Life drawing: man holding a window pole

This was still part of the first life drawing session, but here we had 45 minutes to study the model in a pose.

I switched to pencil for this, hoping to achieve finer detail. I did add some charcoal, and then some graphite pencil, in order to get rather more tonal variety. I got rather frustrated with the hand holding the pole - hence the series of hands down the side, where I tried to improve on it.

On the whole, although I'm not satisfied with the sketches, I'm looking forward to going back in a fortnight to try and improve. This is my first experience of life drawing, and really enjoyed it.

By the way, the model came round to look at this final picture, and decided to photograph it, which I took as a compliment!

Life drawing: Ready, Steady, Go

I've discovered a regular life drawing session that takes place just down the road from me every fortnight, so this will provide me with a plentiful supply of models for this next stage of the drawing course.

These pictures were done on my first visit, and were based on the model holding the pose for just four or five minutes. The theme was an athlete going through the ready, steady, go series of movements. (I arrived slightly late and so missed "Ready").

They were done using charcoal. The Go pictures have two versions as the model struggled to maintain his position and so I had to restart.....

Steady...

Go...

Then two pictures showimg the athlete in action...

Then the athlete lies exhausted on the floor...

Assignment 3: View from a window

It took me quite a while to settle on a subject for this assignment, and I ended up using the most obvious subject available to me - the view of my garden seen from my patio doors.

The garden has a paved part near the door and then steps down to a small lower lawn.

The intention was to show the paving close to the house, with bushes in the middle and far distance.

After several try-out drawings to get the perspective right, I mapped out the drawing with a hard (2H) pencil and then went for watercolour pencils to provide colour. I ran a wet brush over some of the areas to get surafce colours, and then returned with dry pencils to try and introduce more detail.

On the whole, I'm not very happy with the result. The bushes in the middle distance look as if they are at the back of the garden, and the various flowers (mainly daffodils and Christmas roses, which have whitish bell-shaped flowers that hang down) just don't look as they should do.

What have I learned?

I need to do a lot more work on depicting distance through tone as well as through perspective. I also need to speed things up - this drawing took several days, and the previous drawing and preparation tooks a couple of weeks.

Anyway, here's the finished drawing...

An old plane tree in Beckenham

This old plane tree in Kelsey Park, Beckenham, must be more than 200 years old and bears the scars and damage of the years. It is gnarled and obviously one of its major branches broke many years ago but continued to grow at an angle from the main trunk.

I've tried to capture the underlying structure of the plant, with its strong lines running up from the roots and up the trunk.

I drew it from life, despite the cold weather, and found myself surrounded by ducks, geese and pigeons, all hoping I was there to feed them. I also took some pictures to help me fill in some of the details back home in the warm.

I did the main drawing in pencil, and then added some colour using watercolour pencils, although I didn't add a lot of water (except the odd damp finger to spread the colour around a bit).

Barocci exhibition at the National Gallery

Federico Barocci (1535-1612) was a very successful painter in his time, and a contemporary of Caravaggio, but for some reason he is hardly known today.
This show at the National Gallery goes some way to bringing him back to prominence, and the collection of some of his major altar pieces and portraits are supplemented by the many preparatory studies the artist did for each of the major works on display. These studies, many in coloured chalk on tinted paper, are fabulous and display a fantastic level of draughtsmanship.
Barocci apparently used to carry a sketchbook around with him in his native Urbino and would be constantly drawing from life to capture poses and mannerisms. (A great lesson for us all)
Much of his work has a religious theme, but the composition and treatment of the subjects have a very naturalistic approach that I would havc associated more with 19th century Impressionists than with the 16th century. For example, a Nativity scene shows Mary watching over a very lifelike baby lying in a manger, with cow and donkey looking on. In the background,  Joseph opens a door to allow a couple of visitors to peek around the door to see the scene; a very informal touch.
In another, The Visitation, where the pregnant Mary visits her sister Elizabeth, also pregnant with John the Baptist, the scene is of an ordinary couple arriving at a door and being welcomed in. Elizabeth grasps Mary's hand while Joseph stoops to pick up his baggage before going into the house. It is a very domestic scene.
Alongside the main works, we see the studies of hands and faces and different poses that allow the visitor to understand the thought processes of the artist. Some of Barocci's "studies" are beautifully finished works in their own right, and one theory is that he made some of these as a way of generating more money.
It is a great revelation to discover this artist, and a privilege to be able to see his methods of working. The abiding impression is of an artist who was blessed with fabulous talent, but who worked incredibly long and hard to develop his skills and to produce these works.
If you get the chance to visit, go.

Xu Bing exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum

On a visit to Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, I visited an exhibition by the Chinese artist Xu Bing. Like many artists and inellectuals, he spent many years during the Culrutal Revoliution working in the fields and lving in poverty. However, he seems to have kept drawing through the years, producing beatiful and detailed pictures of everyday Chinese objects - such as kitchen equipment, and local sceens - with whatever materials came to hand.
The early drawings, from the age of 14, are very impressive and show a mastery of technique, often just using pencil on scraps of paper. The later pictures are freer (he was influenced by Andy Warhol for a while) and some of his woodcuts are really charming in capturing anything from a riverside scene in Beijing, to a pig suckling her young, to a woodyard with piles of sawn logs.

The real lesson for me was the fact that good technique can overcome lack of good materials; that drawing involved a lot of hard work (which I've learned over the last year!) and that virtually any object or scene offers artisitic possibilities.

If you've not seen Xu Bing, take a look at his work. It's very inspirational.

Sketches of the statue of a miner

This statue stands at the entrance to the Fowlmead Nature Park, a recently created area that is built on what used to be a slagheap for the Kentish coalmines.

The miner crouches on his haunches, stripped to the waist. He is scrawny but muscular, and has a grim expression on his face as he stares into the far distance.

I took the opportunity to do three sketches looking at it from different angles. I might go back when the weather's warmer and I can spend more time on representing the tone and texture of the sculpture.