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