The parent category for research and reflection posts.
This is a very practical book by Juliette Aristides that invites copying, tracing over, and adding to the illustrations it contains. Published in 2019 by Monacelli Press, it’s a beautiful thing in its own right. The illustrations are copyrighted and … Continue reading Beginning Drawing Atelier
Curiosity I have never been interested in history of any flavour and so I’ve struggled to find hooks in art and art history on which to hang information pertinent to my own work. In particular, identifying artists who might have influenced what I’m doing and the way I’m doing it leaves me blank. To remedy this, I have followed up recommendations of artists to look at, bought and read books describing developments in art history, and tried almost to manufacture post hoc the required ‘influences’. This article may describe one reason to account for this: because I have almost no … Continue reading Curiosity, memory, and implicit learning
This is my professional body so I can vouch for its credibility. That said, this podcast is a very quick skim through the cognitive neuropsychology of creativity so it doesn’t cover anything in detail. The main takeaways though are: Experience novelty as much as possible Practice – both being creative by problem solving [and questioning things], and technique. Step away from whatever you’re working on and take some time out. Doing something mundane like washing up or walking that doesn’t involve too much cognitive effort frees up your brain to work on problems under the surface. We all recognise that … Continue reading Creativity – a podcast from the British Psychological Society
Historic and contemporary self portraits. I chose Rembrandt and van Gogh as my historic examples (then read that they were recommended) because of their very different approaches. I particularly liked Rembrandt’s honesty with regard to his image when he was older; the unvarnished truth of it and the lack of glamour. His style is very much about realism, these were the instagrams of the day, the selfies, and many of his clients paying for commissions were likely to require a very positive image of themselves and their surroundings. Van Gogh, an insular man with some enormous troubles, painted fractured images … Continue reading Part 4, project 6 – research point #2
Contemporary and historic artists working in different ways on the head. See in particular Graham Little and Elizabeth Peyton. Extraordinarily, Little has no Wikipedia entry and doesn’t appear in any of the books I have to hand. An internet search brings up gallery reports, blogs, and news items, with The Guardian in 2010 introducing his Artist of the Week slot thus: The women in Graham Little’s virtuoso drawings inhabit a world of sumptuous beauty. Realised in a muted Merchant Ivory palette, these long-limbed belles recline gracefully in designer interiors. This is an 80s world of midnight-blue suits and earth-coloured bed sheets, of … Continue reading Part 4, project 6 – research point #1
A local gallery has sent out notifications of a forthcoming exhibition of cityscapes and I’ve seen for the first time the works of Angela Edwards, a contemporary artist. This is a short video of one of her pieces as she puts it together. The gallery is Kellie Miller Arts in Brighton which I visited earlier in the summer and which I intend to visit again to see these pictures close up. The link leads to the gallery’s page showing thumbnails of Edwards’s work. Also showing is a selection of Marco Minozzi’s atmospheric townscapes in which there are no figures … Continue reading Moving figures, research point Angela Edwards
Historic and contemporary artists whose work involves the underlying structure of the human body. Two strike me immediately: Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) for his methodical and systematic observational studies of anatomy, some of which must have involved dissection; and Gunther von Hagens (1945 – ) who used the bodies themselves in his controversial art/autopsy exhibitions. This 2006 (revised 2011) review by Gareth Bate describes the beauty of the “athletically posed specimens like The Soccer Player or the piece called Elegance on Ice featuring male-female pairs ice skaters, or the stunning head composed entirely of red blood vessels which creates an exact structural likeness.” but also … Continue reading Part 4, project 4 – research point
I have never quite ‘got’ Fibonacci because I have never needed to but a recent image brought it right into focus. In the absence of real world moving models to draw, I’ve been using the live stream from NASA’s JPL laboratory where they’re building the 2020 Mars lander, and while everyone is dressed in white one piece coveralls, boots, hoods, and masks, they move, they gesture, they bend and stretch, climb and curl up into small spaces. Two days ago they formed a tableau that reminded me of a piece of classic art but I couldn’t recall what it was. … Continue reading Fibonacci’s spiral and the Golden Ratio
This came up earlier in the module but I hadn’t seen it discussed with reference to paintings that didn’t strike me immediately as employing this technique or method of focusing the eye and drawing attention to areas of demarcation. This very readable discussion by Dan Scott refers to John Singer Sargent’s painting of Madam X; how he used very blended and light brushwork for her skin and much darker, broader strokes for her hair, dress and background. Everything is about the posed elegance of this socialite who, by all accounts, had as much of an opinion of herself as Sargent … Continue reading Negative space and chiaroscuro
After some dismal attempts in Part 4, exercise 2, I’ve taken myself to YouTube hand drawing boot camp. This is the first video: The demonstrating artist makes very precise photorealistic drawings which I’m unlikely to be doing. However, her way … Continue reading Part 4, project 4, exercise 1 – structure, body parts: Drawing hands
Strayfish Arts 