Research point: Pentimenti

By patriciakarsten | Published: October 13, 2012

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 as “change of mind during composition”, followed by a restatement during the process of painting.
These changes are not normally visible in the final work, but sometimes they reappear due to chemical processes while the painting ages over time. They can also be traced using techniques like X-rays and infrared light. They are quite frequent in the works of old masters and are even interpreted as sign of an initial, original work, because secondary versions or copies rarely have them.

The article mentions several examples:
–    The portrait of Jacques de Norvins by Ingres painted in 1811-12. Originally, there had been a bust of Napoleon’s son which was later overpainted with a curtain after Napoleon’s fall
–    The Cardsharps by Caravaggio with several minor alteration that could be detected using infrared light
–    A work by Zurbarán titled Christ and the Virgin in the House at Nazareth, where a white cloth was expanded later and the expanded area appeared in a darker overall tone.
The article provides references to other famous examples of pentimenti.

One of these was a painting originally by Giovanni Bellini, titled the Feast of the Gods. The WebExhibits website explains the fascinating story around this painting, which had been overpainted by other artists later – first by Dosso Dossi and then by Titian who completed the final version. But the painting had become transparent with age, revealing the ruins of a building which Dosso painted on the original.

I find the topic interesting, but I am asking myself why it is included in the course materials – I’d have expected it in a painting course. Does it have any relevance for drawing? I don’t know.

References

Wikipedia article on Pentimento
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentimento

WebExhibits: Scientific analysis of the Feast of Gods painting:
http://www.webexhibits.org/feast/analysis/reconstructing.html

Posted in 3: Drawing outdoors, Landscape drawing, Research points | Comments closed

Landscape drawing: A sketchbook walk

By patriciakarsten | Published: October 10, 2012

The first project of part 3 is concerned with landscape drawing. Now the difference to parts 1 and 2 is that it’s about drawing outdoors, which means that I’m looking for good or at least “interesting” weather conditions. I had intended to begin part 3 much earlier and benefit from nice summer weather. But part 2 took much longer than expected and so it was October when I finally started work on part 3.

Exercise 1: A sketchbook walk

Sunday 7 October 2012

The task was to go out for a walk in a familiar location, and make four sketches during that walk, using a viewfinder to focus on some point of interest like trees, a gate or a road.

I began the exercise with some preparations: Making myself a viewfinder, selecting a sketchbook which was light enough to take outside, choosing equipment which wouldn’t require me to take a bag but would fit into the pockets of my jacket. I decided to walk along my regular route through the local park and chose an A4 sketchbook, plus a 2B pencil. I also took black ball pens with me, just in case, because it creates more contrast than pencil.

Wheather conditions were not so good – a bit cold, windy and quite unstable with rain to be expected now and then. I tried to dress warm enough to be comfortable during an hour or so even when I paused for a drawing for some time.

The first drawing was a view over a lawn with some trees scattered around. I took place on a bench and experimented with the viewfinder. I realized that only a small part of what I actually saw in the scene would fit on the paper, unless I grossly distorted the proportions and distances. I did not want to draw while holding the viewfinder because I found this disturbing. So I decided to begin with a central tree and develop the drawing around this tree, and see how much of the scene fitted on the paper.

Again I felt disheartened after short time by the amount of detail that I saw and wasn’t able to capture in a naturalistic way. Instead, I scribbled “some greenery” where I saw leaves, and some quick strokes for the trees. I got quite annoyed and felt very unsatisfied and stopped soon. Upon reflection I realized that there was no real point of interest in my drawing, it was just a nice view.

I resumed my walk and reflected on the task, and became quite negative in thinking that again I was at odds with the tasks given. I knew that there are many things in this park which had already captured my interest visually, but these were rather some details on the way, like the interesting shape or bark of a single tree. I hadn’t paid too much attention on views and since the route was so familiar, I couldn’t think of anything particularly interesting along the way.

On the other hand, I could have stopped everywhere because I am able to find something visually attractive everywhere I look at. But the task was “landscape drawing”, and therefore I didn’t permit myself to get distracted. Walking and looking around, I stopped at the crossing of two paths through the wood where I liked the view in front of me.

This was the second drawing. It shows the main path leading into a lighter area, and a big stone to the right marking the crossing. I roughly sketched the trees and some of the foliage and again got quite annoyed because I felt entirely incapable of drawing them realistically. Instead, I just scribbled curly marks in different sizes where I saw different types of foliage. This time, I tried to capture some tonal values, like the darker ground next to myself in the foreground which got lighter towards the background. There were also some darker areas in the foliage of the background. I stopped drawing when the paper was full, again dissatisfied and even more at odds with what I was doing.

I continued walking and thought that the small garden house village at which I would arrive soon might be interesting to draw. While walking, I looked forth and back to check whether there was a view that I liked, and finally when I had already passed the village and was walking up some steps, the look back onto the main path through the village with the houses on both sides looked nice. This became the third drawing. I included a group of three men walking along the path. Again I wasn’t able to draw realistically, it’s just some sort of scribbling to quickly sketch how I perceived the visual patterns. This may have to do with my myopia and it may also be an effect of age-related impatience with minor detail coming in too large quantities.

Maybe it would be better if I constructed my drawings, to have a better orientation on the page. In the third drawing for example, there were several garden house roofs to the right side, but I did not get the distances and proportions right and so I couldn’t include all those which were there, and those I included are not at the correct position. All the time I felt that I didn’t like drawing, and didn’t like the linear approach of using a pencil, because I would have preferred to use colour and tone for the different areas of the image, and to create structures with an instrument like a brush.

During the walk, I was intensely reflecting about my coursework and how I could arrive at doing something I like and feel good with, rather than constantly having inner debates and not getting to grips with the task at hand. One possibility would be to double up the work – try to do the exercises as good as possible, and then do the same in my own way, departing from instructions and do things in a way which I felt good with. Another possibility would be to try to integrate “my personal way of doing things” right into the first attempts. This would save time, but I fear I’m not able to do this because I don’t have enough drawing experience and practice.

For the fourth drawing, I selected the stone bridge marking the main entrance of the park. I drew it when I was just about to leave the park. Unfortunately it began to rain so I had to finish the drawing quickly. I got a bit wet, but captured the main elements of the scene, the bridge, the trees around it and the path leading through it.

On the positive side, it was good that I went outside and actually made the drawings, despite all my objections and personal difficulties. I think it would be good if I took the time to repeat the exercise, but taking more freedom. Firstly, I wouldn’t want to be restricted to landscape, but let myself be attracted by anything that I like. Then, I wouldn’t want to be restricted to pencil or black and white or line, but would like to take more media with me and decide on the place which one to use. It is autumn now and the leaves are beginning to get coloured, and it would be a shame not to try and draw something in colour.

I also had the idea of taking a lockable jar with water with me and employ watersoluble media. Experience from the watercolour course has shown that the water gets dirty quickly when several colours are involved, and this wouldn’t be very practical when I’m outside. But I thought that I could restrict watersoluble media to one or two darker colours and focus on tone and texture, then the “dirty” water would represent less of a problem.

The instructions for this exercise were to include notes “where appropriate” on all sorts of different aspects of the drawing, like time of day and weather conditions, the main point of interest, the division of space into foreground, middle ground and background, but I didn’t do that because I didn’t want to write across my drawings. They are precious to me even if they are very humble beginnings. I also found it a bit difficult to focus on so much at the same time, it would actually amount to writing a mini-essay on each of the drawings.

I had printed out the instructions and taken them with me. Maybe I will get back on these aspects when I repeat the task, they are certainly worth reflecting about. But this time I was already overwhelmed by the difficulty and complexity of the drawing task.

Tuesday 9 October: Another sketchbook walk

I did another sketchbook walk. Initially I hesitated whether I could afford the time to do an exercise twice, but then I thought that I was so dissatisfied with the first attempt that it would be well invested time to give it another try.

This time, I improved my equipment: a warmer Jacket and softer pencils. I took a different walk from the first one, which is a route I take rarely and this made it more interesting for me. It passes along a little lake which I thought would be nice to draw. I was a bit unfortunate because the late afternoon sun blended so that I had to take another view for the first drawing. Later when the sun had vanished, I drew the lake but I was already exhausted and felt pressurized by the reduction of available light, so this second and the next two drawings were unsatisfying like those from the first walk.

The first drawing depicts an open space next to the lake, with a view into some trees. I like this drawing, maybe because I just took some more time for details and patterns. The second drawing is a view on the lake, depicting the flat water surfaces and a tree close by to the right and some trees further away at the opposite side of the lake.

  

The third and fourth drawing were on the way back home. It had been late afternoon and daylight was disappearing quickly, so I tried to draw quickly before it would get too dark. Drawing three was the pathway with some trees in the background, and drawing four a view along the pathway with trees on both sides.

My conclusion from this sketchbook walk is that I need to take time to produce something which I like. This means time not in terms of a certain number of minutes, but in terms of taking the time it needs for the drawing, rather than trying to produce a quick hasty sketch. Maybe the hasty sketches will work for townscapes, or maybe they work if the tempo comes natural, but for now I think it would be better to take all the time I need for my quasi first attempts at landscape drawing.

I also thought that my approach might work well with oil pastels, because they’d permit to quickly cover an area with a colour or tone. So overall I liked this second sketchbook walk much better than the first, and especially with the first drawing I had the feeling to have learnt something. With the remaining three, I’m a bit skeptical. They were drawn very quickly and I attempted to capture the structure of the scene and some tonal values. But the results are not very recognizable.

I’m not sure how to proceed. A third sketchbook walk would certainly do me good, especially if I reformulate the task a bit to suit me better. Maybe for me instructions should have read: Take a day off when the weather is good and make a nice walk through a park. Make 4 drawings in pencil or some other medium and take the time you need.

I just wonder whether instructions deliberately talk about ‘sketches’ and not ‘drawings’. Also, the instructions are to take notes about various aspects of the scene, as if the task were not to focus on the drawing but on analytical observation. But would I learn to draw by just analysing and observing instead of trying to depict the aspects in question?

Posted in 3: Drawing outdoors, Landscape drawing | Comments closed

Research point: Different depictions of landscape

By patriciakarsten | Published: October 9, 2012

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 it differently this time was interesting. Maybe my own attempts made me more aware of difficult elements in landscape drawing. On the other hand, my own attempts might have benefitted from looking at how other artists had approached the topic.

Albrecht Dürer (1471 – 1528)

I searched at the Bridgeman education library and searched for artist = Durer and with the keyword  = landscape, which brought up quite a few works, not only drawings but also watercolours and engravings. I selected those which I found interesting and typical for landscape – a somewhat open view over an extended area.  I made notes about what I found remarkable.

View of Nuremberg (1496-97), watercolour on paper

This drawing depicts a view on the medieval town. The colours in the foreground are quite dark, they become more pale towards the background. There is much more detail of stone walls and buildings in the foreground than in the background. Both these aspects create a sense of space in the drawing.

View of the Arco Valley in Tyrol (1495), pen & ink with watercolour on paper

This drawing depicts a fortress on a hill  in the background, and the valley in the middle  area. Somehow strange are the trees with blue foliage. The landscape at the distance to thre right is very pale, compared to the scenery in the middle area.

Road in the Alps (1495), gouache and watercolour on paper.

A drawing of a a mountainous landscape in golden and blue tones. Here the intensity of colour is evenly distributed over the entire image, creating less sense of distance.

St Jerome in the Wilderness (c. 1496), engraving

This is not a drawing, but it represents what could have been a deep black linear drawing. The trees are depicted in fine textural detail. Dürer created shades of tone through texture and stippling which followed the forms of the objects. I like this because it supports the visual impression – compared to my own drawings where I often found parallel hatching very disturbing to a three-dimensional effect. Size difference serves to indicate distance, for example a fortress building (?) in the background. The library collection contained more engravings, for example ‘Madonna with a Dragonfly’ (undated). These also had the deep black line effect, but Dürer used lighter lines for elements very far away.

The Watermill (1495-97), pen & ink, gouache and watercolour on paper

There is not much differentiation in how elements of foreground and background are depicted, maybe this is because the image mainly consists of elements in the middle area. The sky is quite dramatically coloured, from darkest blue tone, and purple, to light rose and yellow.

View of Bergen op Zoom (1520), silverpoint on paper

This is a verso drawing,  i.e. the back side of another work. The front side is ‘Portrait of a person in front of the Abbey of Saint-Michel d’Anvers’. The verso drawing is  a view on a townscape with a hill in the foreground. There’s not much emphasis on distance. This drawing was made much later than others, maybe there was a change in style with the mature artist.

View of Kachreuth, near Nuremberg (1511), watercolour on paper

This is a view of a village in the foreground. There are  huge black trees to the right, and woods and a hillside landscape in the background, with hills forming the horizon line. The drawing conveys much sense of space and distance. The houses in the foreground have some details indicated with light lines, towards middle and background the amount of detail decreases and the landscape is amainly depicted through colour. A few minor details in pkack are sufficient to establish the shape of hills, forests and fields. I’m very impressed that this painting is 500 years old.  It’s also one of the later works by Dürer

View of Trente (1494), watercolour and gouache on paper

This one resembles other landscapes Dürer made in the earlier years. There is a somehow naïve approach, compared to the view on Bergen op Zoom. I’m not sure why this is. It may have to do with perspective and how later works appeared more clear and straightforward. This painting depicts distant elements with considerable detail, maybe this is why it appears “naïve”.

Claude Lorrain (1600 – 1682)

Claude Lorrain was a French painter, who lived around 100 years later than Dürer. Searching at Bridgeman education library yielded way too many hits to look at all of them. So I went through the first 20 or so pages and selected some which I found more closer to drawing than to painting.

Landscape (undated), pen and bistre and wash on paper

I recognized some of the topics that I encountered myself in my first attempts at landscape drawing, for example the question of how to treat tree foliage or other landscape detail.

This drawing has some buildings in the middle section, and a tree and three people in the foreground, and some distant hills. This gives much sense of space.

A view of lake Bracciano (c. 1638-39), pen & ink with wash on paper

This is a very soft and distant landscape drawing. The foreground is created by quick lines depicting some grass and a bush. The size difference to the small trees in the middle area estabishes spatial distance.

A road outside the walls of Rome (c. 1627-30), pen & ink and wash on paper

This drawing depicts a small road at the bottom of a hill, and there’s a house at the hight. I found it interesting because it was made in portrait format. Compared to other drawings, there’s a different type of distance emphasized –  that of of a height distance between the road at the bottom and the house much higher. A tree connects the two main elements of the composition. Again the foreground is established by some grasses which are much larger than the grasses in the middle area.

Landscape with Christ preaching the Sermon on the Mount (undated), pen & brown ink with grey wash on paper.

This one looks like a very classical landscape, with sheep and people in the foreground,  some huge trees, a townscape further away and the sea with ships in the background. The trees are to the left and the right of the open view over the area and act like a frame for the more distant elements.

Wooded landscape (undated), pen & ink and wash on paper

This drawing shows a bridge and trees in the center, some cows in the foreground , and trees and a steep hill or stone cliff in the background. The trees are depicted with a few lines to indicate foliage, and the wash indicating tone, with some lighter and some darker trees. There are deep contrasts in this drawing, from very light brown tones to deep browns which are almost black. The drawing is a quick sketch, there is no meticulous work on details. I think this contributes to an impression of lightness and ease.

Lowry’s images of industrial life

Again I searched Bridgeman educational library. Since there was no first name given in the course materials, I only used the family name, which brought up quite a few different artists by the name of Lowry. So the first task was to determine which was the Lowry with images of industrial life!

A Google search brought up some articles and from skim-reading a few of them, I concluded the right one must be Laurence Stephen Lowry (1887 – 1976), a british artist who also worked as a rent collector. Having identified the artist, the most interesting source I found was the website of The Lowry, a charitable organization devoted to Lowry’s legacy. They present a large collection of works by the artist.

The river Irwell at the adelphy (undated) depicts a river and industry buildings to its side, with many chimneys and smoke. It  looks like a pencil drawing, using a very soft grade, or maybe charcoal. For me, the black and white drawing perfectly conveys the atmosphere of environmental pollution through industrialization.

Bandstand, Peel Park, Salford (undated). This drawing depicts a park with an industrial landscape in the background, again with many chimneys and an effect of “gray air”.

I found only a few actual landscape drawings, but many oil paintings, and many townscapes. But the collection also presents some traditional landscape drawings, for example the Country road, which also looks like a pencil drawing. It depicts a road leading from the viewer away towards a distant forest. Very far in the background again some buildings and a chimney or high tower, maybe from a church.  There is not much texture. Lowry seems to have focused on tonal values and simple shapes. He structured the large area of grassland with a few horizontally stretched marks.

Looking at the works by L. S. Lowry brings back to attention how much landscapes have changed through industrialization.

Concluding reflections

I wrote this article about a month after actually doing the image search and taking the notes presented above. In the meantime, I have had a go at all the exercises in this project. I think my understanding of landscape drawing has already improved a bit, and also my perception of landscape depictions has changed. I’m beginning to see a second level in them – not only what they depict, but also the techniques the artists used to solve certain problems.

For example, in my own attempts at depicting groups of trees at a distance, I was quite frustrated from the difficulties of not being able to create different tonal values and a light impression of texture with a pencil. Now looking again at Claude Lorrain’s method of using washes to create tone and combining these with light lines, I realize that using washes is a solution to overcome the limitations of a purely linear drawing tool. The insight seems to have come only after having tried myself, or maybe I had seen it already, but now I have a deeper understanding.

Times are changing

Another aspect is the different time period in which the three artists lived. They all depicted elements of the world in which they lived. They did this in different style – for example, I have the impression that Claude Lorrain was much more part of a distinct school with rules about the “correct” way to depict a landscape. By contrast, Dürer who worked much earlier may have been one of those who developed ways of depicting which were previously unknown. Similarly I see the works of Lowry as much more independent in style and outside of established schools than those of Lorraine.

And then there’s industrialization. Maybe Dürer would have depicted factories if they had been in his world, but there weren’t any in the medieval age. By contrast, they were in Lowry’s world, and he included them in his works and even made them central elements. It was the ‘Edgelands’ article on the ‘We are OCA’ website which made me aware that my understanding of landscape drawing was one which avoided industrialization and urbanization. For me, a landscape with a factory, modern houses, roads, bridges etc tends to be spoiled and I would change my viewpoint to have them outside the composition. My understanding of landscape would welcome civilization in its more ancient forms of old wooden bridges, farm houses, fences around a meadow to keep the cows from running away, etc. – briefly, trying to depict a world how it may have looked in pre-industrial times.

At the same time, I do see the beauty in modern architecture, and I even like it in its rotten form like when formerly modern constructions have become edgelands. The concept of townscape as a contrast to landscape was new to me. Thinking about it, my concept of landscape is beginning to change, or maybe I’m just beginning to question what I have taken for granted until now.

Time spent researching

When I did this research, I was a bit worried because I spent so much time on looking at the artists work. And again much time was necessary to bring my thougths and observations into this form. I could easily spend all the time I allocated for coursework with research on artists – but this is not why I’m on this course! So it’s also an art of finding a balance between researching what other artists have done, and pursuing one’s own practical work. But I’m beginning to appreciate what I can learn from looking at other artists.

References

Bridgeman Education
http://www.bridgemaneducation.com/

Wikipedia article: Laurence Stephen Lowry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._S._Lowry

The Lowry Art & Entertainment, Collection of Lowry’s works
http://www.thelowry.com/ls-lowry/the-ls-lowry-collection/

The Lowry, selection of works depicting places – many drawings
http://www.thelowry.com/gallery/work-by-ls-lowry-places

We are OCA article about Edgelands
http://www.weareoca.com/photography/edgelands/

 

Posted in 3: Drawing outdoors, Landscape drawing, Research points | Comments closed

More artists: Henri Matisse

By patriciakarsten | Published: October 7, 2012

I came across some drawings by Henri Matisse (1869 – 1954) by accident. Searching for watercolours by Emil Nolde, I was directed to the page of a commercial gallery which had organized an exhibition of works by Henri Matisse, too, and presented some of the drawings and prints of the exhibition.

I had seen some Matisse works earlier and remembered their reduction to single, very fluent lines. By contrast, this exhibition presented works which included tonal values. I thought these were all drawings, but in fact most of them were prints. I thought maybe the tonal works were earlier and then the artist sort of cleaned up his style to focus on line, but wanted to verify this idea by a closer look on the creation dates.

I’m quite impressed by the expressivity of the simple lines in Matisse’s works. For example, the women’s portraits seem to convey so much of their personality and current mood, despite the extreme reduction of information on the paper, compared to more “complete” or worked out drawings. I like this style a lot. It would be interesting to see whether the expression in fact represented the person that was depicted, or whether it was more a chance product resulting from interpretation through the viewer, based on viewing habits. Maybe the style of Matisse’s works was influenced by the printing medium which focuses on line, rather than on tonal values.

And indeed, from the paintings I found in these exhibitions it looks as if the earlier works included tonal values, while the later ones focused purely on line. And I’m quite impressed how much they look like drawings, where they are actually prints. Personally I like a lot the idea of prints, because they reduce the uniqueness of an artwork. It’s like introducing a very democratic idea, making something very precious available to more people.

  

 

  

  

  

My selection of works:

“Le repos du modèle” (The model is resting)
Lithograph on China paper 1922

“Nu sur chaise de repos sur fond moucharabieh” (Life drawing)
Lithograph on China paper 1922

“Jeune fille accoudée au paravent fleuri” (Young girl)
Lithograph on China paper 1923

“Intérieur, la lecture” (Interior, reading)
Lithograph on China paper 1925

“Danseuse” from “Dix danseuses” (Dancer)
Lithograph on Arches paper 1927

“Figure au col et manchettes de dentelle”
Etching on China paper, mounted on hand-made Bütten paper 1929

“La lettre” (The letter)
Etching on China paper, mounted on hand-made Bütten paper 1929

“Portrait de femme nu accoudee” (Life drawing)
Pencil drawing on paper 1931

“La Pompadour”
from “Ensemble de lithographies sur le thème “La Pompadour””
Lithograph on Vélin d’Arches 1951

Without title from the collection for John-Antoine Nau
“Poésies antillaises” (Poems from the Antilles)
Lithograph in brown colour on Vélin ca. 1946 / 1972

References

Presentation of an exhibition at Galerie Boisserée, 2009
http://www.boisseree.com/fr/exhibitions/2009.html

Exhibition catalog (2002, in German)
http://www.boisseree.com/images/artists/Matisse/Katalog_Matisse.pdf

Posted in 3: Drawing outdoors, Landscape drawing, More artists | Comments closed

Assignment 2

By patriciakarsten | Published: October 3, 2012

I’ve finally completed part 2. I had several occasions where I was near to giving up. I hope I will get on better in the next part of the course.

The task of the assignment was to set up an interesting composition of natural objects, and make a drawing using the media of my choice. Instructions advised to first select the media, then decide on the composition and try out different variations in the sketchbook.

I had some difficulties with this sequence, because I already had an idea what I wanted to draw before I had decided on the medium. I was interested in drawing squashes because I liked their forms and colours. Initially I wanted to combine two squashes with an artichoke arranged on a wooden chair.

The initial pencil study of the objects and the compositional sketch were nice. But  I wanted to use oil pastels and from earlier experience I knew that I wouldn’t be able to depict fine details with this medium. Therefore I changed the composition. I kept the squashes but changed the artichoke for a vase with sunflowers. I made another compositional sketch of these items on the chair, but then  decided to change the composition because I found it unnatural to have a vase on a chair.

  

After considering several alternatives, I decided to use a small, high table covered with a red and orange table cloth, and improvised a black cloth in the background to have a neutral background. I preferred this to the actual interior of my working room which presents too many irritating details which I did not want to include in the drawing.

I was very unsure about my choice of oil pastels. Two preparatory sketches of a sunflower and the squashes further convinced me that the task would become quite difficult. Nevertheless I wanted to give it a try and see how far I would get.

  

I selected dark grey pastel paper which I thought would help to give depth to the arrangement before the dark background. I began with sketching the objects in a light colour, then added coloured areas and tried to work out some details.

There was a point when I was so disheartened that I did not only want to throw away the drawing, but also abandon the whole drawing course because I simply did not see any progress or any use in what I was doing. After a break of 10 minutes or so, I decided to try harder and try to improve what I had drawn. I kept on reworking the drawing for around 5 hours until I was moderately satisfied and the paper was more or less saturated.

After all, I like the drawing and am glad that I did not give up. But I really don’t know whether I will be able to complete this course.

Reflection: Which aspects of this assignment did I enjoy most?

I think it was the free choice of what I wanted to draw and with which medium.

 

Posted in 2: Observation in nature, Assignment 2 | Comments closed

Check and log: Drawing animals

By patriciakarsten | Published: September 25, 2012

What were the main challenges of drawing animals?

With the cats, the main problem was that they were moving all the time. This made it extremely difficult to capture any pose or detail. I was often left with an incomplete outline of a cat, with the head or some other part of the body missing because the cat had left the scene already. It went a bit better when I waited until the cat was sleeping.

For the fish, the main challenge was the texture and reflections of the surface. I found it very difficult to depict these.

Which media did you enjoy using most and which did you feel were best for the subject matter and why?

I didn’t try out so many different media in this project and liked most of them, with the exception of coloured markers which didn’t work for me when drawing the cats. I liked pencil for the cats, but I think the best for capturing their fur is soft pastel because it permits to cover a larger area with colour and interesting texture by using the pastels sticks with their side.

For the fish, I liked the watersoluble colour pencils and I think they are very good for the subject, because they permit to combine fine detail with working loosely over large areas when dissolved with water.

Where can you go to draw more animals? Think about the sorts of places that will give you opportunities for animal drawing. Have you tried drawing a moving animal yet?

Berlin has two public zoos where I could go for drawing more animals. I could also make visits to the countryside outside Berlin. On my last trip, I saw hens, goose, cows and I think just taking the time to stop and draw animals that come across would be nice.

I haven’t tried to draw a moving animal yet, but I imagine this must be really challenging.

Some personal thoughts after this project

This seemed to be another project which made me realize how much I can not draw… but looking on the work I’ve done, I can see some progress from the first animal drawings to the last. To improve, I could continue drawing animals alone for the next year or so. I’m still far away from the feeling of skill,  but I’m beginning to understand the projects as introductions to the various topics in drawing.

It would be good if I complemented the directed coursework with ongoing free practice in these topics, and this would be the right thing to do in my sketchbooks! Currently I’m using the sketchbook when I’m told to do so, and I think this isn’t sufficient. I’d like to develop my skills further, so it would be good to find the time for some free work.

Posted in 2: Observation in nature, Check and log, Drawing animals | Comments closed

Fish on a plate

By patriciakarsten | Published: September 24, 2012

Sunday 23 September 2012

I have drawn the fish this afternoon. I chose a fresh gilthead fish. I had bought it yesterday already, but in the evening I was too tired for drawing, but today I took the time and drew, and now the fish is in the oven. I did not want to wait any longer with cooking so another try might be from the photo I took, or with another fish!

For the Bockingford paper, this is not very known in Germany and I think I confounded it with Bockingford Inkjet paper which has a very smooth surface and is very good for drawing with markers or pen and ink. But probably instructions referred to watercolour paper with some roughness in texture.

I chose watersoluble colour pencils and this worked quite well on the paper I had chosen because it was heavy enough to not dissolve or buckle when I worked over the drawing with water.

Composition.

The main problem was that I had to close myself off in the kitchen because my four cats would otherwise not have permitted me to finish the drawing, they’d have eaten the fish.  So I took a lamp, drawing board and drawing utensils with me and improvised a “fairly neutral context” for the drawing. On a stool I had put a black table mat, on which I put a gray plate with the fish. So the arrangement wasn’t very colourful, a grey-white fish on a grey plate on a black table mat. But I detected some colours on the fish while drawing, like yellow around the eyes and reddish and blueish tones on its body.

Critical reflection

I think I managed to capture the shapes of my composition quite well, and I like the facial expression of my fish. Despite being dead and waiting to be cooked and eaten, the fish has a very friendly and almost happy expression. I also like how I included very light notions of colour.

But I’m also very critical about the drawing. For example, the background cloth has no “clothness”. It should have been much darker and convey the impression of a textile. Also, the surface of the fish doesn’t look like the real fish, I didn’t capture the shiny texture.

To improve in the future, it would be good to do some detail studies of the cloth and the fish surface before starting a drawing like this. I think I was again overwhelmed by the complexity of the patterns and did not really understand them, and this is possibly the reason why they are not very realistically depicting what I saw.

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Grabbing the chance

By patriciakarsten | Published: September 24, 2012

The task was to grab the chance of drawing an animal whenever the chance arises. Then after practicing in two sessions of several hours, with different animal poses and different drawing media, to take a large sheet and make a drawing in my preferred media.

Wednesday 5 September 2012

I began with this exercise yesterday evening, without having finished the research point, but already inspired by what I had seen from Leonardo and Dürer. I had the sheet with many small cats by Leonardy in my mind, and also Dürer’s Hare.

I drew several pages, beginning with Paula but also tried to depict Moritz, Micky and Gina, my other cats. Due to her illness, Paula is very weak and doesn’t move very much so she should be quite easy to draw, but my first attempts weren’t very successful. I think this was because I drew too large and too detailed. I tried to draw her smaller as I had seen it on the Leonardo sheet, but maybe I sat too close to her and just couldn’t do it.

Somewhat later I drew Moritz who was resting in a chair, but instead of sleeping he began to wash himself. These movements are so fast that I wasn’t able to depict him… but I learnt something, my approach changed a bit. Firstly I tried to draw smaller and with him I had more success, maybe because I deliberately placed myself at a larger distance (3 metres instead of 1 meter with the first tries to draw Paula). Of the smaller drawings, I could place more on a single sheet and the sheets looked more interesting. Towards the end of the 10 minutes I had been drawing him he came to a rest and I could work a bit longer on the final sketch, adding some tonal values for his dark fur with white socks.

I also did one sketch of Gina, not more because she then ran away, and one sheet with Micky but he was also moving too quickly and I wasn’t succesful.

The drawings are extremely sketchy because I was so irritated by the cats’ movements, but during the session my perceptional focus shifted from moving details like head or paws to the more stable overall shape of the body. I also began to draw quicker and tried to first outline the main shape, then draw some details. So the later sketches are somewhat more successful than the earlier ones. But I certainly need more practice with this. And I’m full of admiration for Leonardo who depicted the essence of various poses so typical for cats with such accuracy!

I think for the large animal drawing I will select Paula, because depicting her has a special meaning to me as these may be the last memories I will have from her. I had looked at the details of Dürer’s hare and think that he first made a broad shape in colour and then added fine linear detail, and this is how I would like to approach the drawing of Paula.

I am thinking about using Conté Pastels because they permit soft gradings of colour but with their hard edges they also allow to draw linear details. Pastel pencils would be handy for these details too, but I have spent so much on artist equipment that for now, I think I will try what I can do with what I have, rather than adding ever more materials.

  

 

     

Monday 17 September

In the meantime, I have made quite a few sketches of my cats. In general, they move too fast for me to draw then. If they are not sleeping, they tend to change their position within seconds and I found it almost impossible to capture a particular pose beyond a drawing a rough outline.

But drawing them is possible when they are resting. I found it quite difficult to draw the fur with a linear tool like a ball pen. It worked a bit better with a soft pencil. I haven’t tried out pastels so far. I thought they would be good to quickly give an area a particular colour and then add some furry details. I’m planning to do some pastel drawings and also try out coloured markers before tackling the drawing on a large sheet.

I think I will draw on an A3 sheet which to me seems large enough for drawing a cat. An A2 size would mean to enlarge the cat or draw much background and I think this isn’t important for now.

One thing that stroke me was that I felt like capturing how very ill Paula is, even in the quick sketches. When compared to Moritz or Gina who aren’t ill and are resting quite relaxed and calm, it appears to me that Paula is tense even when resting. It’s something in her facial expression and maybe also in her body language. Also, her fur looks different from that of the other cats. While it feels as soft as ever when I touch her, its appearance is like “badly combed”, and I think this is also due to her bad health. It’s a bit difficult for me that my drawings depict her illness, because I’m so sad about it. It reminds me of Monet who painted his wife on her deathbed. I wish I had drawn Paula years ago, when she was still well.

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

Monday 24 September

I have completed this task with quite a few more drawings. I’ve tried out markers, but wasn’t very comfortable with them. Pastels worked better, although I’m light years away from the accuracy of the Durer Drawing I had in mind. My main difficulty was the impredictability of the cats. Even when they were sleeping and I set out to draw them, they would just jump up at any moment and I was left with whatever I had drawn until then.

I’m glad the course materials encourage students to try out different media. After having reviewed the work for this task, I find that the pencil sketches are very soft, while other media are much more expressive, for example ball pen or pastels.

I’ve made many drawings for this task and am glad that I perceive some progress over the course of the drawings. I’m not sure which of the drawings I consider the “final drawing” as demanded by the task, but the last one could be it for now.

 

Trying out markers:

  

Back to pencil and then pastels:

  

  

 

 

 

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Research point: George Stubbs

By patriciakarsten | Published: September 17, 2012

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 chose a drawing where the skeleton looks less technical and is shown in relation to the shape of a healthy cat.
The skeleton looks of course interesting, but I’d rather not depict any details when drawing a cat. I prefer just following the outlines along the fur contours.

I proceeded with a Google search for George Stubbs (1724 – 1806) and as usual found the Wikipedia article quite helpful as an introduction. George Stubbs was a British painter and highly recognized for his naturalistic horse paintings, but he also painted portraits and other animals. The article shows some horse painting, for example the Whistlejacket (c. 1762), which is of impressive exactness.

The article also reports that Stubbs spend some years researching the anatomy of horses by dissecting them. This suggests that Stubbs used his anatomical knowledge to construct his horse paintings with their skeletal and muscle structure in mind, rather than estimating the horse’s shapes from its outlines. The results are quite convincing with regard to their accurateness in depicting horses.

A Google Image search for Stubbs’ anatomical drawings brought up one which is an etching for his book ‘Anatomy of the horse’. It is extremely accurate, and I wondered why there was an additional line drawing with little numbers written inside each area. First I associated this to “painting by numbers”, the commercial way of aiding aspiring artists to produce respectable artwork. Then I thought the numbers were engraving instructions, but then I realized that the image was not a drawing, but already the engraving. Finally it dawned on me that the numbers were probably referred to in the text, to indicate which anatomical structure the area represented. Stubbs must have been obsessed with perfectioning his illustrations. Maybe this was a reflection of the times, like following the ideal of a scientific approach to nature, a departure of the more mystifying or religious views of the world.

Since the Google image search wasn’t very helpful in identifying anatomical drawings, I proceeded to search in the Bridgeman education library. It contains a nice collection of paintings by Stubbs, confirming that Stubbs painted quite a variety of different motives, but remained true to his ideal of accurate representation. I found a really cute painting of a little kitten. I think this painting is a little less technical and more guided by the furry appearance of the animal.

George Stubbs 1790 Miss Anne White’s Kitten

And finally I also found some anatomical drawings, for example “The Study of muscles: Ecorche” which depicts a horse from the side. I also liked the Anatomical drawing of a horse skeleton in relationship to its outline shape. This was done in pen and ink and pencil on paper.

 

I think the extreme accuracy of George Stubbs’ paintings is a result of his anatomical knowledge. He seems to be building his painted animals from inside out, with a profound knowledge of anatomy helping him to get the outline shapes and proportions correct.

Nevertheless I don’t feel very much at ease with the anatomical approach. It makes me think of dead animals and the process of dissecting them. I’m not comfortable with it.

References

Image of the cat skeleton from
http://facinatingamazinganimals.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/skeletal-system-skeletons-joints-bones-part-two/

George Stubbs, c. 1762 Whistlejacket, oil on canvas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Whistlejacket_by_George_Stubbs.jpg

George Stubbs, Etching for Anatomy of the Horse, 1766. 52 x 41 cm.
http://drawingdetail.tumblr.com/post/25996468309/george-stubbs-etching-for-anatomy-of-the-horse

George Stubbs 1790 Miss Anne White’s Kitten
http://www.bridgemaneducation.com/ImageView.aspx?result=12&balid=4870

The study of muscles: Ecorche
http://www.bridgemaneducation.com/ImageView.aspx?result=75&balid=55333

Pen and ink drawing of the anatomy of a horse (skeleton in relationship to shape)
http://www.bridgemaneducation.com/ImageView.aspx?result=88&balid=211045

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Check and log: Drawing plants and flowers

By patriciakarsten | Published: September 9, 2012

How will your experiments with negative space help your observational drawing in the future?

Drawing negative space definitely helps to draw more realistic and natural shapes, and I think whenever I was attentive to negative space the drawing improved. But I’m still at the beginning and need much more practice. The main problem is to get the directions and lengths of the line segments correct. I think that currently I’m producing too many unconnected lines in a drawing and it’s a major challenge for me to identify the forms to which these line segments belong. There’s still much to work on for me.

What techniques did you use to ensure you drew your plants in proportion?

In the negative space exercise, I think I began with a rough outline and applied proportional estimations. I visually divide the plant in segments and try to transfer the segments correctly on the paper. But I corrected a lot. In the coloured pencil drawing, I used the same principle and chose a light brown to draw a first outline of all shapes to get them more or less correct. For the marker drawing, I sketched the outlines in light colours first and then just continued with any proportional error I made. For the wax crayon drawing, I drew a very light pencil sketch first, then colorized the drawing. The pen and ink drawing was made without an outline sketch and more with a focus on negative space. I think this worked because I was already very familiar with the plant I had chosen.

Basically it seems that I’m always using the same technique of visual estimation. I think this works quite well for the overall shape of my arrangement on the sheet, but it works less well with all the object details. I have numerous errors because the drawn leaves are not true to their actual proportions.

How did you achieve an effect of three-dimensional space in your drawings?

In the negative space drawing is only a minimum amount of three-dimensionality. I think it results from the leaves’ shapes which are distorted through the viewing perspective, but exactly this conveys the three-dimensionality. I also added some lines to clarify the shapes of stems and how leaves are attached to them, but these can be seen only from quite close.

In the potted plant drawings, three-dimensionality results from drawing the context of the plants like clay pot and the metal fence behind the pot. In the coloured pencil drawing, the three-dimensionality is quite successfully achieved through fine tonal gradings. Otherwise, the main technique I used was drawing overlapping elements, like leaves before or behind other leaves.

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