ArtActivistBarbie – a Conversation article

The Conversation is an academics-driven publication that takes a sound look at a variety of topics from cosmology through medical research to gender politics. They permit republishing under the creative commons licence and in accordance with their policy of enabling the free flow of information. This article speaks to my growing discomfort at the monopoly male artists, male collectors, and male curators – generally white – hold in representing the history and the body of art. In fact, as ArtActivistBarbie put it with regard to a history of art poster (see penultimate paragraph), museums and galleries are de facto His … Continue reading ArtActivistBarbie – a Conversation article

Book review: Secret knowledge – rediscovering the lost techniques of the old masters. David Hockney

This review was first posted to Goodreads on May 11th, 2020. I can rate this before getting anywhere near the last page because it’s a parallel of two BBC documentaries made in 2001 that details Hockney’s theory that many of the old masters used contemporaneously new technology as drawing and painting aids. The camera lucida for instance that allows for an image to be visible within a lens positioned over paper and that the artist can see to ‘trace’, and later the camera obscura that uses a larger lens to project an image onto a canvas or wood support in … Continue reading Book review: Secret knowledge – rediscovering the lost techniques of the old masters. David Hockney

Drawing or painting; painting or drawing?

For my final assignment I found I really wanted to execute this in acrylics; but was this drawing, and if it wasn’t, what made it different? Intuitively, I could see no real difference, especially as somewhere in Drawing1 I was being asked to ‘paint with pastels’, while in Practice of Painting at least one exercise is about ‘drawing with paint’. If I draw in the traditional sense, it is with an implement that on the whole is short and resilient, while if I paint I am using a tool that is often longer and has a flexible component at the … Continue reading Drawing or painting; painting or drawing?

Formal Assessment – images

This is a detail from my sketchbook; drawings of metallic birds in biro, and watercolour finger-painted into place. The support is pink sugar paper pasted into the book. It was probably the first time I had made loose drawings of this kind and it came after buying a copy of Henry Moore’s book full of ‘wire frame’ drawings of sheep. I think this series of drawings represents something of an early milestone in exploration of different media and supports as I had never used either before. My approach to drawing had also changed in this work, looser and less ‘perfect’. … Continue reading Formal Assessment – images

How to paint like Picasso – video

I am a sucker for idiot’s guides to areas I have little or no grasp on, and while I’d read somewhere about cubism being derived from an attempt to represent many rather than just one perspective, having that idea visualised for me makes a big difference. Don’t make the mistake though of thinking this is a demonstration of how to copy one of Picasso’s pieces of work, it isn’t, it’s the equivalent of a singer/songwriter using Bob Marley’s riffs and rhythms in a new song, rather than someone you never heard of covering ‘No Woman, No Cry’. The art work … Continue reading How to paint like Picasso – video