Monday 5 December 2016

Semester 1 Reflection essay

In relation to your own practice, compare and contrast approaches to 'drawing' of three different artists.
Cameron Hurd

During this last term, we have been introduced into our Drawing for animators and illustrators course. Over the last few months we have developed and fine tuned our skills as artists. Many exercises have shown their difficulties, but all of them have helped me develop my artistic abilities. Most notably i really enjoyed our sessions on Perspective, as it helped me learn new techniques, but in addition it gave me much needed practice, to allow me to get a better natural hold onto how to draw better from an observational source.

During this module we have explored different artists and their approach to drawing, one of them being Leonardo Da Vinci, i love his attention to detail during his observational studies. In some of my drawings i attempted to imitate his techniques to see if i learnt anything. One thing i learnt was his style was very time consuming, and could not work in some situations. For example, when we were drawing Animals at bristol zoo, you had to draw the form of the animal incredibly quickly before the animal moved. Because of this fast drawing speed, you helps you learn how to draw accurate flowing forms quickly, but because of this, the precision is sometimes lost and while the sketches look correct, they lack the detail that someone like Da Vinci would add into their drawings, by the end of the Drawing module at the end of the year, i would like to be able to draw in sort of a hybrid fashion between these two styles, being able to draw detail fast and accurate. However i feel that in order to achieve this, i will have to draw a lot and consistently, and continue studies of other artists, in order to try and unlock their secrets.

One of my proudest achievements while taking this module was seeing the progression in my ability to notice imperfections in my initial sketches and redraw them in a more correct fashion, at the beginning of the course i was worried that i would really struggle to get perspective correct, or be unable to work out how to correct the mistakes i made. Techniques such as the pencil ruler and the finger composition really helped me plan my drawings more accurately, I really want to utilise more techniques like this in the following months of the course. In the future i want to keep up this level of development and improvement in order to be able to apply these new found abilities to a wide range of medias and other uses.

One thing i wish i had developed more on this initial part of the course was being able to use colour correctly and more accurately. For the most part of this module i have used mostly dry media such as Pen, pencil and charcoal, and while i did use these to a good standard, it did not show a huge range of variety in my work. One artist who i have researched during this module who is able to utilise colour and wet medias well is Andrew young, a contemporary artist who creates some excellent anatomically correct drawings, many of which mainly respond to drug abuse and issues that affect modern society. His ability to use high contrasts and plentiful colours really creates dynamic images, it is my goal by the end of this year is be able to combine my current style, while being able to utilise colours, something that in contrast to Andrew’s work, i have felt has been lacking from my recent work. In the next term i will try to use colour more, as if i can get my tonal values more correct, then i feel my entire ability as an artist will improve. However, there are some examples of my work that i feel shows improvement in my use of colour, my piece i made that uses green and yellow pastel in a two tonal drawing was a good example of colour. To exemplify this, looking at drawings from my first session and the ones that uses limited colour, there is a significant improvement in my ability to show contrast using colour, i want to be able to continue this trend into the second semester.

Another artist who has a great ability to utilise colour effectively in their drawings was Pablo Picasso. He is best known for his Cubism painting, however he also created many colourful drawings that inspired me during this project. He used bright primary colours to create tonal drawings in a loose style. I really like this approach as i feel that it would complement my current style that i have, whether i'm using colour or not. In the following terms and semesters i want to be able be more loose with my colour, creating many tonal paintings using bright primary colours, as i feel this will help teach me how to be more accurate with my use of colour. If i can do this then i feel that i will have rounded off my artistic skills during this course. I feel that using a lack of colour during this semester was an error on my part, and i fear that it may have affected my experience during this half of the course.

In conclusion, i feel that this course has significantly developed my drawing technique, in both wet and dry media. I feel that i have utilised dry black and white media during this half of the module to a good standard and want to continue this into the next semester. In addition, during the next semester i want to develop my colour technique in order to be able to have had a well rounded experience during the module, as i feel that that has been my weakest point during this half of the module. I want to study other artists who are able to use colour and learn from them, by imitating their styles and doing artist studies in order to hopefully unlock their secrets and hopefully improve as an artist. I am proud of my improvement in this semester and am excited for the next term and what it holds.






Words: 1045












Bibliography

-Blogs, J.W.M. (2004) ‘ANIM1003 drawing for Animators and illustrators’, 11 January. Available at: http://anim1003worc.blogspot.co.uk/ (Accessed: 5 December 2016).
-Leonardo Da Vinci - the complete works (2002) Available at: http://www.leonardoda-vinci.org/ (Accessed: 5 December 2016).
-Unknown Pablo Picasso paintings and drawings (2016) Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/8168711/Unknown-Pablo-Picasso-paintings-and-drawings.html?image=3 (Accessed: 5 December 2016).
-vectroave (2016) Andrew Young Art. Available at: http://vectroave.com/2011/09/andrew-young-art/ (Accessed: 5 December 2016).

Citations, Quotes & Annotations

-Blogs, J.W.M. (2004) ‘ANIM1003 drawing for Animators and illustrators’, 11 January. Available at: http://anim1003worc.blogspot.co.uk/ (Accessed: 5 December 2016).
(Blogs, 2004)
-Leonardo Da Vinci - the complete works (2002) “Learning never exhausts the mind”
Available at: http://www.leonardoda-vinci.org/ (Accessed: 5 December 2016).
(Leonardo Da Vinci - the complete works, 2002)
-Unknown Pablo Picasso paintings and drawings (2016) Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/8168711/Unknown-Pablo-Picasso-paintings-and-drawings.html?image=3 (Accessed: 5 December 2016).
(Unknown Pablo Picasso paintings and drawings, 2016)
-vectroave (2016) Andrew Young Art. Available at: http://vectroave.com/2011/09/andrew-young-art/ (Accessed: 5 December 2016).
(vectroave, 2016)


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