Tuesday 15 December 2009




Course work: Drew a cow’s vertebra with fine ball-point pen, using line and stipple, as part of the Detailed observation of nature exercise. I found this drawing less interesting than yesterday’s: perhaps I made a poor choice of subject or should have used artificial rather than natural lighting.

Reading:



E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art

Phaidon press Limited, Oxford 1978

Pp 352-374



Personal Sketchbook work: A colored pencil sketch of a ginkgo

leaf.

Detailed observation of nature (check and log)



Of the media used in this exercise, I found graphite pencil to be most effective. Hatching and cross-hatching is very slow, but it does produce effective results with sufficient patience.



In the proper setting, I think that any kind of mark can be used to produce some sort of tone, pattern, or texture.

My preference for drawing either details or big, broad sketches depends to a considerable extent on the subject drawn, and on a lesser extent to my mood at the time. On the whole, most people would probably consider me to lean toward detail in my drawings but to paint somewhat more loosely. Among artists who worked in contrasting ways, one would have to include Rembrandt, whose drawings were often so loose as to almost be a personal shorthand, yet who could become very precise and accurate in, for example, his etchings. Goya was another artist whose drawings differed so greatly from detailed to almost-unrecognizable that one could wonder if they were done by the same person. In more modern times, one could consider Picasso. It seems likely that many artists work in this fashion, with what is almost a scribble to get the idea down before it is lost, followed by other, more precise, drawings to develop the idea.



On the topic of composition, strictly speaking, none of the drawings that I did for this exercise involve more than a single object, as directed by the text. Therefore no real composition other than deciding where on the paper to place the object was involved.



The first two drawings of the series done for this exercise were pure line drawings, to be done with a single line. I spent little time thinking about looking at space effectively, but much thinking about how best to use that single continuous line I was allowed. I don’t think that I did very well.



Total time: 2 hours 35 minutes