Category: Research & Reflection

The parent category for research and reflection posts.

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Part 4, research point 2 – the Golden Mean

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

From the course notes:  [Essentially] the Golden Mean is a proportion in which a straight line or rectangle is divided into two unequal parts in such a way that the ratio of the smaller to the greater part is the same as the ratio of the greater part to the whole This site (Maths is Fun) describes the Golden Mean and its relationship to Fibonacci numbers thus: … just like we naturally get seven arms when we use 0.142857 (1/7), we tend to get Fibonacci Numbers when we use the Golden Ratio. Maths is Fun https://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/nature-golden-ratio-fibonacci.html#:~:text=Fibonacci%20Numbers,B Sometime last year, watching … Continue reading Part 4, research point 2 – the Golden Mean

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Part 4, project 3, research point 1 – looking at landscapes

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

There isn’t an explicit task to this other than to take a look at various kinds of landscapes from the surrealist oddities of Dali, Ernst, and de Chirico; the less dream-like but emotional and somewhat personal work of Nash and Sutherland; and to take another tilt at German Expressionism and Symbolism via Nolde, Klimt, Moreau, Bakst, and Kahlo. One of the first genres of painting to attract my somewhat sci-fi focused attention was surrealism. It looked out of this world, an imaginarium of weirdness that seemed aspirational. It’s hard to put my finger on it, but I think Dali’s 1931 … Continue reading Part 4, project 3, research point 1 – looking at landscapes

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Representing volume in drawings and paintings – follow up to formative feedback re Part 3

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

It wasn’t until I had posted my efforts to make images that show volume rather than ones that sit flat on the page or canvas that I began to ask myself where and how volume arose as a concept in art. I think this was triggered by reading Hockney’s 2001 book on the ways he believes some of the old masters achieved their remarkably naturalistic effects, but there are other questions too because even with an understanding of perspective and deployment of the various lenses to aid execution, the end experience of volume comes from an interaction between this two … Continue reading Representing volume in drawings and paintings – follow up to formative feedback re Part 3

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Objective Evaluation

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

After quite a difficult start due to having no relevant background, I felt my drawing began to emerge towards the end of this module. Now, some way into Practice of Painting, I am seeing things I could not see before. One of these is that I find my D1 assignments less satisfactory than many of the sketches; they seem constrained and tight while the sketches were beginning to loosen up and become more relaxed and fluid. This is why the pieces I have submitted comprise mostly the latter. A second realisation is that I had no idea how to process … Continue reading Objective Evaluation

Art and artists: building a vocabulary, Research & Reflection2 Comments

ArtActivistBarbie – a Conversation article

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

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

Research & Reflection3 Comments

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

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

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

Part 5, Research & Reflection3 Comments

Drawing or painting; painting or drawing?

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

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?

Research & Reflection2 Comments

How to paint like Picasso – video

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

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