AdeleArtBlog

Odilon Redon is one of my favourite artists. I enjoyed discovering his lithographs and works in charcoal, having only ever seen or known of his later paintings. My research shows that until the middle of the 1890's, Redon devoted himself primarily to his graphic work, engravings and drawings, and notably to the  noirs : unusual and precious charcoal drawings, which he exhibited in Paris for the first time at the beginning of the 1880. He explained his discovery of charcoal in a letter published by the magazine  L'Art Moderne  in June 1894, under the heading "Confidences d'Artiste" (Artist's Secrets). "This everyday substance, which has no beauty of its own, aided my researches into chiaroscuro and the invisible. It is a neglected material, scorned by artists." 1. It is his use of value (or tone) in his noirs that really express the use of atmospheric tone to be studied here. In much of the work a considerable amount of dark tones can be seen

Did a lot of practice here before I attempted the exercise. What I learnt here is that implied lines are enough and by not outlining the objects a looser, softer and yet "more real" effect is obtained. This is interesting to me - is it because the brain completes the picture and is therefor more involved in the process and is then more invested in being interested in the painting?! This was 4B pencil. This is some of the practice. Got bored so the bottom 2 ain't great...

This is my second attempt at this exercise and I feel it is much looser than the first effort. Was great to see the whole as a unit and see it all in terms of light and shade, not as apple and lemon and background - merely tones of varying light and dark. I felt I learnt something crucial with this exercise and that I managed to tie the various elements together. This is the second attempt: And this below is the first: I attach another exercise in Conte which I felt is loose and alive - maybe because of the colour, but I feel he marks are vibrant.

This exercise made me look at objects in relation to each other as opposed to disjointed and lying next to one another. I used ink on brown paper and that worked beautifully after I had sketched the drawing lightly in pencil. I like the strong expressiveness of the ink lines and the way it ties everything together.

Conte, Charcoal, Pencil and Ink were the materials I used. Pencil: Good for fine work but limited. Charcoal: Soft and some control. Good for erasing areas into texture. Picks up the texture of the paper. Ink: lovely to smudge, scratch, brush. Conte: Soft, also picks up the texture of the paper. Frottage: This excited me more than I thought it would! Textures are created readily and I created a small picture from one almost solely by rubbing on the end of a 15 l plastic bottle.

Four Sheets of paper folded. Each expressing a different emotion using 4 diffeerent types of media. 1. Calm: The first, bottom left I felt worked the best - the charcoal was soft and fluid and expressed the emotion easily. I like the simplicity of the composition and felt that it worked well. The ink drawing worked too - loved the way the paper absorbed the ink before letting me draw with the wooden chopstick. Conte (top right) makes fabulous dark oily marks. Felt the least pleased with the marker: didn't like the definite dead marks it made. 2. Anger: Found it easier to express anger with the charcoal. The pencil was way too "iffy". I loved the ink splatter/splash drawing the most. 3. Joy: This emotion came more naturally! I was pleased with most, and although I don't usually like a symmetrical composition I felt the it expressed the emotion well. Went back to the marker and felt it worked quite well. Loved the 3 evolving spheres in conte the most. 4. Mi