I think the previous exercise gave rise to a soft enough landscape for now, so I’ve gone for the hard version. More architectural and structural but also involving a lot of horizontals and verticals that need, even if they’re hand … Continue reading Part 4, project 1, exercise 2 – hard or soft landscape.
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
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
I was very, very pleased with the positive feedback from assignment 3. I’d had a feeling my artist voice was emerging but it’s very gratifying to have that confirmed. An issue that my tutor highlighted is that quite often my work … Continue reading Painting for volume
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
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
Looking yesterday at the difference, to my eye, in appearance between the physical and the digital versions of the second ‘inside looking out’ painting and thinking it might be due to the first relying on a subtractive process and the … Continue reading Print to OHP film – looking for back light
Probably the most timely of projects and exercises, given the current situation! The exercise is about choosing a view from a window and, after making a number of sketches, painting a final composition that reflects a mood. At the moment … Continue reading Part 4, project 1, exercise 1 – from the inside looking out
Apart from the challenge of finding someone other than yourself to draw and a landscape that isn’t the parked car outside your front window, lock down works quite well for a distance student used to the vacuum of no physical … Continue reading Busy, busy, lock down busy
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?
Strayfish Arts 