Assignment 5 Option 2 - Review of Assignments

Review of Assignment 2 and 5

Looking back over all my work from Assignments 2 and 5, my favourites are the large blue Conte drawing of the figure lying face down which was the final piece from Assignment 2 and the pastel of the figure lying with his arms behind his head which was the Tonal study from Assignment 5.

These are both very similar poses and I think that is the reason I chose them. I love the foreshortening not just from the challenge of drawing but also because I think it make a very interesting piece. Putting them next to each other I can see that the pastel drawing is inaccurate because his upper body should be smaller. The proportions on the drawing on the left are better.

Both are also done in a similar media. The conte pencil is much harder but still has that soft nature that is nice to blend and good for describing form.  

I'm also pleased with the sketches from of the pencil drawing with the figure supported on one elbow and the charcoal of the figure sitting in the "thinker" pose, both from Assignment 2 - Structure. From Assignment 5 I like the drawing of the figure on the sofa from "quick studies" section.

I like these for different reasons. The middle one of the "thinker" I like because of the pose and the way the foot comes towards you. The highlights and shading are also good on this one. The other two are much quicker poses and I like the way I've managed to get the weight and shape of the figure quickly without it being overworked and detailed. They seem spontaneous and looser.

There are some aspects of other drawings that I like but something (usually the face) lets the drawing down.

Looking at my drawings I can see my progress throughout the course. I feeling I'm getting better at proportions although I still make mistakes. When I'm drawing, I find it comes much easier to me. I used to labour over certain poses whereas now I can get the correct anatomy much faster and without the effort I used to put in. I think one of the main things that helped me with this are the line drawing exercises. They made me look properly and spend the time to get the proportions correct.

I really like doing close ups. I find these much easier than doing smaller studies. I find it easier to get a likeness if I do a close up of the face. This is also a feature in the conte and pastel drawings I chose above which both have a large part of the drawing taken up by the feet which I'm pleased with.

Regarding media I enjoy doing detailed close ups like portraits, using pencil. For full figures I prefer a softer medium but I also like doing sketches using pen. I think pen is really useful for doing quick figure studies.

Assignment 5 - Drawing Figures - Tonal Study

Tonal Study

For this exercise I wanted to do a lying pose with the models feet covering a large part of the paper and having the interest and difficulty of foreshortening. I did a few poses using the cylinder approach from the last section.

The last pose I thought was really interesting and would be a challenge but I felt it was a bit too flattened and unnatural. However I liked the straight-on approach so I opted for the second last pose.

I wanted to try out using pastels which I'm not very keen on and haven't had much success with in the past. I felt they would provide a good medium for a tonal study because you can blend so easily. The brief suggests using coloured sugar paper so I chose a purple sheet for my initial drawing. This was dark enough to give a nice mid tone and I was interested how the colour would shine through.

A2 Pastels on sugar paper

For this first attempt I didn't spend enough time getting the measurements correct before firing on with the drawing and this is obvious in the incorrect size of the upper body. I also struggled with the legs because of the foreshortening.  



Unfortunately I didn't have any more purple paper left so I chose an orangey brown for the final drawing.
I spent a bit more time getting the measurements right this time. 

A2 Pastels on sugar paper

Check and Log

1. When you have completed this exercise assess your drawing. Make notes in your learning log on the effectiveness of you technique and choice of media.

The first pastel drawing was the perfect example of how the brain tries to correct what the eye is actually seeing - the head can't really be half the size of the feet etc. It did however give me great practise with the pastels and although the sizes are all out, I'm pleased with the effects, I especially like the feet. The purple was a great colour and it shone through and gave colours (especially the yellows) a bit more intensity.

The sketch allowed me to get the measurements right for final drawing although I still didn't quite get the legs right, I think looking at it they need to be a bit shorter. Again I'm happy with the feet, pastels seem to lend themselves to feet! I'm not so happy with the shading on the arms. They've ended up looking a bit flat and no matter what I tried I couldn't make them come out. Something I've found with pastels is that you can't go over them too often of you lose their vibrancy and they look muddy. Perhaps that's what's happened here.

Pastels are a good choice for a tonal drawing because the blend so easily. They are relatively fixable if you make mistakes too, although up to a point as I've mentioned above. They work very well with a coloured paper and I think it would be interesting to play with different colours depending on the main colours of your drawing. So purple paper would shine through nicely with mainly yellows and orange would be good for mainly blues etc.

Overall I'm happy with the drawing. It's much better than my previous efforts with pastels so I feel I've found a new medium to play with.

2. Have you made a convincing tonal study of the figure?

I think I have, the only part I'm not happy with are the arms which need something to make them appear more round. I think because they are further away and were more shaded it was difficult to pick the right colours to shade them.

The feet have worked well and as usual with bits of drawings that work well, they were the easiest bits and were finished really quickly! I was able to pick out the darkest shades and the highlights on each toe and I think this is why they've worked. The arms are a much larger area and don't have the small highlights which help show that a subject is rounded.

3. Have you conveyed the volume and proportions of the figure?

 The volume is described though shading and making the figure look rounded so yes I think overall I have. The proportions were harder to get right and I think the legs could be a bit shorter, but overall I think the proportions are not bad. I think the fabric made this task more difficult. It the model had been nude it would have been easier to get the highlights and shading right but the folds of the clothes made this a bit complicated.

4. What have you learned?

I've learned that I don't have to be scared of pastels and they are actually a good medium to describe the shading of the figure. I think they (and I) work best close up so I would like to do some studies of feet and hands to experiment.

I've also found that working on coloured paper can give really good effects and I like drawing "in the reverse" - rather than starting with a white sheet of paper and leaving the lighter areas blank, starting with the highlights using  a light colour and laying them down first.
 
Needless to say this exercise has also been great practise in getting the proportions correct and how initial sketches are a practise area to get this right and to play with the medium.

Assignment 5 - Drawing Figures - Analyse Form

Analyse Form: Simplified Figures

This exercise asked to break the figure into connected cylinders. I found this very useful for simplifying the shape and is a method which I will use in the future to simplify the shapes. If this is done in your initial sketches I think it's more likely that the proportions will be right and the angles will be correct.  

I then added tone to the cylinders to give them a roundness. The charcoal sketch has worked better for this I think.

Check and Log

Look at your drawings and note down what you have learned from this exercise in your learning log how you experienced this exercise.

I have learned an effective technique of establishing the main shapes of the figure with this exercise. I think it's an observational change, rather than looking at the model and thinking of them as a rounded form with arms and legs and shadows and highlights, it helps to simplify that data into cylinders from which you can examine and decide the overall position of each of the limbs in relation to the rest of the body. I found this very useful and hopefully I can use this techniques at the initial stages of a sketch even if only very lightly or indeed just in my head.

Assignment 5 - research - David, Ingres, Degas

The brief asks to look at the work of Ingres, David and Degas to examine their linear elements. I am very familiar with Ingres and David as I studied French Neoclassical painters in high school. Even though it was such a long time ago I remember being so impressed with the way they painted the human form. This was probably when I first discovered my love of figurative art. A few years later, I was very lucky to go to the Louvre to see these paintings and was in awe at the size of them and the amount of work that had gone into these highly rendered paintings.

Jaques-Louis David (1748 - 1825)

He was thought to be one of the most important painters of the French Neoclassical era. He was influenced with the Italian masters, particularly Raphael and he wanted to participate in the Classical revival that was occurring at the time. His work shows how he believed that simplicity of line was central to the classical ideal in drawing.

David - The Oath of the Horatii (1784-85) 329 x 424cm

Later he became involved with political events and was a supporter of the attack against Louis XVI and the French Revolution. His paintings became propaganda for this cause.

David -Sketch for Oath of the Tennis Court (1789) 101x66cm

The sketch above was a depiction of an oath taken by the National Assembly which was performed in a makeshift conference room inside a tennis court. It signified the first time that French citizens formally stood in opposition to Louis XVI.

David - Death of Marat (1793) 165 x 128cm

Marat, a friend of David and member of the National Assembly was murdered in his bath and this, one of his most famous paintings has been called the Pietà of the revolution and created a political martyr in Marat.


Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres 1780 - 1867

Ingres was also a French Neoclassical painter and a staunch advocate of the classical style. He was very resistant to the emerging popularity of the romantic movement. He studied with David in Paris.

Inges - Le Grande Odalisque 1814

Degas (1834–1917)

Degas met Ingres, whom he revered, and whose advice he never forgot: "Draw lines, young man, and still more lines, both from life and from memory, and you will become a good artist."

He is most well known for his fascination with picturing movement and paintings of ballet dancers. He is also one of the first artist to use photography as a tool in his art. He is often called an impressionist painter but this is a label he rejected as he felt he did not work spontaneously and would criticise those artists working en plein air.

The Dance Class (La Classe de Danse),1873–1876, oil on canvas,

La Toilette (Woman Combing Her Hair), c. 1884–1886, pastel on paper

Looking at all of these artists and their drawings it is possible to see the importance of line for these artists through the very simplicity of the contours.

David Drawings

Ingres Drawings

 
Degas drawings

Degas is much looser than the others but his absolute importance of obtaining the accurate contours of the human figure is clear. 

In order to show the difference I looked out a couple of drawings from other artists for which line was less important that form. Seurat was fascinated with tonal differences and his drawings contained few lines. Van Gogh was interested in texture and technique and Matisse's painting below shows his interest in tone and colour. 

Van Gogh - Portrait of Joseph Roulin

Seurat - Artist's Mother 

Andre Derain by Matisse 1905 oil 55x47cm

Assignment 5 - Drawing Figures - Line drawing of the whole figure

Line drawing of the whole figure

I'd been caught out by this task before in previous sections, so this time I was determined I was going to do a proper line drawing and not get embroiled in detail and shading.


When I actually set down to do this I found it quite easy and satisfying and I'm quite pleased with the result. This technique of concentrating on line and contours is something I would never have done previous to this course and I think it's been a really useful exercise to help me establish the correct proportions in a drawing.   

Assignment 5 - Research Point - Giacometti/ Hockney

Giacometti

Giacometti Standing Woman 1958-9

Giacometti Caroline 1965

Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and print maker. He is known for his distinctive elongated figures both in sculpture and paintings.

His portraits are as distinctive as his sculptures. He would repeatedly draw over the same lines and rework  lines while erasing others until the paper would become worn underneath. He typically would draw his sitter front on and  and use a rapid energetic technique encircling the eyes with heavy lines.It looks like he has drawn the figure using a continuous line as in this exercise, possibly not looking at the paper much while drawing or lifting the pen from the surface. His lines are full of energy and action e.g the lines describing the sitters neck in the drawing below (Portrait d'homme) are very expressive and appear to have been carried out in seconds with little effort but are hugely descriptive.

Giacometti Portrait d'homme

Giacometti Femme debout et tête d'homme, 1960-63,

Giacometti Silvio 1950

Giacometti Tete d'homme I (Diego) 1964

Portrait De Jean Genet 1955

Giacometti - James Lord

The above portrait of James Lord took Giacometti 18 straight days of sitting to complete. He reworked and reworked the figure till he was happy. The sitter, James Lord wrote a book about his experience and Giacometti's technique. I've not read it but it's definitely on the list for the future.

From looking on the web it seems that Giacometti had a specific technique for drawing and painting figures. I've not been able to find out specifically what this was but he was certainly interested in the space around the sitter and how they are placed in it. He often included horizontal and vertical lines in the background which seem to place the figure in the setting but with no detail. I would definitely like to find out more about this and try to understand what he was trying to achieve.

Hockney

David Hockney (born 1937) is described as one of the most influential British artists of the twentieth century. He is most famous for his Pop art paintings of the 60s and 70s predominantly concentrating on figures but recently he has become known for his large landscape works and his use of digital media to create works of art. He currently has a major exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts of new landscape works. This exhibition includes vivid large-scale paintings inspired by the East Yorkshire landscape and a display of his iPad drawings. Recently the OCA held a study day at this exhibition and there is a report of this on the website.

I hadn't really seen many of Hockney's drawing before and I found them quite interesting in their style. I found many examples of "contour drawing" style where he has described the outlines of the figure but there is no shading. They couldn't be more different from Giacometti's style of over laying lines on top of each other and never erasing anything. I find Hockney's style to be quite deliberate and thought out which is very different from Giacometti. Interestingly from what I can gather, while Giacometti appeared to work quickly and very spontaneously and Hockney seems more rigid and slow, Hockey is a very fast worker while Giacometti would work and rework and spend a lot of time pondering his drawings.

Hockney - Charles Alan 1969 ink 17x14 in

Hockney - Sheridan sleeping and cushion 1968

These drawings have pared the figures down to their essential elements. Small lines can describe the fold in clothing perfectly and uninteresting sections are just left blank.

Later Hockney starts to draw portraits with more detail but sometimes keeps the work on the face but leaves the rest of the body with very little detail.

Hockney - Portrait Henry XI 1985 pencil 30x22in

Hockney - Jeff Burkhart 1994 crayon 30x22in

Assignment 5 - Drawing Figures - Continuous Line, Giacometti, Hockney

Continuous Line

I enjoyed this task, it was good fun to try and draw the figure without looking at the paper. It was really difficult to stop myself glancing down, it was automatic to look at the paper. I used a variety of pens or pencils but I found that pens were better and gave more movement.

Check and Log

1. This challenging exercise is likely to frustrate you. Instead of worrying about it reflect on what you have gained from it and make notes in your learning log.

I found overall my drawings were OK but sometimes I would look down and I had got something completely wrong. I found this particularly with the facial features. I guess this was because I must have been lifting the pen off the paper too much without realising, in order to place the features in the middle of the face.


In some of the drawings I tried to show the shadows in order to help describe the form but I found this didn't work very well with this technique. I noticed that it was sometimes helpful to concentrate on the negative spaces which helped to pick out the forms correctly. I also found that using a wiggly line to draw the folds in clothes was quite effective to show the form.


Overall this technique was really good to help me pick out the important shapes in a quick way. A figure can be described with sometimes only a few lines and this section helped to focus the mind on the essential lines. I found that I wanted to go over the same area again and I had to try to stop myself doing this as it would create a mess and ruin the first lines.

2. Find some examples of artists such as Giacometti and David Hockney, who work fluidly with loose line and note them down for reference.

See research point in next post...