AdeleArtBlog

As said before the Watchtowers of Kaiping fascinated me and this drawing is done on the sketches I did from one of the watchtowers looking over the village and the landscape. I am not quite sure what to feel of think about this drawing. The view is taken from the top of one of the Watchtowers and overlooks the valley where there is a mix of town and Watchtowers in the background. I used brown and blue ink on 100% cotton paper. I feel it is looser and less polished than my previous work and I hope it holds the atmosphere which I tried to achieve... a feeling of old, unstable yet solid and planted by use of an unfinished approach. Furthermore the composition seems a bit unstable but I was trying to use that to enhance the feeling I felt there - its not easy to describe - a feeling of the past clinging to the now, of ancestors and of a need to barricade and protect a fleeting wealth. Sketches: Ink washes:

Drew this building in Dangkoushou first in Charcoal and then did the study in color. My heart was not in the second work - I was trying to finish the assignments during a very busy time at school - so, don't work when you don't want to! I really don't think it is a successful or interesting work - the color is flat, and the tonal values are missing.

I did this one drawing as I got caught up with enjoying the line and building on the structures. Next time I will start with a larger piece of paper but I did enjoy the detail. The area is Dangshoukou which is an older part of Gangzhou where the Chinese who returned from exile after China reopened, to settle. It has a hipster vibe and there are quite a few foreigners living here. Sketchbook work:

A visit to Kaiping has got to be one of the highlights of anyone's visit to China. This Unesco Heritage site was built by the wealthy Chinese returning with fortunes made in the USA on the American railroads and thorough businesses opened during that time. Because the landowners had much wealth the bandits in the area would rob and plunder their houses, the "Watchtowers" were built to see them coming and to protect their families and their fortunes. 5 - 6 stories high, the windows and doors are barred and small and a watchtower with a bell is usually seen at the top of the building. Walking through these places the sense of time having stopped here is palatable and the feeling of the Ancestors roaming around is creepy. Inside the buildings huge alters where incense is lit to them bear witness of a China which is still attached to tradition and superstition. As the village is still inhabited the people around there, although used to foreigners were not too keen on a lon

Statues In the Science City park where I live there are many statues of famous and ancient Chinese and western philosophers, scientists and thinkers. here are a few: Thales (although why he's letting it all hang out is somewhat of a mystery) the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. The photo does not show it but its done on tan Bockingford paper with white, black and brown color pencil. Zhang Zhong: A Toaist mystic - done in watercolor, which I do enjoy drawing with as I feel you can capture tone and do less lines. Sun Smiao - The king of Chinese medicine. He was able to read the pulse with a string and lived during the Tang Dynasty. Xu Xiake was a chinese Traveller and Geographer who lived during the Ming Dynasty. The  name Xiake was an alternate sobriquet given to him by his friend and it means "one who is in the sunset clouds". I did two of him as I particularly loved the very rough way he is sculpted and I felt that in this one I captured that te

This turned out a real challenge. The weather at this time of year is consistently overcast or raining with flat grey skies. When there was anything that  looked like a break I would run outside to study and draw. I did manage few works and had some fun experimenting with charcoal powder. I pinned up a large paper on the balcony whist the rain had finally ceased and did the clouds with charcoal powder and charcoal.  Two efforts in pencil - rapid sketches as the wind was quite strong. Two sketches in watercolor at an attempt to capture the colors.  One more done a week later in charcoal.

John Virtue. Having grown up with the happy, pastel-colored paintings of Gregoire Boonzaaier, I still love the playful and sunny nature of his townscapes. They are as part of the Cape as Table Mountain is. Gregoire Boonzaier, Kaapstraat. 1982 Gregoire Boonzaaier, Distrikses , Then there's my dear friend, Sewyn Pekeur whose work is not only accurate of the township vibe in the Cape but also allegorical and often times, politically satirical. Selwyn Pekeur, Lovers in a Township . 2002 I guess the more adversity we face as human beings the deeper our need is for fun, laughter and colour. His townscapes are always reflective of this need. Similarly are the works of Kandinski; Wassily Kandinsky, Grungasse in Murnau. 1909 John Virtue's works are very dark in contrast, yet, I love the dark and moody feeling: John Virtue, Landscape no 87, This work was part of David Bowie's collection. I enjoy the angular marks and the very vague and suggested images that t

Aerial Perspective This was easy for me to do as the high amount of moisture in the air here lends itself to this. All the views are done from my balcony.   Ink and wash Charcoal study. I felt that I achieved the feeling of the masses of buildings that make up downtown Guangzhou - and yes, the buildings are that tall. The IFG building is 100 stories and the Canton Tower just slightly higher Watercolour 1. Watercolour 2. In both watercolor works I was pleased with the way I resolved the buildings issue - trying to paint masses of buildings without getting bogged down in detail. Also, it was easier to get the gradation of tone with watercolor by just thinning the paint. The last two are oil stick and chalk pastel respectively. I dislike both intensely as I felt the color is garish and ill chosen. In the second one I feel that the mountains look more like candy floss. I realised after that if I had not blended the pastel and used only one color the re

As the weather continued to be rainy and wet, and as I did not want to work from a photo, I did a drawing of the buildings below my flat as seen from the 29th floor. This obviously changed the angle on the perspective and the horizon line. Using my pencil as a guide I checked the angles and proportions against those that I drew. As you can perhaps see, the horizon line was probably higher than what I thought it was .. some of the orthogonal lines were off... 

The interior was not as long as I would have like it. I sat in my living room and looked through into the bathroom. I first did some sketchbook practice at school using orthogonal lines to guide me. For the most part my eye was pretty accurate when I got to do the exercise as I have had some practice.

A more conventional work than the previous one... I tried to work at putting in less information in order to give the work a crisper feel - reflecting the clean, well-groomed feeling of the parks here and to achieve a sense of depth without having to draw every leaf and blade of grass. Sketchbook work: The pagoda with the small bridge was my initial subject for this exercise, but then I realised that the pagoda was too close to the hill behind it to establish enough depth. Reflection: In order to simplify I selected the elements which I felt would add to the composition only and simplified the masses of vegetation by really only drawing in the main elements. I created a sense of difference by   Tone: I shaded the foreground in heavier darker ones and then got lighter as i moved back. I used more detail in the foreground I used overlapping elements to indicate space and  I used a receding path to lead the eye to the back of the picture plane. I felt t

Contemporary Artists working with landscape and a range of viewpoints. Georges Seurat, Landscape with houses. 1881. Conte Crayon Tacita Dean, Fatigues. 2012. Chalk on Blackboard Mark Tansy, Reveler, 2012. Oil on canvas. The subjects of Mark Tansey's work is set in, for the most part, landscapes and he uses and manipulates these to serve the purpose of the allegory that he wishes to convey through the use of images which are paradoxical and at times absurdly but never, randomly placed on the canvas. I love his work and have included it here to compare the three works as they all monochromatic and unusual to their approach in viewpoint. In all three works there is a strong sense of division in the picture plane. The first two the space is divided horizontally and in the last vertically - Tansey's work has a strong sense of symmetry, both vertically and horizontally and this further emphasised by the repetition of this element in the mirror. Tonally the works are also

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