Category: Research & Reflection

The parent category for research and reflection posts.

Art and artists: building a vocabulary1 Comment

Bisa Butler – portrait artist in quilts

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Somebody remind me of this for when portraiture comes around in this module. I’m a child of the flower-power generation, a hippy, a 1960s Brighton art student who somehow ended up in science. Butler’s colours sing from that palette but they’re singing a very modern tune, setting right some cultural wrongs by depicting black men and women with a dignity they were never quite accorded at that time and which our white world still struggles with. Butler trained as a painter and describes herself as a portrait artist, but uses the medium of fabric and thread to make her art. … Continue reading Bisa Butler – portrait artist in quilts

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Brighton galleries

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Where can you see Banksy, Damien Hirst, Grayson Perry, Sir Peter Blake, Bob Dylan, Ronnie Wood, and Billy Connolly originals within a few yards of each other in right-on-the-street galleries? Brighton. There’s a detailed account of these galleries on my Drawing blog. Castle Fine Art – Lanes. Dylan, Wood, Connolly Kellie Miller – no photos. Art Republic – Banksy, Hurst, Perry, Blake Continue reading Brighton galleries

Research & Reflection2 Comments

Colour theory revisited – Part 2, research point 1

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

I’m coming back to this after a few months’ break while finishing the Drawing1 module and my understanding of how to tackle these research areas has grown, along with my ability to process and retain something of art’s back story. The purpose of this research point is to discover more about Chevreul’s role in the development of colour theory and look to see who and how this has influenced in their practice of painting. My first stop was a paper by Georges Roque (Chevreul’s colour theory and its consequences for artists, 2011) which details the manner of Chevreul’s insightful discovery … Continue reading Colour theory revisited – Part 2, research point 1

Research & Reflection1 Comment

Heads, hands, and feet – from Aristides atelier

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

When I copied this on Page 71/72 or Juliette Aristides’ book Figure Drawing Atelier (Monacelli Studio, 2019), I thought I was drawing an abstracted, blocky, illustrative figure of bare bones simplicity and I was totally taken aback by what came next: This: The shaping is provided in the book as an under-drawing; the task is to render the shade which is not. This plays to my strengths which rely more on reductive than additive drawing. I find I prefer to shade and finger-blend several layers of graphite (pencil) then dab away with a putty rubber to remove some, add some … Continue reading Heads, hands, and feet – from Aristides atelier

Part 5, Research & Reflection, Videos6 Comments

Part 5 – personal project preparatory work, digital seas

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Flamepainter for iPad is a free app and it’s wonderful for quick, if somewhat erratic, sketches. The process is easy to work out – choose a brush, set the size and other parameters, change the colour if you want to, draw. The last part is the trickiest as the ‘light’ zooms around the canvas as if possessed. Best plan is to try one combination of brush and speeds and get used to it before altering anything else! The image above is made on a black canvas using a number of brushes to pick out the light that might be from … Continue reading Part 5 – personal project preparatory work, digital seas

Research & Reflection2 Comments

Book review: Beginning Drawing Atelier – an instructional sketchbook by Juliette Aristides

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

  This is a work book – guidelines, exercises, drawings to copy and a page next to each to do that. I have never copied other people’s work or tried for the photorealism some artists specialise in making so this was quite a challenge. Add to that the realisation not long ago that lefthanders make their marks in entirely the opposite direction to righthanders and I could see this was not going to be easy. Fortunately, the quality of the images to be copied – there are two da Vinci’s! – makes it clear that perfection is really not the … Continue reading Book review: Beginning Drawing Atelier – an instructional sketchbook by Juliette Aristides

Research & Reflection5 Comments

Book review: What are you looking at? Will Gompertz

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

For someone like me, doing a degree in art but having neither background nor interest in art history (actually, history of any sort if I’m being honest), this book is perfect. I have it on Audible and within a very short time, also bought it in paperback (to flick through) and for Kindle (for the links and notes facility). Gompertz, who I knew only as a film and theatre critic (who was not inclined to be pompous or obfuscating about it), writes with a refreshing lack of reverence for the art history schtick that so turns me off; and while … Continue reading Book review: What are you looking at? Will Gompertz

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The Story of Painting – Sister Wendy Beckett

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

This is not a book for reading, it’s a reference book to keep to hand. Years ago, I saw Sister Wendy’s documentary series on TV and this book is an elaborated version of that. At the time I saw her as unexpectedly (for a nun, and that’s a judgment I probably wouldn’t make now) robust in her approach to the subject matter of many paintings and also the lifestyles of some of the artists. But watching them again as a refresher and I can see that she wasn’t entirely innocent of passing judgement herself. Some women in the pictures have … Continue reading The Story of Painting – Sister Wendy Beckett