Personal Project
A written assessment of each of the previous assignments:
ASSIGNMENT 1 – Gesture and Form
I enjoyed this project and the experimentation with composition and the media.
A lot of thought went into the selection of the materials to ensure there would be a wide range of textures and surfaces to represent, and that the objects were particularly ‘special’ to me. I was very conscious of exploring different compositions to make it interesting for the viewer, using a balance of positive and negative spaces, and tones where possible.
I learned a lot about surfaces and materials in my experiments. I also began to appreciate how valuable standing up to draw and using an easel is.
Whilst I am pleased with the final drawing I think now I am much more conscious of the impact of tone, and that perhaps I could have pushed some of the tonal contrasts further in this drawing. Nonetheless I think it reflects where I was at the start of my journey.
ASSIGNMENT 2 – Intimacy
Even though colour is an integral aspect of this project, it is the wide range of very light, mid and very dark tones that I am drawn to try and emulate. Although I do use colour in this, I chose a muted neutral palette with just a hint of greens in support.
Once again I was keen to use mixed media, but a key part to doing this successfully is to really have a good understanding of what particular media’s can do and what work well together. I do not yet have that depth of knowledge about using coloured media and struggled with parts of this assignment. The paper base for the artwork also comprised explorations of different surfaces and experiments with collaging. Knowledge of using materials is certainly developing as the course progresses.
I did get really energised when creating this final image, especially how I just ‘went for it’ and allowed things to happen, and was pleased when they actually did happen in a positive way. Having drawn the scene numerous times really did help with this spontaneity.
ASSIGNMENT 3 – Expanse
Whilst I do get really excited about the beauty of the natural countryside around here every morning on my walks, I discovered that I felt my natural landscape images were less successful than the ones comprising buildings.
I particularly enjoyed drawing the Basel Munster using line and tone and washes. I had never seen the work of John Virtue before but loved the bold graphic simplification of complicated townscapes.
When I had the idea of attempting a panorama I was really keen to try this as a piece of artwork. This time, it was tone rather than line that appealed. I was really pleased with how the artwork evolved, but there were a couple of unsuccessful aspects to the finished piece. The most obvious one is the poorly joined papers. It spoils the whole effect. The second major issue is the lack of atmosphere in the sky.
I have since stood and looked at this artwork many times, and it is with a growing sense of acknowledgement that I am going to have to rework this before I can send it in for my final Degree level assessment.
One option is just to work on the left hand piece of paper, and just discount the right side, and explore the addition of line, and or colour.
The second option is to work up some of my other exploratory compositions. Looking again at some of the options, this work with its strong sense of aerial perspective might be an option to rework to a larger scale. When I have completed Part 5 of drawing 1 I will be returning to decide what is my best options for reworking this assignment.
ASSIGNMENT 4 – The Figure and Head
I had been looking forward to this part of drawing 1 as I know I do enjoy figurative drawing. I have been attending life drawing classes in the evening for the past three years, and continued to do so to address some of the exercises within this Unit.
Instinctively I feel that I will want to continue studies in this context for my personal project, although I do not know what or how yet.
This assignment had a lot of parts to it, which involved a lot of work. I think the three pieces of work I have produced are very different in style and do eventually fulfil the requirements of each task.
The first has a very graphic aspect and uses colour with line selectively as a ‘framing’ device without detracting from the picture. The base material is an important component of the device to echo the requirement to work in line, but I was disappointed how the cardboard warped, despite pre-painting both sides of the panel. I would be wary of using cardboard in such a large scale project again in light of this.
I am learning what a wide variety of ‘charcoal’ like materials there are out there and that they all have the potential to create quite different effects. In this second drawing I did have to use a scaling up method as I knew I would doubt my proportions with the foreshortening if I didn’t. The effect of virtually all the body and head being in just the top half of the picture fascinated me.
I felt the constraint of just working in tone on this drawing and constantly wanted to add line. I feel the addition of a variety of lines to this drawing could have made it feel more animated and less ‘static’.
Whilst I would not have chosen the pink cartridge given a choice, the coloured ground was good for working with dark and lighter tones.
For the third part of the assignment, I did not initially engage fully with the requirements of the task and created a full coloured portrait of my husband, albeit with lines through the texture of the drawing. However, when I realised it did not follow the brief, it was tough to adjust to the idea that I was going to have to redo this part of the assignment… especially when I thought I had finally finished the unit!
Nonetheless, I thought long and hard about what media would most effectively create line and tone and be subtle enough to represent the gentle character of my husband. The advantage of having already created a piece of art from this image meant that I had developed a familiarity with the drawing. This helped in my final drawing and composition.
I then opted to use a pen that I knew would create fine lines and effective toned washes. It was scary applying that first wash to the carefully drawn eye, but once I had done that I was much more liberal in my mark making and washes, and I feel the final drawing is refreshingly loose. I kept a muted palette as I had already identified that it worked well with this image.
I was delighted to discover that a different thickness of the same brand of black pen produced a different colour wash with a green tone. Thankfully I hadn’t used this pen on any other aspect of the face. Keeping it just to his sweatshirt meant that it helped differentiate textures and separated the face from the clothing. Wanting to make the background recede behind the head, the Derwent blocks allowed just enough suggestion of colour without competing with the portrait.
OVERALL REFLECTIONS
Looking through the Drawing 1 book at an earlier stage and seeing that Part 5 was a Personal Investigation into an aspect of art that we were particularly drawn to, I suspected it might revolve around figurative art, even at that early stage. As I worked through Part 4 I became more certain that this was going to be the subject of choice and I began jotting notes in a ‘Personal Project’ sketchbook.
I also now recognise that I do particularly enjoy working in monochrome and with tone as a big part of my artwork. Whilst I have not been conscious of this before, I wonder if that is because I see it as a safer option? Using colour adds so many more dimensions and many more considerations… What range of colours to use, how to use them, what does it communicate about your work, how can you use it to manipulate what you want to communicate, how to choose the ‘right’ colours for that particular artwork… and then, what media to use, and on what base… These are a lot more additional considerations, and I recognise, as a growing artist I am certainly less confident in using colour.
In light of this self-discovery, it is clear to me that I must venture into using colour in this, my final Drawing 1 project. I must explore coloured media as the project progresses to develop my knowledge and improve my choices.
I reference Edinburgh artist Lucy Jones as a source of inspiration for two of these assignments, so I can see that the mixed media and collaging is perhaps something I must enquire into further for my personal project. I haven’t yet found a way of applying layers of paper that truly works for me, so perhaps that too will need to be part of my explorations.
Posting 1 – 7.2.2020
Initial Thoughts…
As I suspect is normal, my head is buzzing with ideas and some of them are moving so fast it is hard to capture. I just have to dive in and grab one of them to start.
I enjoy figure drawing. I do find it challenging, but I am interested in developing and exploring this aspect of my art. This could be a good opportunity to try that, in my Personal Project. Reflecting on how and where I might even start, I remembered seeing this Picasso image of the gradual simplification of the representation of a bull into the merest of lines, an abstraction… the essence of this creature. Perhaps it might be interesting to start with detailed figurative life drawings and work towards simplification like this.
Thinking of other artists who use line as a major component of figurative art, I instantly thought of Tracey Emin and Egon Schiele. Whilst I am inspired by Schiele’s selective and varied use of line in particular, I am not interested in his more graphic or gratuitous imagery. However, even ‘parts’ of Schiele’s more contentious line work can be aesthetically beautiful.
The liveliness, minimalism and wide variety of lively, confident lines in this drawing are energetic and exhilarating. They capture the essence of a beautiful young female, looking directly, and perhaps even provocatively at the viewer.
His lines differentiate between the piled up, wayward hair escaping its boundaries, the voluminous fabric of her blouse, and her fine young features in her face. Whilst the thickness of the line is fairly consistent, the mark making varies. Short wispy lines, zig zag, curvy, spirals.
The hands feel a little clumsy, and unusually heavy for Schiele as he is known for hands with sometimes overly long, but articulate looking fingers. Nonetheless with a minimum of lines, and areas where the viewer needs to fill in the details (neckline of blouse), he successfully creates an image of a 3D figure through line.
This other cropped drawing of his appears ‘timeless’. There, again is a simplicity of line softened by the gouache colouring. It could almost be a sketch for a Pre-Raphaelite model with her wild red hair, or of a young girl today in a t-shirt and leggings. There is a fragile beauty to this part of the drawing. What is quite remarkable is how he does not really use a variety of tones on the skin (eg arms, neck) to emphasize the form and yet the drawing still has depth and form feels very believable as a figurative drawing.
Emin often uses monoprinting as a technique for her figurative work. Whilst this is a self-portrait of Emin at age 10, I chose it to represent some of the other more intimate monoprints she has made. She likes the quality and indirectness of the lines created by monoprinting. The additional marks created by the process add atmosphere to this particular image. It is like a cloud of sadness hanging over the childs image, echoing her expression. I would be interested in exploring this process in some figurative work too.
EXERCISE OPPORTUNITIES ARISING FROM THESE INITIAL THOUGHTS
- Complete a figurative drawing and then work step by step to simplify and abstract it.
- Continuous line drawing of figure
- Drawing of figure in style of Schiele
- Coloured version using gouache of a drawing in the style of Schiele
- Monoprint of line figure drawings, to see if it will emulate Emin’s style of drawing, and create a different atmosphere beyond just a ‘line’ drawing. (Try a) line, and b) line and tone.)
REFERENCES
EMIN, Tracey, (1994), ‘Me at 10’ [online], National Galleries Scotland. Available at: https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/98119/me-10-family-suite. [Accessed 7.2.20]
PICASSO, Pablo (1946), ‘Bull (Study), Pablo Picasso’ [online], WikiArt, Visual Art Encyclopedia. Available at: https://www.wikiart.org/en/pablo-picasso/bull-study-1946 [Accessed 10.12.19]
PICASSO, Pablo (1945), ‘The Bull’ [online], ‘ The Bull by Pablo Picasso – A Lesson in Abstraction, by Dan Scott, 2019, The Draw Paint Academy. Available at: https://drawpaintacademy.com/the-bull/ [Accessed 10.12.19]
SCHIELE, Egon, (1918), ‘’I learned a lot’ Seated girl with legs spread’ , [online] ‘He took sex to the point of oblivion’: Tracey Emin on her hero Egon Schiele’, The guardian by Jonathan Jones, 2017. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/jun/16/tracey-emin-vienna-expressionist-egon-schiele-all-his-angst-made-sense [Accessed 7.2.2020]
SCHIELE, Egon, (1917), ‘Seated woman with bent knee’, [online] WikiArt, Visual Art Encyclopedia, 2011. Available at: https://www.wikiart.org/en/egon-schiele/seated-woman-with-bent-knee-1917 [Accessed 7.2.2020]
Post 2 – 11.2.2020
Whilst this is my second posting, I have also been working on some of the identified tasks from my first posting. However, I was writing this post whilst doing the exercises from the first posting and the work I am finding that the work I am doing is overlapping the two posts in terms of incorporating ideas, as will become evident in my third posting.
At a local art show in Nov 2019 there were two artists whose work I really liked.
The first set, by Friederike Yesely was based on figurative work but used mixed media effectively. I particularly like the first image here with other characters drawn on top of the monochrome line and tone image of a lovely model. He had lots of little sketches in a similar style, but I can’t find any more images of them available on line. However, this other example is also interesting. The figures are anonymous and are sometimes made from collaged materials with a variety of lines and mark making. I saw this 5 frame composition and it made me wonder if I could build on this to do something of my own. Could I have models walking between 4 frames with some parts of the composition spilling into the next frame? Could I combine the simplified images generated through the Picasso simplification, moving across to more conventionally styled images?
Could I do it with the figure moving from right to left with the last frame being a conventional drawing, or would it be better for the line drawing to be the first on the right, building on the idea that ‘line drawing’ is the starting point? The irony is that I am trying to move from conventional imagery to looser more stylized imagery and a series like this would represent that journey.
Maybe a walking image is too obvious. Would a selection of poses be more interesting, with overlapping between frames. Perhaps the colours from one frame could spill over to the next frame too?
I am inspired and excited by these works and feel that I need to experiment with some mixed media figurative images. I can use sketches I have made at life drawing classes as my reference to keep the images loose rather than working from models. By doing this I hope to capture something of the ‘essence’ of the figure rather than focussing on achieving a good likeness.
William Etty, working in the late 1700’s made some ‘nude studies’ which have an unfinished quality that I like. It is hard to believe that this Male nude with the radically loose blocks of colour background dates from the 1700’s. The figure is so well observed and beautifully rendered with subtle tones which contrast totally with the background.
I was really excited to find this painting of three women by Etty.. The beautiful, completed painting of the nude on the left, with contrast with the studies in the middle and on the right side of the painting, with the right hand one showing the least detail. This is similar to my thoughts about having several figures across several works that ‘evolve’ in style as they move from either left to right or visa versa.
Visiting a friend’s house I was struck by a beautiful life drawing on her wall. This work was created by Mark Clark, who apparently is one of the most consistent exhibitors and prolific sellers each year at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London. It is a beautiful sensitive and subtle pen drawing. Looking closer I was amazed to see that most of the lines were short straight lines, even those that were successfully creating the rounded forms of her feet and face for example. This aspect of rendering a figurative form is also appealing. Could this be used as a ‘step’ in a series of artwork?
So many ideas, where to start? I think initially this might be about a media exploration and experimentation with collaged materials.
I don’t know how to successfully apply materials to paper for collaging, how to make it so the surfaces are then workable on and what drawing media would work on what surface. I had done some similar experiments with certain materials for Assignment 1, but I want to explore this further, possibly with using colour media too.
Next steps
- Experiment with creating some mixed media life drawing artwork.
- Experiment with images from my life drawing classes to create work in the style of Elisabeth Thorpe
References:
ETTY, William, (1787-1849) ‘Academic study of a male nude standing’ [online], Bridgeman Education. Available at: https://www-bridgemaneducation-com [Accessed 11.2.2020]
ETTY, William, (1815-1845) ‘Three standing female nudes’ [online], Bridgeman Education. Available at: https://www-bridgemaneducation-com [Accessed 11.2.2020]
THORPE, Elisabeth, (2019), ‘Elisabeth Thorpe, Naked Art; [online, Elisabeth Thorpe. Available at: https://www.naked-art.ch/index.php [Accessed 10.11.2020]
YESELY, Friederike, (2019), ‘Friederike Yesely, Kunst and Co.’ [online]. Available at: https://www.kunstundco.ch/inhalte/impressionen.php. [Accessed 10.11.20]
Post 3 – 13.2.2020
I have begun some of the exercises generated from posting 1, but they are being done in a different order from the original list I made.
Continuous line drawing of figure
I am keen to have a go at drawing a figure with a continuous line to explore what it is like to do and what the effects are. Most of the drawings I have done for Part 4 – The Figure and the Head, have been of nude models.
Not sure what media to start with I wanted to see if I could use white ink on black paper with a dip pen. Of course I hadn’t appreciated how little ink each pen stroke could hold. Consequently these are not ‘continuous line’ as I had to keep dipping the pen, but I tried to work fluidly, and ignore the inevitable dribbles and splashes. I might return to these drawing tools and media for subsequent exercises as there is character in the accidental blobs.
So, thinking still of drawing with a continuous line, I decided that in contrast to Schiele and Emin’s naked, and often ‘graphic’ figurative line work I wanted to do some demurely clothed figures! I was surprised how instant and enjoyable these continuous line drawings were to do and also how liberating. I just observed the model, looking mostly at my reference photo, and drew and didn’t think about where I placed a line, I just allowed the pencil to go all over and back again wherever it needed to go. I was pleased how effective the finished drawings are. I consciously started in the middle of each model trying to see lines and directions than thinking of them as people with heads, arms, bodies etc.
Wanting to do some more drawings on a coloured background, to compare and contrast the impact of these continuous line drawings I used the Conte coloured charcoal sticks and blended them into vertical stripes to create a toned background.
I felt the figures I was going to draw were all tall and elegant and the vertical line background would be suitable for echoing their form. I combined three of the drawings on one A4 piece of paper using a different coloured Pitt square drawing stick for each figure. The sanguine model feels further back in the image with the lighter toned pastel.
I was pleased they overlapped and were all of a similar proportion. They are fresh, instant, lively continuous line drawings. The comparatively thick media when working at A4 scale means the facial features appear a little clumsy, but I like it as it emphasises the manner in which they were drawn. I did experiment in putting white pitt stick on the left hand model once I had finished, but I was not so keen on this addition in this context. I felt it weakened the holistic wire frame see-through effect combination from the three overlapping models.
In an attempt to build on the stripey background, and give a ‘nod’ to Klimt and his male and female symbolic designs in some of his work (circle and rectangles) I created the suggestion of these simple shapes in the background for my next continuous line drawing. I wanted to further explore this coloured charcoal media as a background and see and how it would respond when wet. I was a little disappointed that these charcoals did not have more of an impact when made wet. I thought the colours would be much more vibrant. However, the continuous line drawing of the figure on its own, with strong black outlines did benefit from a contrasting hint of light with the white pitt stick pulling it forward from the patterned background and creating a little more form.
Monoprint Line Figures
Tracey Emin is known for her monoprint images and I wanted to try this process out on these clothed model images. By redrawing the same figures, it would enable me to make comparisons between the effects of the monoprints against the continuous line drawings of the same subjects.
This first image was too light. I used water based printing inks. Perhaps I took too much ink off the plate before printing. However, it leaves a delicate image with a pleasingly broken and varied line. She looks quite vulnerable. Although this is made with black ink it looks grey and softer in tone.
I thought for the next one I would try with some oil based printing inks as they would surely make a darker print. However, it seems once again that I took off too much ink from the plate. I had to use blue as I didn’t have any black ink. This image is even lighter than the first.
Keen to experiment with printing on a coloured background, I knew the ink would need to be thicker. This time I did not take off so much of the ink before making my print.
The line quality is interesting here. There is much more variation, and the blob for the near eye draws attention. I rubbed in areas around the figure to try and get blue ink onto the background to help the figure integrate more with the toned background.
The unblended patchy blocks of colour mean that the image disappears more into the background as it competes with the figurine. Is it too strong in tones, or is it ok that the figure seems more ghostly as it merges with the background?
Red was added to the plate to get a darker printing line, for my next drawing,which now has a rusty metal feel to it. Again I rubbed some of the ink surrounding the image so it would also transfer to the background, intending to help tie the figure to the background. These stronger colours and a softer background are effective on this final print.
I forget when I am doing these prints that I could, at anytime, remove the drawing from the printing plate, add more ink to the plate and put the drawing back on top of it and continue drawing. It is not like the print has to align with anything as you draw freely on the reverse of the paper. This is something I must remember for possible future uses.
I really do like the quality of line achieved by monoprints. However, I only have a4 sized acetates for my printing plates. I wonder, could I tape a few of them together to get a larger print area? That is worth investigating.
Post 4 13.2.2020
Continued Exercises from Post 1
The initial intention was to draw a Schiele picture to get a feel for the style of his work. However, I had been looking at work by local artists that combined more than one figure in a work and I decided that this would be an opportunity to do both.
I had recently seen an Instagram post shared by the Pastel Society of the UK, for Anna Pinkster who had just won an award for her ‘Six Bathers, Dorset IV’. I loved the immediacy of the vibrant pastel and charcoal drawings, and I particularly loved the colour combinations. I was resolved to use the pale blue and ochre combination in these explorations.
Although I worked on all four of these pieces of artwork simultaneously, waiting for drawings to dry whilst I moved onto the next, I have grouped the progress photos of each work together to minimise confusion, and show the journey each piece went on.
The Schiele image I wanted to roughly copy is one of his wife called Seated Woman with Bent Knee. It is one of the more conventional, subtle and tasteful images. I didn’t want to get caught doing an accurate drawing; the intention was to freely capture the essence of it and to do this, working at A3 size, I used a pointed bamboo drawing tool and Indian ink for the line making. I wanted the work to be as ‘raw’ as I could. I had not used this tool for drawing before. Some of the lines are very pronounced and invariably the first touch of the pen to the paper resulted in blobby marks. I chose to just embrace them for the duration of this exercise.
In this, the first sheet, I tried to get the background using the Derwent Inktense Ink blocks on wet paper. Once again, the results, in comparison to the vibrancy of colours of the Derwent Intense pencils were really disappointing.
I turned to using gouache, another new medium for me. This time I was much more excited by the media. They paints gave opaque or translucent colours depending on the thickness of the medium.
Having read a blog by another OCA student, he recommended using acrylic medium as a collage ‘glue’. It seemed much more effective than the PVA glue I had used up until now. I tore strips of newspaper and then more coloured papers to vaguely imitate Schiele’s drawing of his wife.
I dropped some hard pastels on top of the picture and then used transparent gesso to seal everything. Again, this is a new medium for me so I don’t know if it was right to use it or not, I just wanted to make the surface as smooth as possible for drawing in ink upon. It certainly seemed to be effective in doing that.
I then wanted to explore pushing this drawing backwards, and doing, ironically perhaps, a nude model drawing on top that I thought was in an artistic, rather than graphic (like some of Schiele’s nudes) one. I used compressed charcoal and chalk pastel for this.
Although I liked the drawing on top, I felt Schiele’s image had disappeared too much. I had a similar outcome with one of my other experiments. I decided to leave this one as it was and try and resolve this issue more on the next image, to get some contrasting finished experiments.
For this second set of experiments, I used Brusho inks to create the speckled background, conscious of the positioning of the red hair and green top. I used blended hard chalk pastels to suggest the location further to help with the bamboo stick ink drawing.
This time, the model I drew on top completely obliterated my original ink sketch underneath. I brushed off a lot of the chalk pastels and then redrew the Schiele image as best as I could, although I know some of the lines are in a different place as I could not see the original ones. The black ink then became too dominant again so I went over these with a light blue Prismacolour pencil. I wanted the viewer to be able to focus on one whole image at a time, and then the other, a little like William Ely Hill’s (1887-1962) ambiguous drawing, ‘My Wife and mother in Law’ where both an old and young woman can be seen with a slight change of focus.
The third piece of artwork went through a very similar process to the second one, above. However, when it came to brushing off chalk pastel and charcoal, the ink drawing underneath could be more clearly seen, almost like a ghosting. I pushed a little more chalk pastel into the hair, shirt and legs but decided to leave it here to contrast with experiment 2 where the nude drawing was clearly on top of the Schiele inspired image. Of course, working on these all at the same time, the work did not develop as linearly as this write up suggests.
Finally, the fourth artwork was very different. I wanted to focus on background texture and imagery before drawing the figure.
I applied strips of screwed up white tissue paper, and when it was dry I tore some of it away and sanded the paper. I then experimented with laying patterns in the background using stencils. At first I wanted general patterns, but then I thought the flower patterns were particularly relevant for representing the female, given the euphemistic reference to a personal part of the female anatomy as a ‘flower’. In applying these layers of paint and chalks, the main ink drawing evaporated into the background, and I used compressed charcoal to try and pull it back.
The final artwork is the one I prefer. The simple image with the line drawn in charcoal, the gentle colours and the textured and patterned background make for a gentle and fresh image that works holistically. I think the aged effect background suits the image.
The other experiments were very valuable and the combination of figures, and the contrasting context was something I had been keen to try. I don’t think any of the combined drawings are particularly successful though and I wonder if the image size and detail of the nude just overpowers the line drawing too much. Also, on reflection, whilst I enjoyed the freedom of drawing with the ink pen, the lines were quite brutal for such a delicate subject.
I experimented with lots of different media and learned a lot about materials, collage, colours and the value of consecutive explorations as the finding from one experiment informed the development on the next. I worked fast, intuitively and with energy. It was an enjoyable experience as I wasn’t precious about any of the work and I found that was a very liberating experience.
I will be able to carry many aspects of this learning into my subsequent explorations, not least, the importance of experimentation.
References:
HILL William Ely (1915), ‘My Wife and Mother in Law’, [on-line], Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Wife_and_My_Mother-in-Law [Accessed 14.2.2020]
SCHIELE, Egon (1917), ‘Seated Woman with bent knee’, [online], WikiArt, Visual Art Encyclopedia. Available at: https://www.wikiart.org/en/egon-schiele/seated-woman-with-bent-knee-1917 [Accessed 9.2.2020]
Post 5 – 14.2.2020
Continued Exercises from Post 1 – Simplification of a figure
I had set myself an exercise to take a line and tone figure drawing to its simplest form much like Picasso had done with his bull images.
I tried many ways to try and simplify the image further, whilst looking at Picasso’s work to see if some of it might give me ideas for this. These 12 versions are the most successful with drawing 7 having as few lines as I could do whilst still ensuring it resembled a sitting female. I did experiment with simplifying the shape, as in the bull drawings, but none of these attempts resembled this more complex subject.
The last one using the negative space has a stylised simple shape and is still recognisable as a female, but whilst the design works as a negative image, strangely it did not look so effective as a positive one, with chopped off arms and feet. I did try some figures using straight lines too, but what surprised me was that the fluidity of the female shape was lost in the straight lines. The flowing curved ones are much more aligned with the subject they are trying to represent. The curve for the hips and bottom is a particularly integral one.
To be honest, even as I was doing this exercise I was conscious how much time it was absorbing, and I didn’t really enjoy it as I was struggling to see how this might take me forward in this project. Nonetheless perhaps later on I will discover that this process of simplification and experimentation does help.
Cathy's OCA Drawing 1 Blog 