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Abstract: the art of design – a Netflix series

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYaq2sWTWAA Trailer for the 2017 Netflix series. Accessed 8th August 2019. This is a documentary series featuring designers/architects/artists operating in different commercial arenas. It’s easy to imagine that slick, polished adverts, stark photographic portraits, or magazine front covers, just get there through some act of private genius. But even though extraordinary talent is clearly a factor, so also is a work ethic that requires constant exploration of what’s required, rehearsal of skills, inquiry, and intellectual framing of the problem to be solved. These are people who don’t wait for the ideas to come, they create the environment to maximise those … Continue reading Abstract: the art of design – a Netflix series

Research & ReflectionLeave a comment

Part 4, project 2, research point, foreshortening

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

The first image featuring significant foreshortening that came to mind was this one, a 1914 advertisement by Alfred Leete repurposed for the war effort: Those eyes and that hand and finger pointing directly off the paper into the face of the observer must have felt like an absolute imperative. Such a powerful image with nothing fancy in the text – a statement, a command, and a patriotic rationale aimed at people with the lowest literacy and appealing to their sense of duty. Other instances, at least of clever rendering of perspective, include anything on a ceiling meant to be viewed … Continue reading Part 4, project 2, research point, foreshortening

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Part 4, project 4, exercise 1, structure – mouths and eyes

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Again, there’s video help for this.   These are HB pencil, as per the demo but only the top one is from the demo itself, the other was a drawing by the demonstrator briefly presented to show where light falls on lips. Mouths are clam-shaped. These are ‘invented’ mouths using the same principles, this time with pastel and charcoal pencil (top) and HB pencil alone at the bottom. 31st July – may have added this to an earlier post. More invented mouths, one of them with an invented face and nose in slight profile which is not too successful. Charcoal … Continue reading Part 4, project 4, exercise 1, structure – mouths and eyes

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Part 4, project 4, exercise 1 – feet and noses

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Best foot forwards! Both charcoal pencil on gesso-prepped cartridge. I thought having to abandon close vision glasses for this (flicking back and forth between even the short distance foot-to-sketchpad is tricky) might be problematic but actually it seems to lead to looser drawings as there’s no way to get tangled up in detail when you can’t see detail at close range. These sketches are preparatory, non-specific practice pieces not, as far as I see at this stage, a formal exercise. But given my lack of models, I can at least use myself and make a start on various limbs and … Continue reading Part 4, project 4, exercise 1 – feet and noses

Research & ReflectionLeave a comment

Figure, form, and light: Rego, Vermeer, Lautrec, Schiele, da Vinci

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Not yet a research point but as I came across it via the drawing module, I’m including some of the material here. Toulouse Lautrec – before the simplified nature of his posters (necessitated, I understand, by the printing process), his drawings were quite loose and almost cartoonish. There was a great deal of movement and energy, often with large numbers of characters and a focal individual. ‘La Danse au Moulin Rouge’ looks to me like a picture of spontaneous uninhibited fun. Egon Schiele – I envy the economy of line, and suggestion of form, but I am less keen on … Continue reading Figure, form, and light: Rego, Vermeer, Lautrec, Schiele, da Vinci