Sunday 31 January 2010




Course work: Several partial cat sketches in graphite pencil, several in pen, and a few in brush, the latter based on previously-done pencil sketches. (We have three cats, all of whom seem to be in profound coma until I try to draw them, at which time they invariably become hyperactive.)

Reading:



Daniel M. Mendelowitz and Duane Wakeham A Guide to Drawing (Fifth Edition)

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, Orlando, Florida, USA, 1995

Pp 104-138



Weekly reflections on learning experience: I am happy to be finished with the large colored pencil drawing. I remain convinced that the A2 paper size required is too great for a student working with this medium, but perhaps this is a problem of my perception. (I certainly learned a good deal about colored pencils during the eleven days I worked on this drawing.) The effort to find a way to make the marker drawing acceptable was worthwhile, and I think that markers and colored pencils can make reasonable multimedia partners, though perhaps not in my hands. I continue to seek a good source of information on marker drawing, but have found little not aimed at architects, fashion designers, or comic-book illustrators. I confront the “Drawing Animals” exercise with some apprehension, as drawing moving subjects has always been a major weakness.



Total time: 1 hour 41 min

Saturday 30 January 2010




Course work: Applied some colored pencil over parts of the marker drawing I did yesterday, adding some highlights and details, and muting some of the more obnoxious colors, which improved it enough to, I hope, meet the objectives of the exercise.

Started the “Drawing Animals” exercise with a very hasty sketch (done through a telescope, in the rain) of a Canada goose on the pond. Black and grey markers were added later. Field marks are adequately captured, but the bird didn’t look this wooden…as I’ve drawn it, it looks like a decoy.

Reading:



Carol Strickland The Annotated Mona Lisa

Andrews and McMeel, Kansas City, Missouri, USA, 1992

Pp 74-109



Personal Sketchbook work: A simple brush drawing of a towel on a hook. Then I rehung the towel and did another. Brush drawing is something I would like to learn, but I find it about as forgiving as the tax collector.

Drawing plants and flowers: check and log:

Negative space is a useful tool for drawing, as it diverts one’s attention from preconceptions about the object drawn and focuses one on the adjacent negative shapes which delineate the object.



In order to get my plant drawings in proportion, I used negative space, measuring with a pencil, comparison with previously-drawn parts of the work, and in some cases modification of actual dimensions to alter the composition.



The plant drawings all had a relatively shallow depth of field, and superimposition and shadowing were the main tools available for suggesting three-dimensional space. Since the subjects themselves varied in size, reducing perceived size to suggest distance was not efficacious. Atmospheric perspective would have been of little use with a total field depth of only about 20 cm. I think that the large colored-pencil drawing was more successful in suggesting depth of field than the marker drawing, even though the former had a much shallower field.



Total time: 2 hours 9 minutes

Friday 29 January 2010




Course work: Corrections on the colored pencil drawing of calla lilies. A pencil sketch of a group of potted calla lilies, followed by a superimposed marker drawing, on 11 x 14” (279 x356mm) marker paper. Not happy with result, but I’ve never done anything with markers that I liked. I’ll try working over it with some colored pencil tomorrow.

Reading:



Carol Strickland The Annotated Mona Lisa

Andrews and McMeel, Kansas City, Missouri, USA, 1992

Pp 57-73





E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art

Phaidon press Limited, Oxford 1978

Pp 476-490

(This is a reasonably comprehensive and fairly readable book of art history. It deserves to be read slowly, as I have read it, in order to really appreciate it. One can find minor flaws, e.g. the author devotes three pages to Cezanne and less than one to the entire Pre-Raphaelite movement, but if I had to recommend to a serious, interested reader a single book on art history, it would be this one.)



Personal Sketchbook work: A poor partial drawing of a two-week-old donkey.

Total time: 2 hours 19 min

Thursday 28 January 2010




Course work: Further work on the colored pencil drawing of a flowering plant. I think that I have now reached the point of making minor corrections.



Reading:



Carol Strickland The Annotated Mona Lisa

Andrews and McMeel, Kansas City, Missouri, USA, 1992

Pp 57-73



Personal Sketchbook work: Several marker sketches of calla lilies, in preparation for the next part of the exercise. With my limited number of colors, and the inherent difficulty of using markers any way except very boldly, getting an acceptable result may be a challenge. I was certainly not pleased with several of the colors I tested, and made some notes on my sketchbook page.

Total time: 2 hours 5 minutes

Tuesday 26 January 2010




Course work: Ongoing work on the colored pencil drawing of a flowering plant.



Reading:



Carol Strickland The Annotated Mona Lisa

Andrews and McMeel, Kansas City, Missouri, USA, 1992

Pp 57-73



Personal Sketchbook work: A sketch of my slippered feet

Other activity: My painting group met today (time not included).



Total time: One hour 49 minutes

Monday 25 January 2010




Course work: Work continues on the colored pencil drawing of a flowering plant. I added two leaves from a different calla lily to improve the composition.



Reading:



Carol Strickland The Annotated Mona Lisa

Andrews and McMeel, Kansas City, Missouri, USA, 1992

Pp 42-56



Personal Sketchbook work: (This could fall just as well into course work) A stem and leaf study of part of my flowering plant, in preparation for further work on the colored pencil drawing, and in preparation for the following course drawing in another medium.

Total time: 2 hours 23 minutes

Sunday 24 January 2010




Course work: Further work on the colored pencil drawing. Am perhaps halfway through now, unless I decide that it needs more work after I’ve taken it a bit further. A progress photo:

Reading:



Carol Strickland The Annotated Mona Lisa

Andrews and McMeel, Kansas City, Missouri, USA, 1992

Pp 25-41



Personal Sketchbook work: A colored pencil sketch of my morning selection of pills.

Weekly reflections on learning experience: This had been a week of tediously working to cover a very large sheet of paper with a very small pencil point. I have enjoyed trying to combine colors of pencils to closely emulate the actual colors present, but I think that the exercise could have been just as beneficial on an A3 or even an A4 sheet: the hours I have spent and will spend just hatching in the background seem to have little teaching value except for reinforcing patience and will.



Total time: 2 hours 46 minutes (106h31m)

Saturday 23 January 2010




Course work: Continued work on the colored pencil drawing of a flowering plant.



Reading:



Jeffery Camp Draw: How to Master the Art

Dorling Kindersley, London, 1993

Pp 18-34



Carol Strickland The Annotated Mona Lisa

Andrews and McMeel, Kansas City, Missouri, USA, 1992

Pp x-xi, 1-24



Personal Sketchbook work: Finally caught one of the cats deeply enough asleep to at least get a good representative shape down before she woke and sauntered off.

Total time: 2 hours 51 minutes

Friday 22 January 2010




Hay transport and storage compromised my drawing time today.



Course work: Some further work on the colored pencil drawing. Still less than half through with this major exercise.



Total time: 35 minutes

Thursday 21 January 2010




Course work: Continued work on the drawing of a flowering plant. I have a long way yet to go.



Reading:



Daniel M. Mendelowitz and Duane Wakeham A Guide to Drawing (Fifth Edition)

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, Orlando, Florida, USA, 1995

Pp 80-103



Personal Sketchbook work: A sketch of an American red cedar tree in a growth spurt: the odd-looking outgrowths typically appear when favorable growing conditions return after a long period of unfavorable conditions. If all goes well, the tree will “fill in” about the outgrowths and resume a generally conical shape for several more years before developing a more mature branching pattern. This tree is about 20 feet (about six meters) and should have a mature size of 40-50 feet (12-15 meters).

Total time: 2 hours 47 minutes

Wednesday 20 January 2010




Course work: Continued work on the flowering plant drawing in colored pencil.



Reading:



E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art

Phaidon press Limited, Oxford 1978

Pp 442-475



Personal Sketchbook work: Sketched the undulating patterns of a single large limb on an elderly oak visible about 200 meters away, drawn mostly with the aid of binoculars. On this overcast day most of the terminal branching pattern is indistinct and many of those I have drawn are hypothetical.

Total time: 2 hours 51 minutes

Monday 18 January 2010




Course work: I have been thinking about the colored pencil floral drawing for several days, and have looked at my plant with a view-finder from a number of perspectives and against several backgrounds. My conclusion was affected by the requirement to do a second drawing of this plant in a different medium. I therefore decided to do the colored pencil drawing concentrating on the flowers. I rearranged the flowers on the page to provide what I hope is a better-balanced composition than the actual plant. Lighting was from above and slightly to the left. I got a light layout down, then started with the slow process of applying color.



Reading:



Gemma Guasch & Josep Asunción Line

Barron’s Educational Series, Inc., Hauppage, New York, USA, 2006

Pp 7-151

(One would assume from the title that this is a book about line. It is, in fact, a book about the creative uses of different media, and at times, one has to search very diligently indeed to detect any suggestion of a line. With far more illustrations than text, this is a fast read, and it is worth the time. There are three companion volumes, titled Color, Form, and Space that I plan to reread as time and interest permit.



Personal Sketchbook work: Tried yet again to sketch one of the horses: as soon as he spotted me at the fence, he came over to see if I had anything interesting in my pocket. Another failed effort.

 
Total time: 3 hours 19 minutes

Sunday 17 January 2010




Course work: Completed the negative space plant drawing. It did not take as long as I had anticipated, but before I finished I was seeing aggregations of short pencil marks in my dreams. I would be better pleased with the result had I done it with pen and ink.

Did the blending with colored pencils portion of the exercise and made notations of my observations in my course sketchbook.

Reading:



Daniel M. Mendelowitz and Duane Wakeham A Guide to Drawing (Fifth Edition)

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, Orlando, Florida, USA, 1995

Pp 63-79



Personal Sketchbook work: Made an attempt at a brush drawing of a reproduction of the “Willendorf Venus.” I found it very difficult to control the line. After having done one and treated it as just a two-value piece, I did a second (slimmed a bit to fit on the page) with application of a little wash. I was quite dissatisfied with both.

Weekly reflections on learning experience: This was a week of struggling with oil pastels, and of transitioning to new exercises. I found the negative space exercise more interesting than the preceding oil pastel work, probably in part because I have encountered and worked with the concept of negative space in the past, and in part because negative space is a concept, rather than a technique, and concepts have always been easier for me to grasp. I also enjoyed the appearance of my two negative-space efforts far more than the appearance of most of my efforts in the “Fruits and Vegetables in Color” exercise.



Total time:1 hour 47 min

Saturday 16 January 2010




Course work: Made substantial progress on my negative-space drawing of a plant, although I wish now that I had chosen a medium other than graphite pencil.



Reading:



Daniel M. Mendelowitz and Duane Wakeham A Guide to Drawing (Fifth Edition)

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, Orlando, Florida, USA, 1995

Pp 41-62



E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art

Phaidon press Limited, Oxford 1978

Pp 425-441



Personal Sketchbook work: Out of interest in further depiction of a subject using negative space, I did a negative space drawing of the spaces around part of a small calla lily plant, and inked them in with a brush. The result was a strong graphic image, but my poor choice of viewpoint made it more abstract than representational. Nevertheless, I found it a useful and interesting exercise (and much faster than hatching in with a pencil).

Total time: 3 hours 15 min

Friday 15 January 2009




Course work: I think the oil pastel drawing is complete now: I’ll look at it again in a day or so. Made a start on the negative space drawing of a plant.

Reading:



Daniel M. Mendelowitz and Duane Wakeham A Guide to Drawing (Fifth Edition)

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, Orlando, Florida, USA, 1995

Pp 3-41



Research point: “Find out about Ben Nicholson. Why does he simplify still life forms and negative space and superimpose them on the Cornish landscape?”



Ben Nicholson (1894-1982) was the son of a well-known painter. He abandoned training at the Slade after one term and traveled in Europe and later in the United States. He saw his first Picasso either in Paris or Pasadena, California (sources differ), and was strongly influenced thereby. Beginning in the 1920’s his work evolved from landscapes that appear to my eye to have been strongly influenced by Cezanne toward pure abstraction, culminating in his white abstract reliefs (denounced by his father as “awful lavatory seats”). Later he returned to a less-abstract style that often featured representations of still-life objects placed on a windowsill in his studio in St. Ives, Cornwall, and toward the end of his career he worked freely between abstraction and abstract realism. His wives appear to have influenced his work strongly over the years. Winifred Nicholson, a painter, contributed to his ideas about color, Barbara Hepworth, a sculptor, influenced his thinking about form. Perhaps we can assume that third wife Felicitas Vogler, a photographer, further contributed to his ideas concerning light. Another strong influence was primitive painter Alfred Wallis. Nicholson is now considered by many the leading exponent of British Modernism.



The second part of the question is factually unanswerable. Why does any artist choose to do what he does? For many, the answer is “To make a living.” For many others, the answer is “This is what I am moved to do at this particular moment.” For some, the answer would be “What would happen if I did this?” Quite often even the artist does not know why he or she chooses to follow a particular path, on paint a specific painting. I find the efforts of critics and art historians to retrospectively find motivations for or deep meanings in an artist’s work often humorous, and sometimes ludicrous; nearly always such investigations tell me more about the mind of the person writing than about the mind of the artist (imagine what Rembrandt would have thought had he known of the generations of art scholars his works would engender!). The best answer I can give to the question posed is my uneducated opinion: Ben Nicholson painted the way he did because that is what he wanted to do.



Drawing fruits and vegetables: check and log

I would guesstimate that my negative space in the oil pastel drawing is about 1/3, in the two marker drawings about half, and in the colored pencil drawing about ¼. In the process of attempting to draw the details of fruits and vegetables I have learned that one’s success is very strongly medium-dependent, and also strongly related to one’s attitude toward a specific medium. I found working with markers the most challenging and frustrating part of the exercise from the viewpoint of my inability to get them to do what I wanted to do. Colored pencils were challenging, because accuracy in form or color can be obtained only at the expense of a great deal of time. Oil pastels are a very imprecise medium, difficult to correct and almost impossible to apply in a uniform manner using hatching. Perhaps my greatest challenge about this section was in doing work that I thought was adequate: the final colored pencil drawing was about the only one I really felt I had done reasonably well. My dissatisfaction with my work in this section is best reflected in the fact that it took me about 38 hours of effort for this nominally eight-hour exercise.



Total time: 1 hour 57 minutes

Thursday 14 January 2010




Course work: More work on the A3 oil pastel drawing, applying finishing touches to the fruits and vegetables, and working on the foreground and background.



Reading:



Bernard Chaet The Art of Drawing (3rd Ed)

Harcourt College Publishers, Orlando, Florida, USA, 1983

Pp 222-266

(This is not a college textbook of drawing, though one would initially think so. It is, rather, an account of the author’s method of teaching drawing, and of student responses to that method. The chapters outlining the teaching approach to various areas of drawing are interesting, though not directly applicable to the solo student (or even the student in an organized class). In my opinion, the large number of drawings included and commented upon constitute the strongest portion of the book, although the short chapter on the value of copying was also of interest.)



Personal Sketchbook work: Finished work on the colored pencil project workbook project started on 25 December. (The instructions required filling in of the white squares with two overlaid shades of yellow in addition to the work that I did, but I could not see that the limited amount of learning to be obtained from that effort was worth the several hours it would require.) In my pocket sketchbook, sketched an oak gall found while I was trimming trees. In my A4 sketchbook, a piece of mistletoe found while trimming an oak, sketched in colored pencil.

Total time: 2 hours 14 minutes

Wednesday 13 January 2010




Course work: More work on the A3 oil pastel drawing, applying additional layers and areas of closely-related and complementary colors.



Total time: 1 hour 9 minutes

Tuesday 12 January 2010


Course work: Assembled a setup for the oil pastel drawing on A3 paper, incorporating a yellow squash, a purple-red pear, a green cabbage, and a red-orange pepper. Did two preliminary sketches in my course sketchbook, then cropped one and sketched it lightly on the grey A3 paper I selected. A very light hatched layer was then applied. I then began to apply additional layers, varying the colors to work toward local color and tone.

Reading:



Bernard Chaet The Art of Drawing (3rd Ed)

Harcourt College Publishers, Orlando, Florida, USA, 1983

Pp 173-222



Personal Sketchbook work:



Another frustrating try at sketching one of the cats

Other activities: My painting group met today (time not included).



Total time: 2 hours 28 minutes

Monday 11 January 2010




No course work today: took advantage of slightly improved weather to get caught up on my photography of previous work.

Sunday 10 January 2010




Course work: Having been dissatisfied with the results of yesterday’s use of oil pastels on Canson charcoal paper, I turned to a small sheet of light yellow Strathmore charcoal paper (which has a finer texture than does the Canson paper) and carried out some more experimentation with a simple setup. The results of overfilling the texture are not satisfactory, either. It is possible that some of the inhomogeniety will be improved my working at the larger scale required by the actual exercise.

Reading:

John Elliot Oil Pastel for the Serious Beginner

Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, 2002

Pp 56-141

(This book by one of the pioneers of oil-pastels has a lot of useful information, but it does pass a bit too quickly over the fundamentals which are most needed by the beginner.)



Personal Sketchbook work: Did more work on the colored pencil project workbook project started on 25 December.

Feeling I needed a change, I went back to charcoal and Strathmore charcoal paper and did a drawing of a human skull, which turned out better than anything else I’ve done recently.

Weekly reflections on learning experience: This has been a busy period of color work, including colored pencils, colored markers, and oil pastels. All seem to require specialized techniques or additional materials to produce good results, and the time I have spent on them is insufficient for me to have done anything more than experiment with them in the most superficial of manners. The marker sketch of two bananas that I did on 18 December is a better piece of work than this week’s effort with markers. Reading about techniques is no substitute for seeing them done by someone who has mastered them. Use in a multimedia fashion has often produced results superior to employment as a single medium, although such use may violate the intent of the exercise in progress.



Total time: 3 hours 34 minutes

Saturday 9 January 2010




A busy day cut severely into my drawing efforts.



Course work: An oil pastel sketch of five pieces of fruit on a 9 x 12” (~23 x 30 cm) sheet of buff Canson charcoal paper. I found that the texture of this paper was so coarse that far too much of the underlying paper color showed through to be pleasing to the eye.

Reading:



Nick Meglin Drawing From Within

Warner Books, Inc., New York, 1999

Pp 161-222

(This book is more useful than many of its type: it emphasizes a personal response to the subject, but with less “rah-rah” and hardly any pseudopsychological or pseudospiritual claptrap. The exercises in the book are clearly aimed at urban dwellers, but since this includes a majority of humankind, it can hardly be considered a major flaw.)



Total time: 1 hour 6 minutes

Friday 8 January 2009




Course work: As oil pastels are an unfamiliar medium, I started with some brief experiments on scrap paper (discarded) then proceeded to a practice piece on a 9 x 12” (~23 x 30 cm) sheet of grey pastel paper. I set up a simple arrangement incorporating a green pepper, a red pear, a yellow pear, and a lime, then attempted to draw this with my oil pastels, following the method outlined in the text. Dissatisfied with the result, I tried some other approaches, and found that using several colors near the “native” color, plus one or two colors adjacent on the color wheel, plus an occasional complement, produced marginally acceptable results. The process overall seems about as precise as trying to scratch one’s nose while wearing welding gloves, but I will struggle along and try to improve.

Reading:





John Elliot Oil Pastel for the Serious Beginner

Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, 2002

Pp 8-53



Personal Sketchbook work: Two views of a green bell pepper, done in graphite.

Total time: 2 hours 23 minutes

Thursday 7 January 2009




Course work: Did three more preliminary marker drawings for the marker drawing portion of the exercise. This time I chose only three items: a large mango, a small lime, and a pear that had seen its best days. Each of these (except the mango) was predominately of a single color, and I finally positioned it so that only a little green was visible. After some experimentation I discovered that colored pencil would apply very nicely over the marker color, and could be used for shading, reflections, and color accents. I then proceeded to the A4-size drawing, which used marker, a small amount of pen and ink, and colored pencil. Having purchased a marker-paper pad, hoping (in vain) that the colorless blender would work in it, I did a second drawing of an almost-identical setup; a slip of the marker required correction that did result in a rather hypertrophied mango. The colored pencil did not work as well on the marker paper, and the resultant work was less satisfactory than the first effort.

Of interest, although the marker paper seemed to be of little value for use with markers, the smooth surface shows promise for use with graphite pencil, which lays down smoothly, blends readily, and erases easily. I’ll test it with fixative when weather permits.



From my efforts with markers, I have learned the following:

(1) Select subjects either of uniform color or with a sharp border between unlike colors (2) Don’t expect to have much luck blending colors (though one can superimpose unlike colors and get a mixture, the resultant colors often seem to defy the rules of color mixing; smooth blending at the border of unlike colors does not seem doable)

(3) Colored pencil works well as a color modifier. Some small experiments on scrap paper indicated that soft pastel, hard pastel, and oil pastel could also be used in conjunction with markers.

(4) Although I dislike markers less now than following my experiments at the beginning of this assignment, I think it unlikely that they will ever be a major part of my armamentarium.



Reading:



Kenneth Leslie Oil Pastel

Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, 1990

Pp 46-81



Personal Sketchbook work: In my pocket sketchbook, a little sketch of some of the branches of a tall shrub. In my A4 sketchbook, a last look at the pear that has served me so faithfully since 27 December 2009, done lightly with graphite and very lightly overworked with colored pencil.

Total time: 2 hours 57 minutes (71 h33m)

Wednesday 6 January 2010




Course work: Finally finished (I think) the colored pencil drawing of fruits and vegetables, which is fairly satisfactory considering my limited experience with the medium. If I were going to do it again, I would transpose the red pepper and the reddish-purple pear, as the latter loses conspicuity in the shadow of the other items. A total of about seven hours of drawing time was required for this approximately A4 drawing: I dread the forthcoming colored pencil drawing on A2 paper.

Did three preliminary marker drawings for the next part of the exercise. Two included three yellowish pieces of fruit and one green one. I found that the limited number of colors I have available, and the inability to blend them on ordinary drawing paper made differentiating between the lemon, the pear, and the banana possible only by shape. I then switched to some more color-differentiated fruits with somewhat better results. Blending is still not successful.

Reading:



Bernard Chaet The Art of Drawing (3rd Ed)

Harcourt College Publishers, Orlando, Florida, USA, 1983

Pp 79-112



Personal Sketchbook work: Did a little more work on the seemingly-endless colored pencil project workbook project started on 25 December.



Total time: 1 hour 21 min

Tuesday 5 January 2010




Course work: Prepared a color chart of my limited number of Prismacolor markers (19 colors, 7 greyscale tones) in anticipation of upcoming work. Continued work on the colored pencil drawing of fruits and vegetables.



Total time: 1 hour 7 minutes

Monday 4 January 2010




Course work: Further work on the colored pencil drawing of fruits and vegetables.





Reading:



Bernard Chaet The Art of Drawing (3rd Ed)

Harcourt College Publishers, Orlando, Florida, USA, 1983

Pp 139-172



Personal Sketchbook work: A hasty sketch of one of the cats, who knows perfectly well she’s not allowed in that chair.

Total time: 2hrs 55 min

Sunday 3 January 2010




Course work: Started the colored pencil drawing of fruits and vegetables. Had to rearrange my setup a bit, as the bananas I had previously used had aged beyond usability. The setup includes two bananas, two pears, and a red bell pepper. I’m working on a 9 x12” (~23 x 30 cm) sheet of drawing paper, using Prismacolor colored pencils, trying to apply some of the things I’ve learned from my still-ongoing workbook project.



Reading:



E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art

Phaidon press Limited, Oxford 1978

Pp 395-424



Personal Sketchbook work: A drawing of a thin piece of fabric, dropped into a patch of sunshine.

Total time: 4 hours 23 minutes

Saturday 2 January 2010




Course work: Using a pair of paper “L’s”, I drew a few rectangles of A4 proportion over yesterday’s preliminary sketches, looking for better compositions. One of the sketches yielded two additional possibilities, one only one, and one none. I then drew three more preliminary sketches using markers (one in tones of grey, two in approximate colors), to get a little more comfortable with them before the upcoming marker portions of the assignment, and again used the pair of paper “L’s” to seek improved compositions. Markers themselves are an unfamiliar-enough medium that I did rather poorly with this second set of sketches. However, I think that I have now arrived at a suitable composition for the next part of the exercise.

Reading:



Roberta Weir Leonardo’s Ink Bottle: The Artist’s Way of Seeing

Celestial Arts Publishing, Berkeley, California, 1998

Pp 176-217

(I didn’t get a great deal out of this book…from my viewpoint, it was very heavy on pseudospirituality and transcendence and extraordinarily light on useful information.)



Personal Sketchbook work: As a refresher, I did a small self-portrait. Just to make myself really wish I’d done something else, I did this one with a quill pen I cut from a wild turkey feather. It is clear that I have a good bit more to learn about using a pen-knife with skill, to say nothing of using the quill. I also did some additional work on the colored pencil project workbook project started on 25 December, which is proving a longer project than I had anticipated.

Total time: 2 hours 25 minutes

Friday 1 January 2010




Course work: Three preliminary sketches for a fruit and vegetable drawing, done in graphite pencil.

Reading:

Roy R. Behrens False Colors: Art Design, and Modern Camouflage

Bobolink Books, Dysart, Iowa, USA, 2002

(The book itself travels to some extent under false colors, as art theory, design theory, psychology, visual physiology, zoology, and philosophy are the major considerations. If one has a cluttered closet for a mind [as I do] this is a wonderfully entertaining read. If you are really interested in camouflage per se, there are better sources.)



Personal Sketchbook work: A sketch in my pocket sketchbook of one of the pair of donkeys that strayed onto our property yesterday. Donkeys are better subjects than horses…they are less curious, and thus stay still longer.

Total time: 2 hours 47 minutes