14 September 2009




Course work: Continued work on Assignment 1, Section 6, Using Texture. Selected five items with prominent textures for my texture drawing: a piece of corrugated cardboard, a bathmat, a piece of a weatherworn, decaying wood, a quartzite rock with prominent veining, and a large fossil oyster shell. After doing several thumbnail studies, I selected one, and started the drawing with pencil on A3 paper. The textures were, in general, not too hard to produce, but were much more time-consuming than I had expected (especially the corrugated cardboard). I am reasonably satisfied with the final result.



Summary Observations on Using Texture (Check and Log): I didn’t think that the illustrations on p 28 of the text suggested any sort of texture to me (they looked like refugees from the “Making Marks exercise): it is distinctly possible that I am missing the point. Texture to me is a visual representation of the way the surface would look if I could touch it, accompanied by those additional elements that make it clear to the eye what one is seeing, and I think that I have at least in part succeeded in doing this. My preliminary sketchbook work was helpful (two of the textures that I developed in the sketchbook were used in the drawing, with some further development). I am satisfied that the techniques I used do in fact suggest the surface texture of the items in the drawing. A “happy accident” led to the use of the pencil in an improved way to describe the bath-mat that was included in the drawing. I found it necessary to use a moderate amount of tonal hatching, as the use of surface textures alone failed to suggest the third dimension.



Reading:



Keith Micklewright, Drawing

Harry N. Abrams, Inc. New York (2005)

Chapter 7 (pp 74-87)



Anne Classen Knutson, Andrew Wyeth: Memory and Magic

Rizzoli International Publications, New York 2005

Pp 85-102



Personal sketchbook work: A full-page sketch of a large white pitcher, heavily shadowed, in my A4 sketchbook.



Total time: a bit over six hours.