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.

The Albert, Deal, with a limited palette

The aim of this exercise was to build on previous drawings and do a picture with a limited palette of colours. The scene is of the Albert pub in Deal, Kent, which sits at the corner of a square, with a large white building in the far distance

Since I've not used Conte pastels very much so far, I decided to give it a go, as I just have some very basic colours -- black, white, grey and three browns.

The first attempt was on watercolour paper, mainly because my tutor has been encouraging me to use heavier paper with more 'bite". However, I discovered quite quikly that Conte and rough paper don't work very well together.

Working from a photograph, I nevertheless persisted with the picture. I'm not really pleased with the result, not only because of the roguh surface, but because I seem to have got the perspective all wrong with the sightline set too high.

 So I gave it another go, still using Conte crayons, but with smooth cartridge paper - and a lower sight line.

I think the perspective works better this time, but I found Conte crayons very messy to work with and I was constantly trying to clean it up. I found the limited palette very restrictive: there was a lovely red telephone box in the far distance in the square which I had to leave out. I did cheat and put in the double yellow lines, which are a prominent feature of the naroow lane.

The Albert pub, Deal, Kent

For this exercise on drawing a townscape, I took as my subject the Albert pub in Deal, which sits at the corner of a square and some narrow old streets full of period houses dating from the 17th and 18th century.

Since the weather was extremely cold, I decided to take a series of photographs from different angles, and have done the drawings from them. Not ideal, but better than freezing.

Also worth mentuioning that the weather was overcast, and so no strong shadows to add extra interest.

I began with the small section of the pub above the corner doorway, then did a quick sketch of the whole pub to show the overall structure. The larger part of the picture is from a different angle, with the pub seend from a narrow road that leads down from the seafront. The perspective is quite strong, but the lines were a little deceptive because the road sloped down to the pub, and so I think I've not quite got some of the positions correctly...

Four views of a tree

This chestnut tree in my nextdoor neighbour's back garden was trimmed quite heavily last year, and has just started sprouting new shoots from its truncated branches. As it's still winter, there is no foliage, so that whole plant looks like a spiky stunted edifice at the moment. In the next few weeks it will be transformed and ragin some of its shape, and I'll probably return to it to caputre the transformation.
In this exercise, I did four preparatory drawings taking different views of the tree at different times of the day.

This is the overall result:

The top left was the first attempt, done fairly quickly on a fairly sunny afternoon, and I focused mainly on capturing the overall shape of the branches. Here it is in more detail:

The following morning, the weather was dull, and the tree made quite a dark silhouette with litle detail showing:

I then chose to do an outline of the tree's shape, this time working from the top to the bottom. I started by mapping out where the main bracnhes ended, and the relative positions, and then worked down to the trunk:

Finally, I focused on a section of the trunk, and really looked at the shape of the grain of the bark, and the imperfections and scars on the surface of the trunk:

House with solar panels

This scene was done from an upstairs window of my house, looking across at the pair of semi-detached houses opposite.

Since I was quite high up, the lines of the gutter were virtually straight (rather than showing strong perspective) from my viewpoint. The tree is in the front garden of the house with the solar panels, while the lampost is close to my house.

I did the initial outlines quite quickly in pencil, and then changed to a black drawing pen to do the detail.