me to wonder how I can include the bits and pieces that I pick up from my own environment into my artworks, allowing them to also speak of the environment which has inspired my pieces. I was particularly drawn to her use of the charring of oak strips to create sculptures. I love studying wood and the idea of modifying wood through charring, to create an artwork appeals to me.
Format
Over the past two weekends, I have worked on my two final large sketches for Assignment 5. They are on a larger format than my previous assignment submission, 73cm by 53cm. My friend and teaching colleague, Montenegrin artist, Mirjane Marsenić Vujović, suggested that I work simultaneously on two sketches. She explained that her drawing professor at Art School had recommended this approach to encourage her to be more playful and experimental in her approach to her drawings. I have found this approach to be very interesting.
I chose to work on a landscape format, as I wanted to create a connection between the subject matter and the greater panoramic landscape from which the dandelions originated.
I prepared a "studio" for myself in our spare bedroom by mounting two large sheets of cardboard against the wall and pinned my drawing paper to these sheets. This is the first time since commencing the course that I have worked on a vertical surface. At times this proved a challenge as I was often working with inks and watercolor, which tend to flow downwards creating streaming lines. I learnt that if you apply just the right amount of ink it will flow in accordance with the subtle layers of the inks which were previously applied. This often created interesting effects which increased the sense of weight on the lines drawn in.
Subject matter
I chose to continue my exploration of an area of dandelion leaves that my husband photographed while we were on the Panoramic Route hiking trail in the highlands overlooking Albania. This photograph was initially of a grasshopper on the leaves, but what appealed to me was rather the incredibly sharp contrasting design of the dandelion leaves against the surrounding foliage. Their color was saturated and fresh, flaunting a sense of proud survival in the rugged terrain of the rocky mountains. As I wrote in my brainstorm in my sketchbook, my feelings towards the thistles hark back to my underlying attachment to the rugged Scottish landscape. In the same way that the thistle displayed a joyfully defiant sense of survival despite the hardships, I like to imagine that my life has emulated some of these qualities.
Media
Based on my preliminary studies in my textbook, and the fact that I had previously enjoyed working with a combination of Bombay inks, acrylics, watercolors, and graphic pencils of varying grades, I decided to continue to explore these media in my final works. For accent, I added touches of charcoal into the lines of folds of the leaves and rubbings of chalk pastel to alter the tonality of certain areas.
Color Palette
For these studies, I decided to create artworks based on a bright, rich harmonious color scheme. Inspired by some of the greens present in the dandelion leaves, I explored a full range of greens with touches of blue-green, bright yellow and rust browns. I tried to keep my color palette from becoming too muted and dull. At times this was hard to do as I was working with so many layers, which at times clouded one another out. What I found delightful about the paper I was working on was that I when I did not like what was developing, I could use water on the area, slowly lift off the offending pigments, and then build up fresh layers once again.
Focus
I used the grid copy technique to help me to get the proportions of the leaves correct. Because of the foreshortening of some of the leaves, I found this technique essential in getting the correct sense of the depth of field of the composition. It is interesting that although I tried to work very strictly according to the grid, both drawings turned out quite different. This is particularly noticeable when the drawings are turned 90 degrees counter-clockwise. In both cases. I tried to have the area where the two leaves crisscross each other, just above the midway line, about a fifth of the way from the left-hand edge, to be my focal point, although I wanted this focus to not be the dominant feature of the composition.
Preparation of background
Although you can clearly see that the two artworks are of the same area of the vegetation, my interpretation of this varies considerably creating a very different appeal. Initially when I filled in my background colors for my first sketch, I chose a very bright cadmium green in large areas of the background. I decided to change this in my second drawing and opted for a dark cyan - lime green, with light fern green washes over the main plants in the foreground. Both lower right portions were in a light sea green. I thought that working on the darker background would prove to be easier and more conducive to a sense of deep space. Interestingly, this did not prove to be so. I had to work the surface of the second sketch a lot more than the first sketch in order to create a sense of deep space.
As part of the background, I stuck a large map of the Panoramic Route that we took which initially got me interested in drawing thistles. The position of each map on the two different artworks was slightly different. On the first one, I placed the map towards the left-hand side, whereas on the second drawing, I allowed it to be more centrally placed. In
I also stuck a layer of tissue paper down with the words Champion on it. This tissue paper came from the walking shoes I bought, which inadvertently enabled me to walk the paths that got me interested in the vegetation and flora of Montenegro. I positioned the tissue paper in differing positions, which also altered the dynamism of the pieces. In the first artwork, I placed the tissue paper at a diagonal from a central top position down towards the right hand corner. For the second drawing, I placed the tissue paper from the left hand bottom corner, extending upwards towards the centre.
From her blogsite I was lead to the video of the residency of Katie Surridge - Observatory Artist in Residence. (KATIE SURRIDGE - Observatory Artist in Residence, 3 Sep 2015) Since commencing this course I have been intrigued by the notion of doing a residency. I found it interesting how Katie Surridge went about drawing inspiration from the environment of The Observatory, Lymington. I find her playfulness and inventive creativity quite inspirational. It leads me to wonder how I can include the bits and pieces that I pick up from my own environment into my artworks, allowing them to also speak of the environment which has inspired my pieces. I was particularly drawn to her use of the charring of oak strips to create sculptures. I love studying wood and the idea of modifying wood through charring, to create an artwork appeals to me.
Format
Over the past two weekends, I have worked on my two final large sketches for Assignment 5. They are on a larger format than my previous assignment submission, 73cm by 53cm. My friend and teaching colleague, Montenegrin artist, Mirjane Marsenić Vujović, suggested that I work simultaneously on two sketches. She explained that her drawing professor at Art School had recommended this approach to encourage her to be more playful and experimental in her approach to her drawings. I have found this approach to be very interesting.
I chose to work on a landscape format, as I wanted to create a connection between the subject matter and the greater panoramic landscape from which the dandelions originated.
I prepared a "studio" for myself in our spare bedroom by mounting two large sheets of cardboard against the wall and pinned my drawing paper to these sheets. This is the first time since commencing the course that I have worked on a vertical surface. At times this proved a challenge as I was often working with inks and watercolor, which tend to flow downwards creating streaming lines. I learnt that if you apply just the right amount of ink it will flow in accordance with the subtle layers of the inks which were previously applied. This often created interesting effects which increased the sense of weight on the lines drawn in.
I chose to continue my exploration of an area of dandelion leaves that my husband photographed while we were on the Panoramic Route hiking trail in the highlands overlooking Albania. This photograph was initially of a grasshopper on the leaves, but what appealed to me was rather the incredibly sharp contrasting design of the dandelion leaves against the surrounding foliage. Their color was saturated and fresh, flaunting a sense of proud survival in the rugged terrain of the rocky mountains. As I wrote in my brainstorm in my sketchbook, my feelings towards the thistles hark back to my underlying attachment to the rugged Scottish landscape. In the same way that the thistle displayed a joyfully defiant sense of survival despite the hardships, I like to imagine that my life has emulated some of these qualities.
Media
Based on my preliminary studies in my textbook, and the fact that I had previously enjoyed working with a combination of Bombay inks, acrylics, watercolors, and graphic pencils of varying grades, I decided to continue to explore these media in my final works. For accent, I added touches of charcoal into the lines of folds of the leaves and rubbings of chalk pastel to alter the tonality of certain areas.
Color Palette
For these studies, I decided to create artworks based on a bright, rich harmonious color scheme. Inspired by some of the greens present in the dandelion leaves, I explored a full range of greens with touches of blue-green, bright yellow and rust browns. I tried to keep my color palette from becoming too muted and dull. At times this was hard to do as I was working with so many layers, which at times clouded one another out. What I found delightful about the paper I was working on was that I when I did not like what was developing, I could use water on the area, slowly lift off the offending pigments, and then build up fresh layers once again.
Focus
I used the grid copy technique to help me to get the proportions of the leaves correct. Because of the foreshortening of some of the leaves, I found this technique essential in getting the correct sense of the depth of field of the composition. It is interesting that although I tried to work very strictly according to the grid, both drawings turned out quite different. This is particularly noticeable when the drawings are turned 90 degrees counter-clockwise. In both cases. I tried to have the area where the two leaves crisscross each other, just above the midway line, about a fifth of the way from the left-hand edge, to be my focal point, although I wanted this focus to not be the dominant feature of the composition.
Preparation of background
Although you can clearly see that the two artworks are of the same area of the vegetation, my interpretation of this varies considerably creating a very different appeal. Initially when I filled in my background colors for my first sketch, I chose a very bright cadmium green in large areas of the background. I decided to change this in my second drawing and opted for a dark cyan - lime green, with light fern green washes over the main plants in the foreground. Both lower right portions were in a light sea green. I thought that working on the darker background would prove to be easier and more conducive to a sense of deep space. Interestingly, this did not prove to be so. I had to work the surface of the second sketch a lot more than the first sketch in order to create a sense of deep space.
As part of the background, I stuck a large map of the Panoramic Route that we took which initially got me interested in drawing thistles. The position of each map on the two different artworks was slightly different. On the first one, I placed the map towards the left-hand side, whereas on the second drawing, I allowed it to be more centrally placed. In
I also stuck a layer of tissue paper down with the words Champion on it. This tissue paper came from the walking shoes I bought, which inadvertently enabled me to walk the paths that got me interested in the vegetation and flora of Montenegro. I positioned the tissue paper in differing positions, which also altered the dynamism of the pieces. In the first artwork, I placed the tissue paper at a diagonal from a central top position down towards the right hand corner. For the second drawing, I placed the tissue paper from the left hand bottom corner, extending upwards towards the centre.
This afternoon, December 3, 2016, I sought inspiration by reading the latest OCA Weekender article Favoring the Bold by Emma. (Emma, 2016) She discusses the manner in which children are able to approach the manipulation of their media in a bold manner which displays " idiosyncrasies of deliveries which seem to reveal essential structures of conception." (Emma, 2016) She points out that the categories by which children's art was assessed for the recent Texco Bank Art Competition are similar to the criteria used by the assessment team for undergraduate work.
Reading her article made me once again aware of the necessity to seek a bolder, more inventive approach to my drawings. I need to endeavor to ensure that my work maintains an innovative and fresh approach to my subject matter, and that the work does not become overworked and lacking in vitality.
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Fig. 1. David Hockney. Garrowby Hill, 1998
oil on canvas, 60x76 in.
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For each of the artworks, I started working the background in the top left-hand corner. It was interesting to see how the paper I was using responded quite differently to the paper of the sketchbook. This paper was less absorbent and allowed a greater time period in which you could work with the wet media. At times this was helpful, in that it allowed you to tweak the hues and tones slightly before they dried.
As I worked on these two larger works I kept alternating between the two and trying what I had gained from working on the one, on the other drawing to a slightly different effect. I found that the map had crinkled quite considerably on the second drawing. The glue had caused the paper to expand and dry with crinkles. At first I thought this might add to the drawing, but while working on it, it became a distraction and did not seem to add to the texture of the artwork. So, I got my emery board and tackled it with sandpaper to try to file the surface flat. This felt like a bold move, as I have never done this to an artwork before. I know that I would never have tried it if I had not had two drawings on the go at the same time. Somehow, having the second as a backup allowed me to be more courageous and bold in my experimentation than I would normally have allowed myself to be. I think that this has helped to free these artworks from a sheer copyist approach. What I found difficult was to know when to stop work on a surface, to allow the underneath layers to show through, and when to work many layers on top of the background.
Towards the end of my drawing session, I spilt a whole lot of my yellow Bombay ink onto one of the Panoramic Route maps that I was using as a drop cloth. Fortunately, the paper is not absorbent, so I quickly mopped up the ink with my large brush and brushed yellow strokes into areas which I thought might use yellow ink. I did not want to waste my yellow ink as I have no idea if I can replace it here in Montenegro. I applied yellow ink to both drawings in a very quick loose, almost haphazard fashion. This proved to be one of the "happy accidents" of this drawing project. As I worked on my pieces in later sessions, I delighted in the fact that I had these bright touches of yellow to give the drawing a lift and a splash of incidental color.
Works Cited
KATIE SURRIDGE - Observatory Artist in Residence. 3 Sep 2015. [Film] Directed by Spud. s.l.: The Observatory.
suegilmore3blog, 2015. Exhibition- Jerwood Drawing Prize 2015- talk and tour with Paul Thomas., s.l.: s.n.
Emma, 2016. Favoring the Bold. [Online]
Available at: https://weareoca.com/fine-art/favouring-the-bold
[Accessed 3 December 2016
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