Thursday 3 December 2009




Course work: Drew a hemisectioned tomato with a single line, using a felt-tip pen.

Reading:



E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art

Phaidon press Limited, Oxford 1978

Pp 325-351



Deborah Haynes Art Lessons

Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, USA, 2003

Pp 161-184

(The title of this book is very deceptive: it contains, not art lessons, but a series of loosely-connected essays on what the author sees as the essential interconnectedness of left-wing politics, Eastern spirituality, and art. This is my second reading of this book: I had hoped it would make more sense this time. It didn’t.)





Personal Sketchbook work: Drew a tomato with Derwent Coloursoft pencils.

Research point: One artist who worked frequently with pure line was Egon Schiele. Contour is of surpassing importance when using pure line, as one does not have shading as an agent for depicting form. This requires careful thought as to what lines should be employed, and precise line placement so that use of line alone can cause the viewer to “see” the shading that is not there. Much of Schiele’s work in his last year was line, and I think it much improved over his earlier efforts. I think that, had the influenza not taken him at 28, he would have become a truly remarkable artist.



Total time: 1 hour 37 min

Tuesday 1 December 2009




Course work: I carefully cut an onion (previously drawn in my personal sketchbook) in half vertically, and drew it in my course sketchbook with a felt-tip pen, using a single line. Some retracing was required, but it seemed like a pretty simple exercise. Perhaps I am overlooking something.





Reading:



Ian Simpson Drawing Seeing and Observation (Third Edition)

A & C Black, London, 1992

Pp 32-68



Deborah Haynes Art Lessons

Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, USA, 2003

Pp 141-160





Personal Sketchbook work: A drawing of an onion, done with Derwent Coloursoft pencils. I am learning that colored pencil is not a medium with which one can work rapidly.

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



Total time: 1 hour 51 min

Monday 30 November 2009




Course work: Experimented with a tin of twelve Derwent Drawing Pencils. These are more muted than the Derwent Coloursoft Pencils, but handle in a very similar fashion. They blend slightly when rubbed, and are very slightly water-spreadable. The somewhat muted colors would appear to be useful in landscape sketching, where the more-intense Coloursoft pencils might prove less realistic.

A tin of twelve Derwent Graphitint pencils was tested next. I thought that the colors chosen for the tinned set were somewhat strange: three browns, three greys, two greens, indigo, a color a little redder than burnt siena, and reddish and bluish violets. This selection of colors limited testing. Several of the pencils showed striking color differences between the dry application and the brushed-out color. As with the Staedler Karat Aquarelle pencils, results obtained on a scrap of watercolor paper were superior to those on sketchbook paper. The colors did appear more “natural” than similar colors of the Staedler Karat Aquarelle pencils.

I concluded my color experiments with two small sets of pastels, one soft, one hard. I have not worked with pastels before, and was somewhat surprised by their tendency to coat everything within reach with colored dust. Both types of pastels blend easily, and smear very easily. The colors are opaque: only the lighter colors produce optical mixing when laid over others without rubbing. Moisture produces only minimal difference in comparison to dry rubbing. Sketchbook paper is not intended for use with pastels, but nevertheless produced fairly satisfactory results.

Research point: Among the artists who produced detailed drawings are da Vinci, Durer, and George Stubbs. Da Vinci’s notebooks contain such highly-detailed drawings that it has been possible to build some of his proposed machines from them. I remain amazed that he could draw lines as fine with chalk as I can with a crow-quill pen. Durer was a master of the line in portraiture and the figure. Stubbs’ Anatomy of the Horse is still in print, as the detailed drawings it contains have not been excelled. Many others could easily be named.



Summary Observations on Exploring Coloured Media (Check and Log):

A brief summary of color-testing results: (1) proper paper is important, and varies with medium (2) solubility and insolubility are relative terms (3) choosing a medium is very subjective. I found pastels to be expressive, and hope to work with them in a little more depth: they would seem to be particularly useful for capturing a quick impression. I was interested in colored pencils as well: these would probably be the most useful medium for highly detailed work. The very hard lead of the Staedler Karat Aquarelle pencils could produce quite small details if used without water; the softer leads of the Derwent products would require careful attention to sharpening to keep a drawing detailed, but would produce superior color.



Reading:



Ian Simpson Drawing Seeing and Observation (Third Edition)

A & C Black, London, 1992

Pp 7-31



Deborah Haynes Art Lessons

Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, USA, 2003

Pp 111-140



Personal Sketchbook work: Half an apple, done with Derwent Coloursoft pencils

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