Monday 8 February 2010




Course work: No luck with the fish today. Drew a cottontail rabbit from a series of photos I took last fall when this rabbit was a regular visitor to the edge of the lawn. Used a small assortment of colored pencils: black, two greys, two browns, and two greens. Didn’t place the drawing on the page as well as I’d planned, and ran out of page before I ran out of rabbit.

Reading:



Hajo Düchting Cézanne

Taschen, Köln, 1989

Pp 99-151



Personal Sketchbook work: A portrait sketch, to refresh my recollections of Assignment Two. Graphite pencil was the medium used. Page placement was a problem here as well, and I still have a tendency to shorten the antero-posterior dimension of the head. Nevertheless, despite its flaws, this is a far better sketch than I could have done before starting the course. I need to do more of these.

Total time: 2 hours 18 minutes

Sunday 7 February 2010




Course work: As the text suggested animal drawing trying a limited selection of colored pencils, I chose a bright orange, an orange-yellow, a blue-violet, black, and mid grey for an attempt at one of the cats. Results are not optimal, and I’ll try again later…perhaps I can catch her more soundly asleep.

Reading:



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

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

Pp 139-150



Weekly reflections on learning experience: A week of animal work, with varying success. Overall, I think I have made a little progress, especially with the cat drawings, probably because they are always underfoot, whereas working with the horses or the dogs involves going outside in rain, cold, or both. Wild animals are intermittently available, but require a telescope, binoculars, or a camera with a telephoto lens. I also did some experimentation with less-familiar media in my sketchbook this week.



It is interesting to reflect that I’ll have to go fishing in preparation for the next portion of the exercise, as whole fish are not available in area stores, and a frozen fish filet certainly won’t meet the requirement. This part of the learning experience probably wasn’t contemplated by the authors of the course!

Saturday 6 February 2010




Course work: I think the big drawing of the cat is now finished: I’ve certainly managed to capture her personality, and a fairly typical pose. Also, two more quick cat sketches.

Reading:



Hajo Düchting Cézanne

Taschen, Köln, 1989

Pp 7-97



Personal Sketchbook work: A sketch of a floor-lamp, seen from beneath. An apple, sketched with Caran D’Ache Neocolor 2 water-soluble crayons, as further experimentation with this medium. There is a tendency for second applications of color to partially “lift off” earlier ones, and this will require improved handling on my part to manage.

Total time: 2 hours 13 minutes (128h10m)

Friday 5 February 2010




Course work: Sketched a dog (very badly) and a cat (almost as badly) and started work on the large animal drawing. Lacking the required paper, I used a sheet of white Canson paper 500 x650mm (19 5/8 x 25 ½ inches), and drew with sanguine hard pastel, using one of the cat sketches I had previously drawn as a departure point. The details of the markings were taken from old photographs and from several walks back and forth to have a fresh look at the cat. There is more work to do, but I made very good progress, and should finish in another day.

Personal Sketchbook work: A revisit to the shiny metal drawings of Assignment One: part of a very shiny coat-hook with good reflections, sketched with a Design Ebony pencil.

Total time: 2 hours 27 minutes

Thursday 4 February 2010




Course work: Continued with the “Drawing Animals” exercise, concentrating my effort on capturing basic shapes. Only managed three sketches of cats, in charcoal, today.

Reading:



Carol Strickland The Annotated Mona Lisa

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

Pp 159-194

(I cannot recommend this book, which claims to be “A crash course in art history…”. It abounds with factual errors…three in the first sentence alone. All of art history before 1800 is skimmed over in 64 pages, with the subsequent two centuries getting twice as many pages. I’ve read it…now I can throw it away.)





Personal Sketchbook work: A charcoal sketch of a white-tailed deer in the yard, from a photo I took.

Total time:1 hour 36 min

Wednesday 3 February 2010




Course work: A hastily-done attempt at a sketch of a dozing horse: he was almost directly up-sun, and detail was poorly seen. Several cat sketches of varying quality, then another partial horse sketch, followed by two more cat sketches. One of these may do as the prototype for the larger animal drawing; I’ll continue to work on data accumulation for a few more days.

Reading:



Carol Strickland The Annotated Mona Lisa

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

Pp 126-158



Personal Sketchbook work: A brush sketch of cumulus clouds, a distant tree line, and faraway hills, imaginary.

Total time: 1 hour 44 minutes

Tuesday 2 February 2010




Course work: Three hasty sketches of one of the dogs, who, contrary to his usual behavior, would not stay still.

Reading:



Carol Strickland The Annotated Mona Lisa

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

Pp 110-125



Personal Sketchbook work: Some experimentation with Caran D’Ache Neocolor 2 water-soluble crayons: a group of three bananas. The colors are fairly light until water is applied, then they become much stronger: this striking difference would take a good bit of work to master. There is some tendency for the wet pigment to penetrate lightweight sketchbook paper, though this is much less pronounced than with markers or full-strength ink. As a quick sketching medium in the field, these may have merit, but I fear they might have a tendency to melt in the heat of our Georgia summers: this will require some testing in a few months.

I then did a quick sketch of a single banana, using Staedtler Karat Aquarell watercolor pencils. Again, color was quite light until water was applied, then it became moderately stronger. Here again, learning to adequately plan for this substantial change in appearance between dry and wet would take a good bit of practice and experience. These pencils would be unlikely to melt when exposed to the sun, but they cannot be applied nearly as quickly as can the water-soluble crayons, and there is a slightly greater tendency for persistence of the original marks even after water application.

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



Total time: 1 hour 13 min