Category: exercises

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Part 1 – applying paint without brushes

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

This appeals to me, I like wielding a palette knife and a pebble and carving acrylics into shapes. I started with a landscape from memory but found my memory had stored all the wrong shapes. I’ve been doing sketches of this scene recently for the Drawing module and although that’s moved on a bit from pencils and charcoal, it felt very nice to be let loose with something solid and malleable. I worked originally from photos I’d taken there then reduced to monochrome and heightened the contrast in PaintShop Pro. I go through this underpass almost every day and, a … Continue reading Part 1 – applying paint without brushes

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Part 3 Project 2, landscape

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

  Breugel‘s Winter landscape with skaters and bird trap 1505; Monet‘s Grand Canal, Venice 1908; and Stuppin‘s Catskill Moon 2013. Three landscape artists whose images caught my eye when I was trawling for examples of the genre. I already knew of Breugel and Monet but hadn’t come across Stuppin before and actually thought it was one of our local artists, Sarah Duffield who uses very bright and largely unrealistic colours for her work.  I was driven to have a go myself on the black sugar paper I’d pasted into my sketchbook, just to see what would happen.   These are Faber-Castell pencils and … Continue reading Part 3 Project 2, landscape

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Part 3, project 2, exercise 2

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Sketchbook walks. It’s still a bit nippy hereabouts, also damp so this was quite a sprint. And my biro gave out so luckily I had a piece of conte about my person, as you do.   This is a quick gallop round the village at around sunset so when the sun appears there are long, deep, shadows. Otherwise it’s a grey, dismal, flat light. I can’t say this is easy, compared with sheep which are a doddle because of where they are, for quick sketches, I find streets over-stimulating – too many lines, too much material, and too unaccommodating in … Continue reading Part 3, project 2, exercise 2

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Part 3, project 1, exercise 1 and 2 – trees

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Back down to earth with a bump. It’s a long tumble from a fantasy citadel to a conte sketch of a tree. This first pop is from my window which meant sitting on the windowsill over the radiator – not a position to be held for long, but also not to be swapped for standing outside, at least not just yet. It’s a massive evergreen Leylandii type with a massive bole at the base and squirrels in the branches. It’s going to need more attention than I’ve given it today to make any impression on its stature and gravitas. Still, … Continue reading Part 3, project 1, exercise 1 and 2 – trees

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Part 2, Project 4, exercise 3

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Material differences. This had me thinking of textures and also of one of the sketches I’d done earlier which features a series of door frames through from the kitchen to the front of the house. Based on this, I took an A3 sized cartridge sheet and sketched out the key vertical and horizontal lines associated with the doors, the lintels, the ceiling, a book case off in the distance, and reflections of a shelf in the kitchen via a long mirror. Only the sofa and chair are rounded and soft, the rest is wood, plaster, artex, and wallpaper. I’ve recently … Continue reading Part 2, Project 4, exercise 3

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Part 2, Project 4, exercise 2

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Composition. Building on yesterday’s ’round the house’ sketches, it wasn’t difficult to find an area that seemed to lend itself to framing a composition as it’s already framed. This drawing (white charcoal on pink sugar paper) focused largely on the sofa as I could see it through the doorway, but there are so many doorways, like a hall of mirrors (and with a mirror on one wall too), forming a dark tunnel towards the front room. They nest and parallel each other with shades of shadow and spots of light from glass and door knobs. I used black conte on … Continue reading Part 2, Project 4, exercise 2

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Part 2, Project 4, exercise 1

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Brace yourself for a trip round my house. We’re starting with the business end – the room with the windows, the TV, the table full of keyboard, screen, and arty miscellany, the bookshelves, the windowsill being another sort of shelf, and the cupboards full of old vinyl LPs. I chose charcoal because it’s loose and I’m not likely to be able to execute anything more precise while standing, holding a sketch book in one hand and driving a piece of medium with the other.  Here we go: Even I can’t tell immediately what this is but trust me when I … Continue reading Part 2, Project 4, exercise 1

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Part 2, Project 3, exercise 4

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Monochrome which I’ve discovered at this late stage in life, doesn’t mean black and white, it means mono [one] chrome [colour]. I’ve tackled a jug and an onion on a plain white surface with a white background. I’ve been watching Platon (Antoniou)  [Abstract: the art of design; Netflix] whose photography is stark and through that, more revealing than it might otherwise be, and found myself nudged in that direction. It didn’t extend to my treatment of the image unfortunately so I’ll need to go a few more rounds with this idea. First the sketch which mapped out the shadows but … Continue reading Part 2, Project 3, exercise 4

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Reductive drawing

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

I’d heard of this but not quite taken on its meaning which is, somewhat biblically, to bring light out of darkness, unlike redaction which does the opposite with regard to information you’d quite like to get your eyes on. My tutor pointed me at Anita Taylor and William Kentridge who both use charcoal as a base from which to pull detail using an eraser, and I found Mark Hufford’s neat demonstration video of his technique. I’ve used erasers quite a lot in the past and seen them as a drawing tool rather than an instrument for correcting mistakes. But I … Continue reading Reductive drawing

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Grey scale exercise(s)

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Probably the first of several so I’ll collect them here. Hopefully, I’ll remember to come back! I’m still besotted with gesso so this is a pre-prepped A5 sheet in a sketchbook on which I’d blended dark grey charcoal before applying the gesso. The next day (today), I used each of a series of graded charcoals to make the boxes, finger-blending line 1, cross-hatching line 2, and describing small circles in line 3. Line 4 is the black and the white crayons applied with different pressures to give graded tones. I’ve done this with pencil on a previous course but need … Continue reading Grey scale exercise(s)