oca drawing 1 – Page 4 – My Drawing Course

Assignment 1 – Natural Forms

June 4, 2013January 8, 2017Posted in 8 Assignment 1, Natural Forms, Pt 1 - Mark Making and ToneTagged Assignment 1, natural forms, oca drawing 11 Comment

Getting started with this part of the assignment was quite difficult as it is hard to find good natural forms in Bangkok and did not have time to leave the city for the countryside. So I collected pebbles from the car park of my apartment and in front of the office block where my language centre is and also went out with a pair of scissors and took a couple of cuttings from plants in the garden downstairs. Overall I was quite happy with the objects I chose.

After the very technical composition of the made objects I wanted to show a complete variation with something more simple and the objects I chose allowed me to do so. I originally intended to do the finished drawing in colour pencil but as I began the project things took a different path.

Assignment 1 - Natural Forms - Composition Studies — Assignment 1 – Natural Forms – Composition Studies

Working on the composition studies it was like a breath of fresh air compared to the composition studies of the made objects so much so that I may have moved a bit too quickly with fast strokes and very sketchy outlines. The leaves the plants that I had brought in to draw were not going to wait for me as they had started to wither as soon as they felt the air-conditioning of my living room, so working quickly was very necessary. I tried a few compositions with three and four pebbles eventually settling for one of the easiest compositions possible and so worked on it a little more and got it ready for enlargement.

Assignment 1 - Natural Forms - Composition Development — Assignment 1 – Natural Forms – Composition Development

The next step was to experiment with different mediums to help me decide exactly which one I would be using for the finished piece. By this stage the plants were well on their way to the grave, so I took several shorts with my camera so that they would help me later, unfortunately I did not take a photo of the composition I had chosen this would prove to be a problem later.

Assignment 1 - Natural Forms - Variations and Materisla Used — Assignment 1 – Natural Forms – Colour Pencil and Hard Pastel

I actually wanted to try soft pastel but then when I opened the box up I realised I had purchased a portrait set which would be no good for this project.So I tried both colour pencil and hard pastel. I don’t like the feel of colour pencil on paper, they are ok for lighter work but for work that needs more darker tones you have to press on and it makes me feel uptight as the pencil drags across the paper. Hard pastel is different on different types of paper on the Canson sketching paper it can not be smudged but is great for sketching. I decided that I would develop the composition in colour pencil and use hard pastel for the finished drawing.

assignment 1 - Natural Forms - Composition Development - Colour Pencil — assignment 1 – Natural Forms – Composition Development – Colour Pencil

Drawing a grid onto another A3 sheet from my sketchbook I enlarged the drawing and completed it in colour pencil to see how it would look. I was satisfied with how it looked but I wasn’t satisfied with the waste of paper around the edges. There was a very minimum amount of shadow in this composition and so I had to take advantage of the negative space between the objects and cropping the composition would help me to do just that. I had already erased the grid I drew when enlarging the previous drawing so it was a great chance to use the acetate grid I made in the Enlarging an Image module.

Assignment 1 - Enlargement Grid — Assignment 1 – Enlargement Grid

By this time the plants had withered up and I had forgotten to take the photo of this composition so I was working between this drawing in colour pencil and various photos. I was worried that I would just be smudging on this piece especially with my chosen medium and not be able to demonstrate anything I have learnt in the first part of the course but apart from smudging on the rocks and pebbles I managed to resist the temptation of smudging and complete it with some nice hatching and fluid strokes.

There are certain parts of the finished drawing that I am not happy with mainly the rock and the pebble in the top left they don’t look two bad but the shape is out on the sandy coloured rock and I couldn’t play with it that much for fear of messing up the leaf and the white pebble which I did and used fixative before going over it again.

However, I am satisfied that I managed to make reference to certain projects in the first part of the course such as negative space, enlarging an image, tone and form, hatching and lines and other marks and managed to demonstrate quite a lot of these in the leaf and the purple plant alone. I do wish the rocks would have been more sketchy though but with the pastel paper that I used it was hard to do so without the paper underneath showing through.

First Visit to the National Art Gallery – Marco Evaristti

May 3, 2013January 8, 2017Posted in First Visit - Marco Evaristti, Gallery Visits, Study Visits, Thai National Art GalleryTagged bachelor degree, bangkok art gallery, distance learning, Marco Evaristti bangkok, Marco Evaristti thai national art gallery, national art gallery, oca drawing 1, paintingblog, thai national art gallery1 Comment

I don’t get many days off in fact the only day I do get off is the only day I get to see my kids, Saturday but luckily for me my kids love drawing and looking at art so we went for a day out to the Thai National Art Gallery near the Khaosan Road area of Bangkok.

It was my first visit to the National Art gallery, I didn’t even know where it was which was a bit embarrassing as I used to cycle past it everyday to the last school I used to work at. With it being my first visit to the National Art gallery I didn’t know what to expect, I actually thought it would be a bit disorganized.

A Painting by King Bhumipol, a self portait maybe?

The price for the ticket for the gallery was 250 baht for foreigners but only 30 baht if you speak Thai, the kids were free so it only cost us 30 baht to enter. On entering my first impression was that it was all a bit too royalist and I with photos of the Royal family from different generations, traditional Thai drawings, which I am quite fond of and even an abstract painting by the king (which I think is a self portrait).

As I made my way round into the temporary gallery section I decided that my money was well spent and was amazed at some of the work on display, so much so that I forgot to get the name of the artist who created this piece which I believe is of a Muslim girl, knowing what is going on in the south of Thailand.

At a first glance of the painting it looked to be made up of Thai alphabetical characters but I think most probably just squiggles influenced by both Thai and Islamic characters.

It wasn’t long before I came across the next exhibition, Crossing over by Chile born artist Marco Evaristti. Crossing over displays several drawings and paintings of dismembered suicide bombers and victims, although they were very beautifully drawn my kids were terrified so I only managed to stick around long enough to get some photos and managed to get the details on line from the Bangkok post.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/print/334495/

It was a shame that I had to rush through crossing over I did go down for a second visit a few weeks later but the artists in the temporary gallery had changed.

Marco Evaristti Crossing Over suicide bombers — Crossing Over by Marco Evaristti remainders of suicide bombers

Crossing Over by Marco Evaristti – skulls

cityscape 2013 — Cityscape 2013 part of the Crossing Over exhibition

Tone and Form – Tonal Studies

March 11, 2013January 8, 2017Posted in 2 - Tonal Studies, 3 Tone and Form, Coursework, Pt 1 - Mark Making and ToneTagged bachelor degree, coursework, cross hatching, distance learning, drawing, drawing with ballpoint pen, hatching, hatching technique, hatching with ballpoint pen, oca drawing 1, painting, tonal studies, tone and form1 Comment

The brief of the first part of this exercise was to draw four 5 cm squares in my sketchbook using 4 different drawing tools such as a pencil, drawing pen, nib pen and black ink and a ballpoint pen. Try to make 4 distinctive grades of hatching with each square without paying too much attention to detail, suggesting that we have close our eyes as this will help eliminate most of the detail.

I totally read this wrong, drawing the squares in pencil and then hatching within the square using the 4 drawing tools that it gave as examples as above. I tried different types of hatching to do this including, cross hatching at an angle as well as using horizontal and vertical lines to give a much denser tone. The nip pen was probably the most difficult for me and couldn’t quite graduate the tones.

The second part of the exercise was to arrange 4 objects such as an apple, orange, ball, cup or other kitchen utensils, draw the objects then use a hatching technique to technique to add tonal shadow patterns to these objects. The 4 objects I initially chose were a mug, a small bowl an apple and a pong pong ball and chose to have a go at cross hatching with a Faber Castelle Ballpoint pen.

I failed miserably in my first attempt, I even forgot I was hatching with a pen at one stage and went to smooth the pen and smudged the ink across the paper having to fill in the background to cover it up. However it did give me some well needed practise.and confidence towards the end to have another go with the ballpoint pen.

My second attempt was much better, this time I swapped the bowl for a tupperware container turned on its side and I could clearly make out what each of the objects were in my finished drawing, well…apart from the ping pong ball that is.

For my third attempt I went back to a 2B graphite pencil, the tool I feel most comfortable with and successfully cross hatched the whole drawing without smoothing any lines with my finger and this time even the ping pong ball was clear enough to make out in my finished drawing,. I think deciding to start off the exercise with a ballpoint pen was a very wise idea and may have even helped to improve my cross hatching technique.