Thursday 22 April 2010




Course work: Started work on my foreground-midground-background drawing, working with a photograph taken about 4 km away, with a foreground barbed-wire fence, midground pasturage, a tree line at about 400 meters, and a partially-visible distant tree line across the Broad River, about 9 km away. For this drawing I decided to give water-soluble pencil a try.



Reading:



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

Taschen, Köln, 2005

Pp 380-397



Personal sketchbook work: Some experimentation with water-soluble pencil, in preparation for the above-referenced drawing.

Total time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Wednesday 21 April 2010




I have now been released by my cardiologist to work toward resumption of full normal activity, and my most dangerous medication has been discontinued. This should soon make my outdoors work easier and safer: my previous outdoors work for this assignment has all been done within 200 meters of the house.



Course work: Another pastel sketch of cirrus clouds on a blue base. I found it particularly difficult to suggest depth here. Although I am not entirely satisfied with my cloud studies, I think it is time to proceed to the next part of the exercise.

Reading:



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

Taschen, Köln, 2005

Pp 368-379



Personal sketchbook work: A “found” still-life: items set out to prepare a meal, done with pencil, then repeated with charcoal. I’m not happy with either of these: I’m having trouble getting my drawing media to cooperate with me.

Total time: 1 hour 9 minutes

Sunday 18 April 2010




Course work: Another beautiful…and cloudless…day. I decided to try some cirrus clouds, so I lightly washed a page of my sketchbook with cobalt blue watercolor, then used white pastel to sketch in the cirrus clouds. I then laid down a well-rubbed layer of charcoal on another page, used an eraser to rub out some clouds, and added a little charcoal to the darker areas. Although these exercises stretched the limits of what was requested by the text, I found both useful. The cumulus study lacks depth, as it is drawn from a small segment of a larger photograph.

Reading:



Rose-Marie & Ranier Hagen What Great Paintings Say (Vol. 1)

Taschen, Köln, 2005

Pp 332-355 (This is a book that is best savored by reading a little at a time, as it is very information-dense. I look forward to starting Volume 2.)





Personal sketchbook work: A sketch of the trunk of an old, worn-out pecan tree, in my pocket sketchbook.

Weekly reflections on learning experience: A disproportionate number of my sky sketches have been done from photographs, simply because we have few clouds at this time of the year. I will continue to keep an eye open for interesting sky phenomena.



Total time: 1 hour 17 minutes

Saturday 17 April 2010


Course work: An approaching front provided some cirrocumulus clouds to draw. I rubbed some charcoal dust to make a fairly uniform background, then worked in the cloud forms with white Conté crayon, but quickly discovered this wasn’t white enough, and switched to white pastel, which produced a somewhat better result, though lacking in depth because I was looking upward at about a 45° angle,

Reading:



Rose-Marie & Ranier Hagen What Great Paintings Say (Vol. 1)

Taschen, Köln, 2005

Pp 327-331



Eric Sloane Skies and the Artist

Dover Publications, Inc. Mineola, New York, USA, 2006

Pp1-39

(This very brief work is almost all illustrations, but contains some useful ideas concerning cloud drawing and painting. It is a reprint of a book first published in 1950.)



Personal sketchbook work: A quick drawing of our black cat sleeping, done with white and black Conté crayon.

Total time: 1 hour 9 minutes

Friday 16 April 2010




Course work: Since no clouds were visible, using charcoal, and working from my photo collection, I sketched a sky with stratus clouds hovering over a treeline: the trees add substantially to the impression of depth. Then using sanguine Conté and charcoal, sketched a post-sunset sky with red and grey stratus clouds from my photo collection: this was a much less convincing effort. Late in the afternoon, some cumulus clouds with a tendency to develop toward cumulonimbus appeared, and I sketched some of these with charcoal. The tone of the cloud bases is virtually identical to that of the blue sky, and the cloud bases appear to blend almost imperceptibly into the sky. When I returned to the porch later, I noticed a strong tendency to vertical cumulus development, and sketched part of this buildup as best I could with a sanguine Conté crayon. Both these cumulus studies are reasonably satisfactory to me.

Reading:



Rose-Marie & Ranier Hagen What Great Paintings Say (Vol. 1)

Taschen, Köln, 2005

Pp 320-326



Personal sketchbook work: A quick figure sketch with a sanguine Conté crayon, to refresh some of my Assignment Two learning: I think some review of these earlier assignments is needed.

Total time: 1 hour 34 minutes

Thursday 15 April 2010




Visited the Gibbes Art Museum in the morning (reported with museum visits), then visited several more art galleries similar to yesterday’s. Drove home in afternoon.

Wednesday 14 April 2010




Drove to Charleston, South Carolina. Visited several art galleries in the afternoon, with quality ranging from quite amateurish (some even worse than mine) to museum-quality work, with commensurate prices.