Monday 26 April 2010




Course work: Completed (I think) work on the foreground-midground-background drawing: found it necessary to add a few accents in white Conté crayon to offset the slight cream tint of the paper.

Reading:



Rose-Marie & Ranier Hagen What Great Paintings Say (Vol. 2)

Taschen, Köln, 2005

Pp 446-457



Howard Etter & Margit Malmstrom Perspective for Painters

Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, Pp7-31



Personal sketchbook work: A sketch in water-soluble pencil of a portion of a track-light fixture.

Landscape drawing check and log:



(The following responses apply primarily to the foreground-midground-background study, as I have commented on the other work as I logged it.)



“In what way did you simplify and select in your study?” I omitted detail in the trees delineating the farther extent of the midground, as well as some midground detail, in order to separate it more clearly from the foreground.



“Were you able to focus on simple shapes and patterns amid all the visual information?” To a considerable extent, yes. The clouds were simplified in order to help keep the eye on the foreground and the terrain features.



“How did you create a sense of distance and form in your sketches?” By decreasing detail and tone in distant objects, and by making distant objects smaller than similar objects nearer the eye. In the extreme foreground, the use of perspective for the gate and the field road approaching it helped in the illusion of depth.



“How did you use light and shade? Was it successful?” The greatest variations in tone are in the foreground, and in the sky nearest to “overhead.” The high ground seen at a distance is only a very light tone, with no indication that it is in fact heavily forested. I think that I was reasonably successful here.



“What additional preliminary work would have been helpful towards the larger study?” I should have done several smaller studies before launching into the larger one. I should also have either used graphite pencil as the medium for the drawing, or spent more time familiarizing myself with the properties of water-soluble pencils.



Total time: 1 hour 14 min