Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868 – 1928) was a Scottish architect and designer. He was aprominent figure in art nouveau in the 1920s and founding member of ‘The four’, a group creating the influential ‘Glasgow Style’. I found beautiful drawings, many colorized with watercolour. Mackintosh captured the essential shapes in a very elegant style. The line […]
Category Archives: Research points
Research point: Artists’ line work
Also posted in 5: Draw and experiment, Option 2: Observation in nature Comments closed
Research point: Artists’ self portraits
Investigate some artists’ self portrait, both well known artists and lesser known artists. Edward Hopper (American painter, 1882-1967) When thinking whom to select, Edward Hopper came to my mind whose self portraits I had seen in the recent Hopper Exhibition, showing him as a young man and again later in his fifties. The later portrait […]
Also posted in 4: Drawing figures, Self portrait Comments closed
Research point: People watching
I had tremendous difficulties with this task. Firstly, I wasn’t able to observe people as intensely as would be required for later drawing them. It would have amounted to staring at them for prolonged times, and I felt this was socially not acceptable. I did not want to make people feel uncomfortable by staring at […]
Also posted in 4: Drawing figures, The moving figure Comments closed
Research point: Anatomical drawings
I began this research point by skimming through my drawing book by Gottfried Bammes, “Zeichenschule” (Complete guide to Life Drawing). Gottfried Bammes was a drawing professer at the Dresden National Fine Art Academy. His books have become classics in German academic art education. The book is not exactly an anatomy book, but it presents a […]
Also posted in 4: Drawing figures, Structure Comments closed
Research point: John Constable, Fir Trees
Constable was a master of observation of the natural world. Look at the character and variety in the trees he has captured in this drawing. This was not explicitly stated as a research task, but since I felt so stuck with my own attempts at drawing trees that I found it might be a good […]
Also posted in 3: Drawing outdoors, Drawing trees Comments closed
Research point: Claude Lorrain and Turner
Look at the work of Claude Lorrain and Turner. Write notes on how those artists divide their landscape into foreground, middle ground and background. Discovering the works of Claude Lorrain My research strategy began with a look at Bridgeman education library, because the task implied looking at paintings and analysing them. The initial search for […]
Also posted in 3: Drawing outdoors, Landscape drawing Comments closed
Research point: Landscape series
Look at artists who worked in series with the landscape, such as Monet, Pissarro or Cézanne. Make notes in your learning log about the challenges they faced and how they tackled them. I began my search as usual with Google, starting with Claude Monet whose paintings I admire intensely. The Wikipedia article on Claude Monet […]
Also posted in 3: Drawing outdoors, Landscape drawing Comments closed
Research point: Pentimenti
Find out about pentimenti (mistakes in master drawings) and restatements and find examples of them in famous drawings. Log your findings. I started my research with a Google search and as usual, began by reading the Wikipedia page to get a quick overall idea of the term. Wikipedia explains pentimenti not as errors, but rather […]
Also posted in 3: Drawing outdoors, Landscape drawing Comments closed
Research point: Different depictions of landscape
The course materials suggested to look at Dürer, Claude Lorrain and Lowry’s “images of industrial life”. This research point was to be done before the first practical task, however I departed from the suggested task sequence and approached it after the first exercises. Usually I prefer doing things in the suggested order, but having done […]
Also posted in 3: Drawing outdoors, Landscape drawing Comments closed
Research point: George Stubbs
I did a Google image search with keywords “skeleton cat” and lots of images came up. I’m a bit sensitive to the topic at the moment, because Paula is so skinny that one can feel every bone. I’m afraid I’ll have nightmares from studying the skeletal structure of the cat more closely. So I deliberately […]
Also posted in 2: Observation in nature, Drawing animals Comments closed