Semester 2 Essay

This Semester's work has taken a different turn to how i began the year. While i feel that perhaps the quality of artwork hasn't improved as much as it had in the first semester, I have identified areas of improvement and found solutions to these problems. This semester was also less focused of the subject, but more on the drawing as a whole. A Personal goal for me this term along with working out how to improve, as to expand my use of medium. I am happy with the progress i made during this semester, i have learnt that focusing on the lineart and drawing what i think i see is not always the answer. This is a problem that had plagued me for the entire first semester and caused my overall brief to slip slightly. However upon using new techniques, such as utilising negative space and shading to create forms, the quality of my work is more consistent. In the future i want to continue using these techniques to further hone my skills, allowing my work to take new forms, while continually progressing in a positive manner.

One of my goals of this semester was to use more mediums, pushing me out of my comfort zone, to do this, i tried not to use a pencil when at all possible during lessons, and trying to use more wet mediums, such as markers, and watercolours in my homework. I feel that this use of medium is apparent in my Hive maze book and my Architecture Portrait i did at the beginning of the semester. One Particular success was my watercolour church drawing i did as part of my architecture brief, as this was one of the first times i had taken a wet medium out into the field with me, severely pushing me out of my comfort zone. Despite this, i enjoyed the work i did and was proud of the result, showing a significant improvement over what i would have done in the first semester. Heading into my second year of University, i would like to continue this trend of taking wet medium out more and expanding my skills to become a more versatile artist.

One thing that i have struggled most with, throughout this semester, was creating themes for my works, most notably when creating the animal texture pieces, i feel that i need to focus more on my use of composition when moving forward into my second year of university. I was worried that i would be unable to change and improve this, but by studying pieces done by my peers, i learnt tips and tricks that helped me approach the drawings with a fresh light. While i feel that my use of the page has certainly improved since the beginning of the year, i definitely feel as though there is a lot of room for improvement. In my effort to try and Improve my composition,  i looked at many Renaissance artists and their pages with life drawings on, one most notable was Albrecht Durer, who was most notable for his life drawings and Printmaking. In his woodcuts, Durer utilised the entire canvas, using a distinct use of symmetry to create a interesting Composition. Symmetry is something that i haven't really used during this module and is something that i only tried to used at the end of the project, most notably in my Hive Mazebook. If i was able to repeat the semester, i would put a focus on the composition of my images, hopefully creating better looking drawings and series of drawings, rather than having them dotted over the page.

One thing that i am highly proud of was my use of Charcoal over this semester, Before i started the module, i had little to no experience with Charcoal, but by the end of this year, one of the highlights of my portfolio is my Tonal Drawings using charcoal. By using charcoal it has helped significantly improve my use of value painting. Something that was very absent at the beginning of the year. At the beginning of the year, i focused too much of creating precise lines, while neglecting the negative space and shading, however in the latter half of this year, Ive almost reversed, focusing more and more on the background, and using that as well as tones to create my pieces. The Pieces below are the pieces that i feel successfully demonstrate my improvement from the beginning of the year, all the way through to the present day. While i certainly wouldn’t call fig 1. A bad drawing, it was very much within my comfort zone, using a sketching pencil, using construction lines to build the figure, while the drawing is good and high quality, it doesn’t really look like Mel, Whereas in Fig. 4, the Drawing is a lot more use, using Charcoal and a rubber to create a drawing that is much more believable and looks much more like how Mel actually looks like. One Artist who i studied to help me improve in this department was none other than Leonardo Da Vanci, while studying his work i noticed that he almost never used construction likes, or even edge lines for that matter, Da Vinci created Lifelike images using almost exclusively shading and focusing on negative space to draw. The difference between my own and Da vinci’s works caused me to question my own ability, and inspired me to try new styles and adapt a looser style. As you can see throughout the year, i tried to use less and less construction lines, and tried to draw what was actually in front of me, rather than what i thought i was seeing.

Because of this success, it has encouraged me to change my style when i do go back to using pencils and Pens, at the start of this year, i was very much the perfectionist and would waffle on a single curve for minutes of a time, while not having the whole form in. While when i got the lines right the drawings looks nice, however the image wouldn't necessarily be proportioned correctly, and or the image wouldn’t resemble the person i drew. However, reviewing my portfolio you can see the further through the year i get, the more and more lose the drawings become, as i realised that it was more important the get the form of the character in first, before allowing me to be a perfectionist and drawing all the little details that don’t make the image believable. To me, some of the images look as though the quality has declined, however this is certainly not the case at all. The lines are a lot more loser, making the drawings look scruffy, however the purpose of the life drawings is not to create beautiful illustrations, but to help me get the form of what i see in front of me, and to help me create the most faithful and accurate representation of the image, of which i can go back into at a later date, and create a much more neater and finalised Illustrations.

While at the beginning of the year i would have shunned this thinking, believing that the neater the drawing, the better it must be, i have come to realise over the course of the year, that i’d actually rather have a messy drawing, that represents the scene in front of me, rather than being a perfectionist, and drawing something that looks very pretty, even if it is wrong. Because of this i am proud of what i have achieved over the year. I want to continue this mindset into the future, and apply it to more and more aspects of my life, hopefully improving my other modules.

In Conclusion, While i have many aspects of my artistic abilities that i still wish to improve, i believe that my mindest in which i approach life drawing has changed for the better, by studying other artists, being given crits by my peers and lecturers, my ability as an artist, has not only changed, but has also improved. My Versatility in my use of mediums has expanded greatly, and i wish to keep expanding in the years to come, as i have come to find that art is a lot more fun when you draw something that challenges you and pushes you to be fun and creative, rather than drawing the same things over and over again, granted i would get better, but where is the fun in that? There are issues with proportion and composition that i need to continue to address, but i have years of drawing ahead of me, and with the things i have learnt throughout this course, i can continue to study and improve my weaknesses, becoming a better and better artist.

References

Bambach, A. (2017). Renaissance Drawings: Material and Function | Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art. [online] The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Available at: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/drwg/hd_drwg.htm [Accessed 24 Apr. 2017].

Leonardoda-vinci.org. (2017). Flower Studies - Leonardo Da Vinci - www.leonardoda-vinci.org. [online] Available at: http://www.leonardoda-vinci.org/Flower-Studies.html [Accessed 24 Apr. 2017].

Wisse, A. (2017). Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) | Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art. [online] The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Available at: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/durr/hd_durr.htm [Accessed 24 Apr. 2017].

1578 Words

Week 10: Peer Assessment

SEMESTER 2: The Hive Mazebook

For our final task we went location drawing at the hive, I wanted to capture the colours that the hive is blessed with, so to do this i took my Marker set and used as many bright colours as possible, I walso wanted to try and focis on capturing come of the symmetry found within the hive. 

the Hive is also filled with an abundance of people and so i wanted to capture the movement of the people in the building.

The carpets in the Hive are very bright and their patterns are most unusual so i wanted to capture this confusion in all its colour

The lights while looking symmetrical are not what they look like when you take a long glance,

Many of the walls have very intricate designs and patterns to them, all over the building, so i wanted to capture the chaos but also all the symmetry within the building

I enjoyed this brief, although i found the books that we made a bit hard to work with, although the book is designed to be like that, so i guess it works as intended, i was happy with the different colours i captured while at the hive and the use of lots of different techniques and mediums,

SEMESTER 2: Barcelona

As part of the Illustration course a select few of us went to barcelona, therefore missing a lesson, however we did some life drawing while we were there, i wanted to capture the culture of Barcelona.

To do this i did a lot of quick pose drawing, capturing as many people, local and tourist as they walked past me, i also caught a few of the local architecture,  i enjoyed this a lot, it was very nice to sit in the sun and sketch the passerby, something that isn't always available to do while in the UK.

SEMESTER 2. Week 6, Movement Homework

As part of our homework we were asked to contnue with the skills we had learnt in the lecture by drawiug poses from gifs and in real life. initially i got a friend to pose in some basic poses, and i drew them, i found this a lot harder than working from a gif as the pose would change slightly each time, whereas a gif would just loop, despite this i was happy with my attempt.

For the Gifs i wanted to challenge myself so i went for some dynamic poses, and tried to capture as many poses as i could, i am especially happy with how the karate kick pose set turned out. i tried to capture the line of movement, and then draw from there, so as to get the rhythm and flow of the character.

While these tasks were challenging i thoroughly enjoyed them and will continue to practice this technique into the future

SEMESTER 2 - Week 6: Life Drawing and Movement

This weeks lecutre proved to be one of the most fun we have had all year, even though it was also one of the hardest. This lecture we were focusing on the movement of the model, something that we have also been practicing in Animation class, so i was very excited if a wee bit nervous for it.

After a few warm up sketches we had Mel move in a pattern, Once again my composition initially was out, but the proportions and the poses i caught i was very happy with. i feel i could have benefited with capturing more poses than what i did

In addition to the movement poses i also took the time to try and refine my skill in drawing detailed areas such as feet and hands

In this the composition was a lot better, although i once again with i had a bit extra time to capture a few of the movement poses, although i am happy with how the proportions turned out for the poses i did manage to capture

While this lecture was probably one of the hardest i have had, it fit down the lane of what i enjoy, so i had fun being once again pushed outside of my comfort zone.

SEMESTER - Week 5: Life Drawing & 3 Dimensional Form.

For this lesson we once again really focused on tone, but in addition to this we incorporated the backgrounds into the image. i tried to use more charcoal and not use lines to create the tone of the drawings. In this lecture there was a lot of flexibility to do what we wanted, i wanted to continue to push myself out of my comfort zone, hence why i kept with the Charcoal and Chalk, keeping my line marking to a minimum 

I am really happy with how some of the tonal work came out on some of the later images, some of the proportions were out however, in the future i need to remember to focus on the negative space around Mel so to avoid this from happening again.

SEMESTER 2. Week 4 Homework: Experimental Picture Making

In Order to Improve upon a somewhat disappointing lecture, our homework was to create to more cutout pieces. For these pieces, i wanted to create a series of new textures, that should make some more interesting pieces. I am happy with how they came out, as i feel that differently values and textures, creating a much more interesting set of pieces.. I worked on both pieces simultaneously taking bits of texture from each piece and adding them to one another to create different scenes,

While the pieces seem somewhat similar, i feel that both have two very distinct aesthetics thanks to to the textures. I still feel that there are areas in which i can improve, if i can do it again i would add a layer of 3-Dimensionality by layer different textures on top of each other to create a single piece. However i am muhc happier with the homework than i was to my original pieces in class.

Semester 2- Week 4: Life Model, Animals, Birds...

This week again focused on a theme, this week was using taxidermy birds and animals as props around Mel. the first half of this lecture was really fun, as one of my favourite things to do is draw wildlife. I found however that during that this i found that i was struggling with my composition, and certain images got cropped out. I found this odd as the previous week i found composition one of my strong piece.

Despite the composition being skew, i feel that this is my favourite piece from the day, i think its really interesting to see Mel in the piece multiple times, with the animals surrounding her. 

Once the warm up pieces was done we Created tableaux using textured paper, cutting out drawings to create interesting compositions, while the technique was interesting i just couldnt get the hang of this piece and didnt really enjoy it. However i learnt about distorting size to create interesting compositions. I struggled to create lots of different textures and styles, and i feel that the narrative of the piece is lacking. I also need to improve my cutting technique, as i feel that i am somewhat heavy handed and this caused some unwanted hard edges. Despite all of this, i was happy with my combination of creating the boxes over the top of the cut outs, to create a 3D glassy feel.

SEMESTER 2 - Week 3 Homework: Spooky Drawing task

For this weeks homework task we had to continue on from the theme of the drawing lecture. I took 4 somewhat boring locations, and with the use of black and white (charcoal) tried to create a spooky atmosphere. I had a lot of fun with this brief and believe that the outcomes were successful,

 This is probably my least favourite of the 4 drawings, while the image takes your eyes on a path, apart fom that the drawing is a little lacklustre and somewhat messy, in later drawings i tried to make the drawings a little more neat.

 From my least favourite to my favourite of my pieces, i did this one outside my flat i was very happy with the perspective of this drawing as thats something i usually struggle with, some of the areas blended a bit too much into one another in areas, so thats something i need to work on in the future.

 For this one i drew outside of the student union, I'm my first 3 pieces i chose areas with a spotlight, this one i feel as those the values aren't harsh enough to create a spooky atmosphere, something that the other two do much better. however i am pleased with the precision.

In this final piece i moved away from the spotlights and went for  a contrast, I like how this one focuses more of hard shadows than a single source light.

SEMESTER 2 -Week 3: Class. Skeletons, Anatomy and the Gothic.

This weeks Life Drawing was Very unusual as with the addition of a prop, this week being a Skeleton, we created had a certain Genre to the drawings we did, something that had felt somewhat absent in my previous drawings done during Life Drawing. To Start off we drew with a candle, which meant we couldn't see what we were drawing till we splashed the page with ink, This technique forced me to not to focus on the page but instead observing what i see and trying to translate it onto the page, im happy with how many of the attempts came out.

We Then Proceeded to Draw Mel in Relation to the Skeleton. For some reason i found having the skeleton next to Mel helped me get the proportions of the human body more precise, I was also rather happy with how the composition of these pieces turned out, helping create a hypothetical narrative in the images. It helped to create small thumbnail sketches in the corner of the page to help me plan out how i was going to lay out the image, the result is a significant improvement over the last few weeks, and i dont know why i wasn't doing this more often and sooner 

To finish off the Session we used dramatic lighting and rubbing out (negative space). With the practice from previous weeks i feel that these (especially  the latter) were some of the best drawings i have done while in class. I feel the pieces really benefit from the harsh lighting, as it helped create a much more dramatic scene. My only criticism is i should have added more noticeable drop shadows to make it seem that the pieces aren't just floating in the void.