SUMMER Term week 6

Date: 21st & 22nd May

Tutor: Rob and Sian

Free Painting

what to bring

Bring along your usual painting materials. It will be useful to have a sketchpad or some rough paper on which you can draw/make notes.

weekly sketching challenge

Try sitting in a corner of your garden, or looking out of the window if it is raining, and find an area that looks complicated and overwhelming. Now take your pencil and try to analyse different elements within that area and find suitable marks to portray the variety of textures.

Remember this is about LOOKING, not about the actual drawing you produce. It will be far easier to make separate marks for the different textures rather than trying to make a drawing of the whole area. Think of it as making notes, not as making a drawing.

After you have finished note how the exercise has made you more aware of both the variety of textures and how you use your pencil.

THIS Week:

Free painting, bring your current work and questions.

SKETCH OF THE WEEK

CASCADING CROCUSES

PURPOSE : This page in my sketch book shows my preliminary drawings of some crocuses in the garden. The overall scene was extremely complicated, as the crocuses were growing under some pale trees, amongst grasses and fritillaries. I was interested in just the crocuses and the way they seem to cascade dow the gentle slope. So that’s all I drew.

MATERIAL : a mix of soft pencils, an eraser and a sketch book.

MARK-MAKING : Note how I used the pencils, using a variety of marks made with the point and the side of the nib to imply movement, blocks of tone and sometimes the shape of the flowers. Note also that in places I have chosen a softer pencil to indicate darker tones.

There were obviously more drawings between these preliminary sketches and the finished painting, shown above! Who would have. thought these first scribbles would lead to such a ‘clean’ finished painting? This one really makes the point that sketching is more about the looking than what appears on the paper. (Click on the images to view larger versions).

Quote of the week

“The object of art is to give life a shape.”

Shakespeare.

Thank you to Vicky Wilkinson for sending us this one.

ArTIST of the week

David Hockney

David Hockney is well known for the fact that he draws everyday. In this book, page 11, he says:

“The painters teaching at the college left you fairly free, as long as you did drawing, because in those days that as still compulsory - which was fine with me.”

He has been widely reported in the national press for his use of the iPad for drawing. There is a section on his website, davidhockney.com, dedicated to his drawings through the years.

With reference to what we have been studying this term take a look at his drawings for The Arrival of Spring, charcoal on paper. You may or may not like his mark-making, but look at how he uses his own short hand for studying his subject matter, completely relaxed about how others would see the drawing he makes.