Assignment one

Man Made Still Life

I began by putting some objects together and firstly I drew three compositions to decide which one I would chose and also whether I would chose landscape or a portrait drawing.  I also drew some of the individual components so I was more familiar with them.

I then played about with colour to try and decide what medium I would use to apply colour to the finished drawing.

I  tried coloured pencils which were effective but because of the size of the A2 paper I thought that pastels would cover better.  I then tried to draw a charcoal landscape format on A2 just to make sure that portrait was the way to go.

I definitely then decided portrait was the format to choose.  From here I decided to draw on A3 paper a pastel preliminary drawing.

It was a disaster!  I concentrated so much on the objects I lost sight of the rest of the picture and I made up the background, even worse mistake.  The table is floating in the air and the background colour awful.  I was going to throw the lot away and start again and after thinking about this I had to rethink how I would tackle the problems so I just committed to A2 for the final piece.

The table I feel should have been placed further up in the picture as the two front legs of the table drop out of the drawing and then there would have been less background to fill as I think there is too much dressing gown shown. 

The second part of the Assignment a still life with natural objects I began in the same way playing about with the fruit visually and then drawing them in pencil and deciding on the composition.

I then drew the fruit and played about with colour and used coloured pencils to start with and this time I was also thinking about the background which was kitchen tiles.  I tried conte-crayon dragging the stick sideways over the paper and it worked. 

 I next tried pastel pencils, soft pastel and oil pastel and liked the effect.  I tried outlining the fruit with black oil pastel and this reminded me of Patrick Caulfield usage of black line so I thought I would give it a go.

I then did a quick drawing in charcoal so I could get a general idea of how it would look.

I decided to do my preliminary drawing in A3 in coloured pencils and use the conte-crayon for the tiles on the back wall.  I did not like the effect but perhaps it didn't combine  well with coloured pencils.

It was hard to get a shadow on top of the conte-crayon and in hindsight I should have tried hatching.  Anyway I decided to not use the conte-crayon in the final picture and chose pastel.

I am not too pleased with the background as it fights with the foreground.  I used the oil pastel to outline the fruit and I think that I shouldn't of outlined everything.  I feel that I have lost tone and form in the pineapple and I should have put in more shading.  Before I started the background the box was uncoloured and initially I wanted to leave it white as it looked effective seeing the coloured fruit through it.  I should have left it white and decided when the picture was finished whether it worked or not.  The completed picture was drawn on soft grey pastel mat and I used pastel pencil, soft and ultra soft pastel, black oil pastel, coloured pencil (on the orange peel) and black crayon.

 

Enlarging

Having drawn a simple picture with a 1cm square grid drawn over the top I then proceeded drawing a rectangle with a increasing the squares to 2cm. Copying the picture square by square was exacting and time consuming but I felt that it was worth it.  It was only a simple drawing I attempted but I felt it worked and while I was drawing the enlarged version it struck me that if I had wanted to double the size of the picture purely by eye it would have ended up considerably smaller!

Using Texture

I made a series of 5cm boxes and tried to use different objects of varying  textures and tried different ways of using tools to achieve an effect. I firstly tried an orange and used different methods of  techniques.  Some methods worked and some didn't and I found that the type of paper used had a bearing on the result i.e. I tried pencil on a cold pressed 140lbs water colour paper and this gave a good efect with little effort but drawing in detail was not so easy.  I tried graphite dust collected from a graphite stick and I tried to dab it on using a stipling brush this was not very successful so I tried stipling with the pencil over top again not very successful.  I had some success with a towelling fabric which is shown in the sample box and I used the same technique with coloured pencils to show texture on an avocado this seemed to work as well.

I them tried some frottage and there some interesting effects it is easy to see why Ernst incorporated them into his work.  I then tried some more textural boxes and I think that I need to play about and use more ways of developing this further I am already flipping back in my sketch books to see what I have done and using ideas from it.  It is proving to be a very useful tool.

The last drawing I tried was to develop the technique I tried to draw a towel with some other objects and it wasn't so succuessful but I tried too hard with getting the texture I lost sight of the tone and started to rub out highlights so it did not look so good.  I think the technique was sound but the execution lousy!

Botanical course with coloured pencils

On May 20th I attended a Botanical course with coloured pencils for 2 days at Missenden Abbey.  The tutor was Jill Winch and as we were only a group of six we all had a lot of one to one help.   Like all colour mediums it is the experience in which colour to use that is important.  I hadn't much experience in using polychromos pencils and I was amazed at the effect and opacity of the medium.

I chose a clematis and it took the entire two days to complete!  The drawing was on Fabiano Artistico paper which is a lovely paper to work on and it is the first time I have drawn on this type of paper. 
On the whole I came out with a picture and the rudiments of how to colour leaves, the importance of accuracy and observation, the use of embossing, and how to produce a bloom effect on fruit.
What I already know about myself is that I have to work more quickly, I found that I tackled the drawing with much more confidence and I did this quickly but I was more tentative about applying colour and this took the time.  Whether I will go back and study botanical work in more depth I do not know as I am trying to move away from exacting drawing and trying to be more expressive.  I felt this was encouraging me to be precis and exact which was very useful from an observational point of view but not so good for freeing up your work.

Max Ernst

Max Ernst was born in 1891 and died in 1976 ( http://www.abcgallery.com/E/ernst/ernst.html).  He was born in Bruhl near Cologne and he never received any formal training but studied philosophy and psychiatry at Bonn University between 1919-1914.
He became friends with Jean (Hans) Arp who was assoicated with several art movements. He was conscripted into the army and this had a devastating impact on his art and his life. (www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Ernst) He referred to this in his autobiography as 'on the 1st day in August  1914 as the day he died' and 'on the 11th November 1918 the day he was resurrected'.
After being demobbed he founded a group of Dadaists which is a form of anachist art.  Dadaism sprung from WW1 and for some it was a protest against bourgeois nationalism and colonist ideals, which many thought that this was the underlying cause of wars. 
( http://www.abcgallery.com/E/ernst/ernst.html).  His works of this period consisted of collage and junk assemblages.

             Down loaded from the Bridgeman Education Library, collage 1920-21 in the Dada style

In 1924 Andre Breton first published the First Surrealist Manifesto and Max Ernst was among those who took an active part in founding the new movement.  Ernst also developed Frottage (French for rubbing) a technic where paper is held over a textured surface and then with pencil rubbing over the paper to create a pattern in a similiar way to brass rubbing.  He also developed a technique called grattage where usually dry paint is scratched off the surface revealing a textured surface underneath.

                 Downloaded from the Bridgeman Education Library Fish bone Flowers 1928 Oil on Canvas
In 1918 he Married Luise Straus although this was short lived his son was born in 1920 and in 1921 he met Paul Eluard and moved in with him leaving his wife and son behind. He signed a contract with Jacues Viot which allowed hin to paint full time, and in 1925 he set up a studio at 22 Rue  In 1926 he collaborated with Joan Miro and experiemented with his frottage and grattage techniques
In 1927 he married Marie-Berthe Aureche which again did not last long  and again he remarried art patron Peggy Guggenheim in 1942.  After another shortlived marriage in 1946 he married Dorothea Tanning.  They lived in Sedona Arizona until 1953 when they both moved to a small town South of Paris where in 1966 he created a chessgame made of glass described by the poet Andre Verdet as a masterpiece of bewitching magic.
Ernst died on 1st April 1976 and left a huge imprint in the world of modern art.

Negative Space and Perspective

The excerises on negative space were very interesting and draws the mind to the importance of negative space in  drawing.  After placing obects in a group I had to draw the top half of the group in a continuous line from left to right drawing up and over the objects using the table line as the starting point.  Once this was completed I then drew the bottom half in the same way, which made me focus solely on the outline and the spaces between the objects.

I then drew them again  moving the objects closer  together  filling in the background and leaving the group in negative space,  the shaded background changed the dymanics of the picture totally and gave a more abstract appearance and then I did a drawing  shading in the group leaving the background in relief.  I found that the silhoutette dominated the picture and the negative space promoted the group it also highlighted the shapes around the group.

Summary of Still Life exercises

The solidity of my natural  composition I feel was due to the placing of the fruit on the plate allowing space and proportion to be as accurate as possible.  The positioning of the fruit and vegetables I felt had to have a balance so that the eye was drawn over the whole composition. The importance of putting in the shadows gave a grounded look to the compostion The question whether I felt it was easier to suggest three dimensions on man-made objects or natural objects I find it harder to qualify my answer as I felt that I found that the natural objects easier. Two natural objects are rarely the same shape and so there is scope to draw in the imperfections and capitalise therefore on the form.  Man made objects are usually uniform in shape and symetrical and you have to be careful that the composition doesn't look flat.  I think that the repositioning of the composition is crucial to the approach of creating a sense of form.  The objects should have some cohesion with one another to be able to help produce a sense of form.
I tried to position myself directly infront of the composition because the light was coming from the left which gave the highlighted areas a more prominent position.

Patrick Caulfield

Patrick Caulfield was born on 29th January 1936 and died at the age of 69yrs in 2005.  He was buried in Highgate Cemetary and his grave stone reflects the abstract style in which he painted.  He is renowned for painting flat colours with black outlines which look simplistic and commercial in value. www.artycity.com/biography/Patrick-Caulfield. 
He studied at the Chelsea School of Art from 1956-1960 along with David Hockney and Allen Jones.  He later returned to Chelsea as a teacher and in 1964 he exhibited his work at the London's Whitechapel Gallery which earned him a reputation in 'Pop Art'.  His still life Autumn Fashion viewed on www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/collections/20c/caulfield.aspx is a good example of flat colour and bold lines, it is an interior painting of perhaps a kitchen and the oysters on the plate are painted in realistic details and everything else is in bold flat colours. 
During the mid seventies his work became more complex and with added realism with After Lunch being an example. www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=2086  The whole picture except the painting behind the fish tank is done in a flat blue colour with black outline.  The picture behind the fish tank was copied meticulously from a photograph using the grid method. (D.Chandle, J.Collins,J.Welchman, The Technics of the Modern Artist. Grenwich Editions 2001) I think that he has combined traditional painting with comtempory art with stunning effect.  He has painted an area in pale blue which draws the eye to the staircase indicating that this is an upstairs room, very clever.  I have really enjoyed looking at this picture.  I am going to the Tate Gallery in July and will certainly try and see the picture while I am there.
His White Ware work were mainly screen prints and a selection can be viewed on
http://www.alancristea.com/collectionimages.php?a=86&g=464  They are very simplistic and the use of negative space with the 'white jug' is very effective and brilliantly executed.

In 1987 he was nominated for the Turner Prize and in 1987 was awarded the CBE.  He died in 2005.

This is my attempt at a picture in the style of Patrick Caulfield in ink.  I don't think it will impress anyone! But it was fun to do and I think that I will experiment with negative space in the future.