Reflections on Project 4

Did you manage to make space move?

What are your thoughts on your drawings?

Were you able to use your drawings successfully for other work? Are there things you would like to try?

Now that you have a good working method do you feel confident of carrying on?

 

This series of exercises of selecting drawings and working from them was a chance for me to really “connect the dots” with regards to my sketchbooks. I have kept sketchbooks for a large number of years, these books have gradually evolved from straightforward observational drawings in pencil / black pen to having colour and patterns added. When I did the Graphics module I started adding found images (as well as starting new sketchbooks, related to the course that were for working out visual ideas). Once doing Textiles,  I started adding material, threads and different papers to my current sketchbooks. I was theoretically aware of the fact that sketchbooks can act as a resource but in doing this exercise I realised that it was the first time I had really explored doing this.

 

Thoughts on the exercise:

I enjoyed taking a small element and playing around on the computer with it although ultimately I found the computer generated images less satisfactory. Maybe the next step would be to translate them back into materials/threads.

The exercise really opened my eyes and developed a  channel to a new way of working. I wasn’t really blown away by any particular result but it made me keen to try new things and  I would like to work in this way again. I’m interested in trying more things out such as stains and bleach, also rubbings.

Stage 4 continued. Designs 5 and 6

Design 5

I repeated this page using printing, rubbings and stencils. I also reversed the colours and added colours.

Design 6

The first image is from scanning in the image and playing around in Illustrator. I was dissatisfied with this so then had a go using other papers and teabags to make stains.

Stage 4 continued. Designs 2,3,4

Design2

I took the rubbings of the buttons and repeated the individual buttons in patterns.

Design 3 and 4

I tried to reproduce the photograms using bleach on tissue paper, bleach on wet ink. This was not very successful, largely as I discovered that bleach is a difficult medium to work with, it doesn’t flow like ink or paint but instead has a sticky, soapy quality which makes it hard to control.

Stage 4 Developing design ideas. Designs 1 and 2

Stage 3 Selecting drawings

I chose the following images from my sketchbook:

Two  rubbings. I could have chosen many more of these. Someone posted up on the OCA forum about an artist called Jane Dixon who works by using rubbings which I found encouraging as I am very obsessed with rubbings.

Two photograms, made by exposing photographic paper to a light source and placing semi transparent objects on the paper.

A constructed page, starting with found stamp paper, cut into, then worked on with marker pen, material added.

Found stamp paper with the random marks left by teabags, left to dry.

When looking at the images I had chosen, the first thing that struck me was the monochrome nature of the items I selected. Virtually all of them are black, white or grey, with a minor digression into brown.

Secondly I have a preference for  random, made by chance, marks to deliberate marks.

selection from sketch book

Exercise 4 continued

SHAPES

I found the shapes of the house very intriguing. In the end I had to resort to making a cardboard model to get my head around it’s basic structure, which I worked out was a cube with a pyramidal roof. Then various blocks added on. I also found the complexity fascinating and made a drawing of all the windows.

TEXTURES

I enjoyed doing these most. I’m really enjoying doing rubbings and thinking about how to create effects. I particularly liked the stonework which I thought was very effective

model

windows

rubbings

.

Exercise 4

Drawing from “real objects that you find visually interesting” was a problem for me. It reminded me of when I was asked to bring objects in for a still life in an art class. I chose a big shiny bit of boiler lagging I got out of a skip.( Over the weekend it started to smell really bad and by Monday the tutor had to get rid of it as the room was impossible to work in, so I never actually got to work with it) My point being, I am not interested in drawing jugs, fruit or pieces of gnarled wood. The nearest I could get to a real object I found interesting was the house that we can see out of our top windows. Obviously I couldn’t get it on my desk but as far as possible I tried to work from the actual house rather than a refence photos.

COLOUR

The main colour I liked in the house is the colour of the bricks and tiles. Initially I thought it was a red orange but once I started looking at colour mixes, the best match was a mix of yellow green and red. I completed the triad with violet.

Once I had done the sketch in gouache I felt disappointed in it, I thought it was dull and had lost the charm of the original. With that in mind I did a quick sketch using coptic markers, using red orange for the brickwork.

goauche sketch

sketch with coptic markers

 

Exercise 3

I used the stencil from the original drawing for texture. First I used graphite and pastel and a variety of colours onto textured watercolour paper. Secondly I used oil pastel with areas overlayed on one another.

I felt the most successful was spraying through using aerosols.

stencil

graphite and pastel

oil pastels

Aerosol

Exercise 2

I decided to work with the negative shapes so scanned the groups of shapes onto the computer. I was then able to play around with the groups, resizing them,

repeating them etc. Finally I added colour, removed the lines to leave solid blocks and varied the transparency. I ended up with this fish scene which was a surprise to me as I had not visualised this as a possible end result.

Exercise 1

I eventually settled on this photograph. I abandoned  the suggested scale and worked with the entire photograph as the shapes were quite abstract already.

TEXTURE

I cut out a stencil of the shapes out of a textured paper and made a rubbing. I tried to improve it by adding masking tape but the original idea worked best

COLOUR

I tried several triads of colours, using Yellow Green as the starting point before I hit on the colour combination which was scarlet, bluegreen and yellow green. 

SHAPES

I looked at the negative shapes and originally isolated individual shapes, then I realised I was more interested in groups of shapes.