Section 3: TREES: Exercise 1

Moving outside excites me as I love nature and have always been passionate about painting outdoors.

Trees are a favourite subject and I enjoyed this assignment.

I found it difficult to achieve the lush dense feeling of the tree and reflecting on these sketches I had another go at in a larger format.

With this sketch I felt that the hard scribbled lines of the charcoal, although rough and unfinished did more than the careful studies of the previous - but I guess its the process that leads to understanding and coming to grips with essence and not trying to just draw the thing.

And then:

I honestly felt a leap of joy. Its the tree. Its the tree - the feeling and essence of the tree, not just the lines on the paper of what maybe should be the tree, but the beautiful old thing growing on a rock in a park in China. I resisted the urge to finish it and the composition might be unbalanced but I felt it was enough.

I grew an inch today.

Comments

Section 2: DETAILED OBSERVATIONS OF NATURAL OBJECTS: Exercise 1: DETAIL AND TONE

Fallen Leaves Study. For this the subject is 3 dried leaves which I found during my walk, all three in varying stages of decay. I used colored pencils and oil pastels. I left the majority of the page white as I wished to capture the intense light and the lovely colorful shadows that the leaves cast on the crisp white paper that they were perched on. I enjoyed the success that I achieved with the papery delicate feel of the leaves and it was only till I had layered the oil pastel on top that the drawing "popped". What i learnt here was not to be "precious" with your work. Detail 1. Detail 2. And then I cropped it. I think that the composition is better here. There is less negative space and the longer format works better with the length of the leaves and the horizontal lines that they present. Some practice - Lemons in conte crayon

Project 2: Exercise 3: Creating Shadows with lines and marks.

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...

Section 3: COMPOSITION. Exercise 1.

Composite drawing from sketches and photographs. This exercise excited me as I looked at the elements that interested me in the landscape around me and drew from previous work. I realised that a work didn't need to be constructed from only the visual information in front of me but could be drawn from elements in previous sketches and pieced together. I looked through the work I had done: Sketchbook for Exercise 1. and did some sketches: And decided to put together 2 works... the park sketch in charcoal that I did on the Sketchbook Walk exercise: And a 360 sketch of the view over a small stadium and the eastern part of the city. so as to combine the feeling of the concrete jungle and to reflect more fully the sanity of the park spaces in this mega city. This then the final work: I used a number of techniques and materials: Dipping pen with ink and wash, powder charcoal and green Japanese brush pen. On reflection I am pleased with this

AdeleArtBlog

Search This Blog