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Atelier drawings – portrait 3, da Vinci

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Before: ending on a high here! The portrait to copy is Leonardo da Vinci’s Study of a Young Woman (1490) and appropriately but probably coincidentally, it is positioned on the right of the book so that the page where the copy is to be made is on the left. This means I can actually see the image I am working with instead of obscuring it with my drawing arm. The arrangement would not have been lost on da Vinci, a reputed left hander. After: so, that went well! There’s a reason da Vinci is a Master; he makes the complicated … Continue reading Atelier drawings – portrait 3, da Vinci

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Atelier drawings, portrait 2 -Los Infantes II

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

The original by Irvin Rodriguez (2016) is in ink on Hahnemuhle Copperplate paper, mine is in pencil and conte on the page in the book and I really struggled with this. The angle of the head, the ‘baby’ features (mine looks a little older, less chubby) and the expression. Every correction brought another problem and eventually I came close to running out of road trying to erase where there was little leeway to do so. What I’ve learned though is that despite all these difficulties and a few oddities of proportion, if the original were not to hand – and … Continue reading Atelier drawings, portrait 2 -Los Infantes II

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Atelier drawings – portrait 1, ‘Jamaal’

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

This felt very much like jumping in at the deep end despite completing the run-up exercises. I find blocking-in quite tricky with the examples hard to transfer to new material; too many lines seem to scramble my brain and I lose the ends of them and their position in space. Maybe practice will improve that but for now I have used some of the guiding instructions alongside my own more intuitive grasp of shape and position. The result is a portrait of a passable woman who should actually be a young man. In my defence, the small drawing above mine, … Continue reading Atelier drawings – portrait 1, ‘Jamaal’

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Aristides atelier drawings continued

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

I noticed that many of the drawings to copy are made with graphite the nature of which, until now, I hadn’t really questioned, imagining it was maybe another word for ‘pencil’. But looking at the way this medium seemed to work, I was struck by how much smoother the result was and so I investigated further. Of course, graphite really is not pencil although it does come in sticks. I bought some of each, the powder arrived first and my goodness is this a tricky substance. I had no idea (still don’t) how to make it stay where I want … Continue reading Aristides atelier drawings continued

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Art, science and the paradoxes of perception – via The Conversation

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

The fact that the visual system has to do all this work before we can recognise an object shows us that the objects we perceive are not just “there” in the world. They have to be meticulously created within our neurobiology in order to exist for us. But again, cut open a brain, probe its neurons, and you will find no sea creatures or cosmic storms, only electrochemical activity. Objects, like colours, are tangibly real yet are also untraceable figments of the mind – a contradictory state of affairs. In effect, nothing we perceive through any of our senses is … Continue reading Art, science and the paradoxes of perception – via The Conversation

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Assignment 4, self portrait

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

The task is to draw a self portrait of any size in any medium and to find an interesting perspective, which means it’s the first time I’ve taken a selfie from below jaw level and discovered my nose has a central deviation to the right. It’s a wonder the rest of it is lined up as it should be. This is not the up-nostril shot, this is the warm-up, off-centre, eyeball-shift aspect. Biro to see if I can find some shapes that might work. Another quick sketch – white conte on black gesso. The aim, unlike the one above, is … Continue reading Assignment 4, self portrait