Autumn Term week 5
Date: Nov 5th and 6th
Tutor: Siân
Harbour House : First Floor Studio
Tutor Led
what to bring
You will need to have with you a photograph that you find inspiring. You will be using it in the second exercise this week. It does not have to be printed, but if possible a tablet rather than phone would be easier to work from. You may find it useful to consider what it is that you find inspiring about the subject matter or the photograph before the session. Need a reminder of what might be inspiring? See the link ‘Inspiration’ below.
You will also need sketching paper and watercolour paper ( unstretched) along with your other usual materials.
THIS Week:
This week we will be continuing our exploration of what inspires each painting.
To give you food for thought before this week’s class, and as a reminder of what we did in the last tutor led session, we have uploaded our teaching notes from that class. Please take a look at these:
‘Inspiration’: Teaching notes from Tutor Led session 8.10.24
images for the Week
Winter landscape
Sunlit field through hedge.
We will be using these images in class this week. Please feel free to download them to your device, if you would like to, before the class to avoid issues with wifi and accessing them in class. We have hard copies available too.
weekly sketching challenge
Dark to Light
You will need a pencil, a piece of paper good enough to take a good deal of rubbing out, and an eraser.
1 Choose a simple object, e.g. an apple, a jug, or a shoe. Set up a ‘still life’ with the object lit strongly from one side. If you don’t have a touch or lamp available try to work close to a window and sit to the side of the window so that the object is side-lit.
2 Take you pencil and sharpen it over the paper. Rub the powder in the sharpening over the paper. Alternatively you could use graphite powder, or grate a graphite block over the sheet and rub that in. Spread the graphite quickly; don’t worry about making it too even. This will be the mid tones of your drawing.
3 Using your eraser, not your pencil, draw the object. You may need to cut the eraser to give a firm sharp edge, and you will almost certainly need a spare sheet of paper to keep cleaning it off. You will need to look for the lighter tones and highlights, using the spread graphite for the mid tones.
4 Finally, using the pencil, add any darks that are needed.
When we sketch using a graphite pencil we are usually adding mid and dark tones, using the white paper as the lights and highlights. Working on a mid tone will make you look harder and reconsider the tones in your subject. Think in terms of blocks of tone, not lines.
Quote of the week
“ A work of art which isn’t based on feeling isn’t art at all.”
Paul Cezanne.
ArTIST of the week
Shirley Trevena
Shirley Trevena’s work is very much inspired by colour and mark-making! it was her discovery of the marks she was able to make that first inspired her to paint. Her love of using bright, bold colours that sing is evident in her work.
Shirley has written a number of books which are excellent tuition books, as she explains her working process clearly. they are full of valuable information for anyone who is as , or even more, interested in what paint can do than in a particular subject matter.
Here is a lovely quote from the ‘Meet Shirley’ page on her website, a very honest statement that I’m sure many of us can empathise with!
“I have a sort of love-hate relationship with painting. I would rather do anything than start a painting: clean the oven, make lists or even do the ironing. But once I’m in the studio and the first marks are on the white paper, I go into a world of my own, oblivious of everything except colour and form. I find my creativity so hard to start up and even harder to walk away from.”
Do take a look at her website:
Last updated: 11.12.23
Copy and paste the Private page password : GlasgowBoys