Exercise (1) Still Life Using Line. Project (4) Sill Life.

(Thought I may as well stick in theses quick practise sheets I did using a Chinese brush.....just to get the hang of it.)

(Some ideas for compositions.)

(A thumbnail sketch of my decided composition.)

For my composition I chose three objects, the piece of wood (which I had in a earlier exercise), a skull (it isn't real) and the corner of the base of a large candlestick. With a strong light coming from the right, positioned behind the candlestick, so not much light fell on it and the strongest light was on the wood and the skull. 

Loosely sketched in the shapes with white chalk on my blue support. 

Started putting in darks (using the Chinese brush) in black ink watered down, because I still wasn't entirely shore of the shapes.

Now I really started hatching with pure ink.

Put in some more highlights.

Darkened the back of the wood with lots of cross-hatching.

I quite like this picture.

I feel this picture would look better without so much white. 

The brightly lit side of the bit of wood is ill defined. I also, see now that the candlestick is somewhat wonky. 

I should have looked for inspiration from masters of line and cross-hatching, like Albrecht Dürer (a great  favourite of mine,)...I am always so keen to get drawing I forget to look at artists I could learn from before starting.

Work Review.

Work Review. 
Project (3) Detailed Observation of Natural Objects.

I very much enjoyed using and thought that the combination of pencil and graphite stick was effective in the  Detail and Tone Exercise. I thought the marker was difficult for colour as it went a shade darker every time it went even slightly overlapped, making it very difficult to get a smooth surface... but markers are good for one tone line drawings, I think. 

Exercise (3) Detail and Tone. Project (3) Detailed Observation of Natural Objects.

When walking the other day, I chanced upon a rather rotten and beautiful piece of wood, the like of which I have not seen before.

A brief (and I hasten to add) not very good sketch, done in two different tones of felt tip pen, and watercolour.

(I did this as a warm-up exercise, more then anything else.)

I did this with graphite stick and pencil.

I like photographing through all the stages of a drawing (I sometimes forget to do it regularly) but it give a good insight into how the drawing was done. 

I think (though I got quite a good texture in some areas of the drawing) the overall drawing isn't very good.

I think when starting to draw it, I failed to create a solid sense of structure, I was too busy concentrating on the over all outline shape and the negative and the inner shapes. 

(a second try.)

Not liking the outcome of the previous drawing, I did another smaller, speeder drawing in my A4 sketchbook.

Although not working on texture as much as the first drawing, I feel this is a superior piece of work, in that the viewer gets a better idea of the structure, planes, levels, what is coming towards and what is going away, the mass and solidarity and all that sort of thing. 

(I feel anyway)

Exercise 2. Detail and simple line. Project (3) Detailed Observation of Natural Objects.

This drawing is done in black felt tip pen. 

I tried to make it look round, remembering to put in a core shadow and some reflected light. 

Don't think I got the base of the pineapple quite right, doesn't look as if it would be able to stand upright, not flat enough. 

I also wish I put less detail in and left more plain paper on the left side of the fruit, to indicate the highlighted area.

I did another drawing of the pineapple, because when creating the first one, (although not lifting my pen much at the beginning) I sort of forgot to half way through, so I did another quick continuous line drawing...to make up for my appalling forgetfulness.

Exercise (1) Using Markers Or Dip Pens. Project (3) Detailed Observation of Natural Objects.

Brief sketch of a small branch off a ornamental cherry tree.

Don't like it, I think it wasn't very successful. It doesn't look right, I think I wasn't using the pens to great effect.

Shame...because it was a nice subject, I just didn't think enough about it and the way I placed it on the page wasn't very good either. 

Here is another go at the same topic, I simplified it a good bit. And I did this after looking at more "Pop art".

 I took photos throughout the creation of this drawing.

Starting off with a quick pencil sketch.

Then going over the pencil with a greyish black pen, this, with hindsight, I see was a mistake, I thought (stupidly) that it would work as a sort of under-painting....but it didn't.  

Adding in more blocks of colour now.

Finish colouring in all the fruit and starting to try to put in tones and shadows.

Completed drawing...well completed-ish.

Having stuck in some background and some more definition on the objects.

On this one, I worked a bit longer, and I think the all-green apple in the centre isn't too bad on this one, it has a bit more of a three-dimensional quality to it.

I had a go at seeing what it looked like in a round shape.

quite like it.

And the roundness of the last drawing led me to my "Found Support" drawing, on a disposable paper plate.

Using marker pens I found very hard, I was dissatisfied with the end results and didn't even enjoy the drawing part very much. 

Mostly, I am used to getting variation in tones by how hard and how fast I apply the material, these markers  didn't seem to do this. 

Because it goes a shade darker when I went over the same area, creating a unpleasant stripy affect, 

I had to try to sort of put it down in layers (almost like watercolours). 

Unless I had had a lot of different tones of the same colour I can't see how I could get a smooth transition from light to dark, so it comes out sort of harsh and contrasting. Which worked quite well with the cast-shadow, though. 

I  also tried adding water to blend the different colours together like Shirley Ann Leslie seems to have done in the example in my course book...it didn't work....it may have been ink she was using.

I wish now, I had either broken down the shapes into simpler forms and coloured the plains (a bit harder with round objects like an apples) but I think the most effective fruits are the strawberry, because of their irregular shape, 

or I should have tried dots, sort of impressionist-like.

Exercise (1) Experimenting. Project 2. (Physical and Visual Texture.)

                     

Some tree bark in graphite pencil. 

I don't this looks much like bark.

Had a go at some velvet also in pencil. don't think I managed to get the shiny quality to it but it does look a little like material.

The tin foil I did in pencil, watercolour, pen and a few blobs of white acrylic paint for the highlights. I don't like this drawing much, either

 

The fur looks a bit like fur, not sure how much like the fur I was drawing.

I hope I managed to make the textures different from each other, I mean in the way I treated the lines and the marks I made.   

I would like to have tried some more different mediums, but I fear I am behind my work and must get faster...

Some Frottage.

This is a coat of arms carved on wood by my Grandfather. 

Done with a stick of red chalk.

(Funnily enough the chalk also belonged to my Grandfather...)

Done with a stick of charcoal. 

And this is in graphite stick. 

(this last one, I think, came out the best.)

An old wire fire fender.

Rubbed over with graphite stick.

Rubbed over with graphite again, and then set at a different angle and rubbed again, and so on...about five times. I think it creates quite an interesting pattern.

Frottage of the centre of a log.

In graphite stick.

Leather.

graphite stick.

 Compressed charcoal.

Compressed charcoal, rubbing in in lots of different as directions...as opposed to the one above which was done in a few quick uniform lines.