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Part 2, Assignment 2

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

 I am thinking of going for an interior again after what felt like quite a turning point with the previous exercise. This time more horizontals and with this ornamental firescreen that always reminds me of a Klimt painting. I took a series of photos to focus the letterbox idea in my head and pasted them onto a landscape orientation A4 sheet to use for reference and palette. Google sometimes stitches these together to form a panorama and I’m hopeful that it will, given time. Then I set about making a composition, moving some items around and foregrounding a couple of them, whereupon … Continue reading Part 2, Assignment 2

art course, work in progress4 Comments

Work in progress or am I done here?

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

This is a piece of course work. An exercise concerning materials, although I’m not completely sure whether that refers to materials in view or in use. I’ve covered both bases – wood, fabric, glass in the frame; oil crayons, charcoal, inks, and a variety of implements to scrape and scratch at the layers for texture, a bit like sgraffito. The base is cartridge paper prepared with a layer of gesso which I’ve textured to reflect the materials in view, and the colours come from layering the various media, blending, scratching, and generally shoving the media about. So, am I done? … Continue reading Work in progress or am I done here?

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Part 2, Project 4, exercise 3

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Material differences. This had me thinking of textures and also of one of the sketches I’d done earlier which features a series of door frames through from the kitchen to the front of the house. Based on this, I took an A3 sized cartridge sheet and sketched out the key vertical and horizontal lines associated with the doors, the lintels, the ceiling, a book case off in the distance, and reflections of a shelf in the kitchen via a long mirror. Only the sofa and chair are rounded and soft, the rest is wood, plaster, artex, and wallpaper. I’ve recently … Continue reading Part 2, Project 4, exercise 3

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Never mind your right brain, it’s your unconscious that needs letting loose

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

The old left brain/right brain chestnut keeps on popping up, especially in reference to creativity. Dead but it won’t lie down. It comes from some very old studies on people with severe epilepsy whose brain hemispheres were surgically separated to prevent seizures swamping the whole cortex, plus the observation that motor functions are generally right side dominant (governed by the left motor cortex), and that language tends to be located in the left temporal lobe. Early studies seemed to support a view that the left brain is logical, ordered, and language related while the right is more spatial and image-led. … Continue reading Never mind your right brain, it’s your unconscious that needs letting loose

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Left brain, right brain, or something else?

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

The old left brain/right brain chestnut keeps on popping up, especially in reference to creativity. Dead but it won’t lie down. It comes from some very old studies on people with severe epilepsy whose brain hemispheres were surgically separated to prevent seizures swamping the whole cortex, plus the observation that motor functions are generally right side dominant (governed by the left motor cortex), and that language tends to be located in the left temporal lobe. Early studies seemed to support a view that the left brain is logical, ordered, and language related while the right is more spatial and image-led. … Continue reading Left brain, right brain, or something else?

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Sketch book: Henry Moore’s sheep and Found Art

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

I’ve been seeing others on the course doing delightful scribble drawings and so I thought I’d give that a try. I have a copy of Henry Moore’s sketchbook of sheep and these are copied from that. The one on the left looks a little more woolly cow than sheep, and the other has a shade of dog in its face but on the whole I’m quite pleased with how they came out – especially as I’d become rather used to sketching (for exercise 2 of project 4) without my close vision glasses and forgot to put them on. Maybe this … Continue reading Sketch book: Henry Moore’s sheep and Found Art

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Part 2, Project 4, exercise 2

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Composition. Building on yesterday’s ’round the house’ sketches, it wasn’t difficult to find an area that seemed to lend itself to framing a composition as it’s already framed. This drawing (white charcoal on pink sugar paper) focused largely on the sofa as I could see it through the doorway, but there are so many doorways, like a hall of mirrors (and with a mirror on one wall too), forming a dark tunnel towards the front room. They nest and parallel each other with shades of shadow and spots of light from glass and door knobs. I used black conte on … Continue reading Part 2, Project 4, exercise 2

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‘Every mistake is gift’

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

This quote, attributed to Ryuichi Sakamoto, the composer, singer/songwriter and much else, by Maryanne Hobbs who is primarily a BBC 6 Music DJ but also herself much more, comes as a response to questions about music. She had just played a track of his in which some feedback sounding like a rusty saw keeps intruding into the music and which he left there deliberately because it added something unplanned to the whole. It’s an intellectually easy argument to accept; random intrusions, non-scripted words, unintended drips and dribbles are the stuff of discovery and, as I’m finding out, can lead to … Continue reading ‘Every mistake is gift’

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Part 2, Project 4, exercise 1

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Brace yourself for a trip round my house. We’re starting with the business end – the room with the windows, the TV, the table full of keyboard, screen, and arty miscellany, the bookshelves, the windowsill being another sort of shelf, and the cupboards full of old vinyl LPs. I chose charcoal because it’s loose and I’m not likely to be able to execute anything more precise while standing, holding a sketch book in one hand and driving a piece of medium with the other.  Here we go: Even I can’t tell immediately what this is but trust me when I … Continue reading Part 2, Project 4, exercise 1