Sunday 29 November 2009




Our house guests having departed, I can at last return to working on the course.



Course work: Out of concern that my testing of Staedler Karat Aquarelle pencils might have been a bit too superficial, I conducted some further tests. I sketched two apples, one red, one green, and moistened them with a damp brush. Again, color intensity was increased only moderately, and underlying pencil marks persisted. I then carried out some further tests on a scrap of watercolor paper, and found the results somewhat more impressive. Colors mixed from primaries are somewhat stronger, but neutrals remain rather weak. I doubt that these pencils will be of more than limited use to me.

Reading:



Cathy Johnson The Sierra Club Guide to Sketching in Nature

Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1990

Pp 133-178



Deborah Haynes Art Lessons

Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, USA, 2003

Pp 99-110



Total time: 1hour 14 min

Thursday 26 November 2009




Reading:



Cathy Johnson The Sierra Club Guide to Sketching in Nature

Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1990

Pp 101-132



Deborah Haynes Art Lessons

Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, USA, 2003

Pp 84-98



Total time: 34 min



Friday 27 November 2009



Museum Visit: Visited the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Georgia

Tuesday 24 November 2009




Course work: Today I experimented very briefly with Staedler Karat Aquarelle pencils. When applied dry, the color is not nearly as strong as with the Derwent Coloursoft Pencils. A dry finger produces modest blending; a damp finger produces better blending, and in the tested blue pencil, what appears to be a slight shift toward green. The drawn orange was not very intense, and painting half with water increased the intensity only moderately. Mixing complements dry or wet produced unconvincing neutrals. Mixing primary colors dry or wet produced somewhat better secondary colors, but only the orange color produced with red and yellow approached that of the pencil of the same color. Although my experiments were admittedly superficial, I wasn’t very impressed by these pencils.

Reading:



Cathy Johnson The Sierra Club Guide to Sketching in Nature

Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1990

Pp 67-100



Total time: 43 minutes

Monday 23 November 2009




Course work: Continued exploration of my colored media. Oil pastels produce nice, strong colors, though they tend to look a bit like children’s crayons. Colors can be blended fairly well, either by hatching and rubbing, or by rubbing one color directly into another. On my color-bar test, it was obvious that the colors were being dragged across from one bar to another, leaving more examples of neutrals than of two- color mixing. Mixing complements produces usable neutrals. Some tests were made on a separate card using odorless paint thinner: this blended the colors nicely, and produced good mixtures. Two pastels were tested following being directly dipped into the thinner…one went on smoothly, the other streakily, from which I conclude that extensive further testing would be required were I to choose to employ them in this manner. After drying, the card was pasted into the sketchbook. The page opposite the oil pastel page was left blank so that I can see how strong the tendency is for the colors to rub off in sketchbook use.

Reading:

Deborah Haynes Art Lessons

Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, USA, 2003

Pp 51-83



Personal Sketchbook work: Three views of a lemon, and a sketch of the ancient nail that appears somewhere in each of my sketchbooks.

Total time: 1 hr 12 min

ASSIGNMENT 3: Observation in Nature

Saturday 21 November 2009



Course work: Started exploring the properties of my various colored media, working in my course sketchbook.



My first experiments utilized Derwent Coloursoft Pencils. I started off working in a 5 cm square, but quickly learned that I needed more space. I also learned that, surprisingly, slight dampening produces an effect quite similar to watercolor pencils. I sketched an orange, and worked at shading it, not very convincingly…it appears that sketchbook paper quickly takes up a maximum amount of pigment, and that adding more doesn’t produce very satisfactory blending. A tiny stylized tree was half-moistened, and half left dry, confirming that water does produce some blending and color intensification. An application of yellow over blue produced a green, but not a very strong green. Vertical stripes of yellow, orange, red, purple, and green were crossed with horizontal stripes of the same colors to assess opacity and miscibility: yellow, orange, and to a lesser extent red pick up significant amount of the underlying color. None of the colors is opaque enough to fully conceal the underlying different color. Color blending with a finger is not successful; rubbing with a paper stump produces a somewhat better effect.



A second series of experiments was carried out with Prismacolor colored markers. I have only the three primary and three secondary colors in these. The colors are very intense. Since these markers are solvent-based, they are water-resistant once applied. Application of one color over another does not yield very strong mixing; yellow over blue produces only a weak green. Mixing complements produces fairly strong neutrals (particularly strong with orange and blue). Use of a colorless blender results in some color mixture, but also lightens the underlying color, and produces a strong “bloom”. The back of the sketchbook page is worthless for further use, and at least two sheets of paper are needed beneath the “working” page in order to prevent marring of subsequent pages of the sketchbook with bleed-through. I understand that special paper is available for use with markers that minimizes some of these problems, but I don’t see these markers as being very useful to me: I’m glad I only bought a few to try.

Total time: 47 minutes

Monday 23 November 2009




Course work: After reviewing yesterday’s work on the final drawing in Assignment Two, I concluded that it would be a stronger composition left unfinished. I did a little more work on it, applied some workable fixative, and photographed it for submission. I’ll move on to further work on Assignment 3 now.

Sunday 22 November 2009




Course work: Three small heads of people seen in town. I think it is time to declare the “Moving Figure” exercise complete, while planning to continue similar work until I can do it adequately. Two sketchbook pages of ideas and details for the final drawing in Assignment Two. Tried graphite pencil, carbon pencil, Conte’ crayon, water-soluble pencil, and charcoal: decided on the latter, since use of tone is the major objective of this drawing. On this grey, rainy day, I used artificial lighting, which brought out the folds in the model’s clothing very nicely. After some thought, I decided that omitting the feet, and legs below mid-tibia, would improve the composition. The drawing moved along fairly well, and I’d estimate I’m about 2/3 done.

Reading:



Cathy Johnson The Sierra Club Guide to Sketching in Nature

Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1990

Pp 31-66



Ian Simpson, The Complete Drawing Course

Running Press, Philadelphia, PA 1993

Lesson 15 (pp 122-127)





Personal Sketchbook work: A sketch of part of the nighttime view from my armchair.

Summary Observations on the Moving Figure Exercise (Check and Log):

This was perhaps my most difficult exercise to date, and I don’t really think I’ve done it justice: I will continue to work on the moving figure in the future. In a few cases, I managed to capture the “gesture” of the moment; most of the little sketches I’ve done are fragments. The visual memory I’ve always prided myself for doesn’t seem to have done much for me here. I continue to seek the “…few descriptive lines to suggest the movement…”.



Weekly thoughts on learning experience: Portraiture and figure work still seem to be very challenging, but I have made a great deal of progress over the past several weeks. I still lack the ability to capture a truly convincing likeness, but it may take more years than I have left to achieve this.





Total time: About three hours (95)