SECTION 3: Townscapes. Exercise 1.

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 long presence so sketches were done and drawings were finished at home from photos.

Here is one that is part of the village. The actual Watchtowers are shown in Assignment 3.

With the accompanying detail:

Sketchbook work

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Section 3: COMPOSITION. Research Point.

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...

Section 3: PERSPECTIVE. Exercise 2

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...

Section 2: STILL LIFE: Exercise 2: Still life using Tone and Color

I did 2 completed studies for this exercise. The first is in chalk pastels on a dark ground. I thought that the dark ground was useful in contrasting the light areas but that the medium is more difficult to control. I also felt that the composition was successful and I enjoy the contrasting rectangular spaces which off-set the round shapes of the bottles and fruit. The second work was rendered in watercolour pencils and I felt that the medium was far more conducive to accurately capturing the variations in tone and colour. Overall I was more pleased with the first composition as it seemed a bit more interesting and dramatic in a sense.

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