Tutor report – Part and Assignment 4

 

Student name	Emma Hunt	Student number	511713
Course/Module	Drawing 1	Assignment number	4

 

 

Overall Comments

 

You demonstrate at times excellent project research, and a sense of genuine interest and enthusiasm for life drawing has evidently been generated here. I am sure you want to carry on with life drawing, perhaps there is a way for you to access a model without so much expense (set up your own life drawing group maybe?).

 

Context research is very good – I like the way you have looked at other sources (primarily websites, but of high quality) and learned to use quotations to offer a wider range of insights beyond that of your own opinion. This helps to anchor your own views in a wider critical context. You should consider reading books, which give a sense of overview of developments in visual art also. More detail on this below. Please do note comments on style of writing and proofreading – there is scope to improve.

 

In your self-evaluations you are very precise and pretty unsparing. Mostly I agree with your comments – you know fully well when you have underexplored an area, or when you have underachieved as evidently you are capable of a lot and have made lots of progress in this part of the course. I certainly think that the sum of your project work, and even isolated examples in there, are better than your assignment work. This is not unusual in feedback, as often students seem to stall when it comes to the ‘final’ piece. So would it be better to agree that you will not have a final piece for the next part, but that you will aim to develop a series of studies for the assignment brief? We can then discuss via email and via submitted blog, which of those might be the best, so you can then label that as your assignment piece based on reflection?  This is one possible option to go. Another one I tested with one of my other students is that when you have completed all the projects, but not the assignment piece, you submit your blog and we discuss which of those might be the most promising directions to take forward, before you start working on a series of final studies?

 

 

Your extra-curricular work is impressive – I very much see the point of your studying Veronese, and your drawings after him have taught you lots. Ditto Virgile Ittah – very interesting work you have created there in your sketchbook in response to contemporary sculpture. This might be an avenue to follow up in future work (perhaps level 2 course) as a study approach?

 

Gesture Drawing Research – again you have unearthed some really exciting examples here, and the Toulouse-Lautrec bulldog is just the sort of thing to go for when approaching your next part (5).

 

The Classical figure drawing workshop you attended is going diametrically in the other direction of gestural and energetic way of working you excel in. This is not a bad thing as you are pushing the extremes and make yourself do drawing which is not coming natural to you. I have enjoyed looking at the blog pages for this, and I am sure you have learned tons from this hard-core traditional life drawing training. The result is stunning, but a little anodyne. It reminds me of Augustus John – who was a celebrated portrait and figure drawing artist of his time – in comparison to his sister Gwen John whose drawings were so much more personal. It’s classical versus romantic really – either you love Poussin or Ingres or you go for Goya and Delacroix (of course it is possible to like both, but most people have a bit of a leaning).

 

Overall I am impressed with the amount of studying you do, through attending courses, and through independent contextual research. The variety of approaches you are able to live with, show that you seem to be able to tolerate the contradiction of different tutor voices and approaches to art– this is a good thing. You can only emerge stronger from this with time.

 

Assessment potential (after Assignment 4)

 

Select one of the statements below:

 *delete as appropriate

 

I understand your aim is to go for the Painting/Textiles/Creative Arts*) Degree and that you plan to submit your work for assessment at the end of this course. From the work you have shown in this assignment, and providing you commit yourself to the course, I suggest that you are likely to be successful in the assessment.

 

Feedback on assignment 

Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Quality of Outcome, Demonstration of Creativity 

 

Line and Shape: 20 minute and 45 minute poses from life class are very interesting. These could lead onto something else – as you begin to stylise and abstract the observations. You also do a number of interesting developmental studies, in particular the copying or working from Schiele and also from Leonardo are strong. In that sense reference to Saville appropriate, but nevertheless probably not fully explored (see below feedback on blog).

 

The final drawing “Fidget” is quite successful, and I prefer it to the other assignment piece, for its freshness and energy. Exploring different colours is helpful here, but you kept those close in tonal range, which is right. This way you begin to build a sense of tonality – this could be pushed further through gentle tonal work (see Saville for this, and see Richard Diebenkorn also  HYPERLINK “http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/collection/artwork/16306” http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/collection/artwork/16306 )

You acknowledge this yourself in your own evaluation – there is more scope to develop this highly promising approach to your assignment.

Form: Your working methods are really interesting here, and exemplary. I like the way you worked out background and contexts while the model was absent – quite old masterly! The highlight and mid tone analysis is also very useful. The final drawing is lacking the mid tone ground you have in the preparatory study, and I am wondering why you decided to return to a white paper, after demonstrating so clearly that mid tone is helpful in establishing highlights and shadows?

I looked at the final version before reading your blog, and thought that you have two styles here – but they have not been made to reconcile. The figure is done in pencil drawing and appears line based and gestural, the context/ environment looks like conté – pastel to me and uses a soft tonal approach. The latter points towards Seurat – who I can recommend, but then the depth of tone would need building up much more. See also Redon for this – you almost have to sculpt highlight out of the darkness of the crayon or charcoal. The two media have not been made to complement each other. I like the potential of either of them, but not the final result – here I miss a study which is pushing further what you are beginning to successful explore. Considering this second assignment piece should be about form, the tonal aspect would be the more obvious one to develop, not the line as you have already covered that in the first assignment above.

 

You don’t have to submit your assignments in the order of making. Looking at the originals in your folder I have found the developmental project work you put into your second sketchbook very promising for tone/ form. Here you have a number of studies on grey paper, some of those very fresh and complex at the same time. Could you liberate a couple of those and re-frame as your assignment development?  (these are on pages 29/30 and 31 – the one on page 31 I think is best, but back to the ‘wrong’ size, unless you mount it with the one next to it, as you have done in the sketchbook. As these are all spray mounted they would easily come out of the book. Alternatively you could push yourself one more time and see if you do an A 3 study on grey or buff paper addressing the issue of tone and form in conjunction with line. This would probably be the best and ‘cleanest’ option. However, I would still recommend you take those four drawings out of your sketchbook as they don’t need to stay in there – and use these as starting points for development. For final assessment you will have to mount A 1 sheets of assignments alongside relevant developmental studies, and so above selection could be very effective.

 

You could use yourself as a model – as your study sheets sketchbook one demonstrates to me that you are quite capable of good drawings of yourself – Sketchbook 1 pages 37/38 – here I think 2,3, 4, 5 and 6 all have potential, my favourite is 6 but difficult because of the mirror. (See below in feedback on blog for this). Sketchbook 1 pages 41, 47, 48 and 50 and then 57, 58 and 60 go a particular direction which is fore grounding what I like so much in sketchbook 2 – (the series of drawings on grey paper). Here you are beginning to develop tone.

 

Check out Seurat ‘s drawings for this, in particular “seated boy” and “reclining boy” – you can find them via this blog – not a safe source but I can’t find a museum website for this  HYPERLINK “http://evolvematter.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/georges-seurat-masterstudy-part-1-history-and-technique/” http://evolvematter.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/georges-seurat-masterstudy-part-1-history-and-technique/

 

Your evaluation is fair, you recognize your strengths, and you are aware that you could have pushed media and ground research further. Perhaps this is something you could carry into the next part? I would certainly like to see you prepare coloured grounds by applying a wash or base layer of colour to stretched paper, which you can then use as base mid tone layers. Also I would encourage you to buy inexpensive sugar papers as mid tone backgrounds to which you can apply highlight and shadow in monochrome or in colour. For coloured drawing you may want to study Degas etc. This is a useful source to look at for drawing with colour  HYPERLINK “http://www.historyofdrawing.com/History_of_Drawing/Nineteenth_Century_II.html” http://www.historyofdrawing.com/History_of_Drawing/Nineteenth_Century_II.html

 

Use mid tone grounds on streched paper for part of part 5.

 

Sketchbooks Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Demonstration of Creativity

 

This has been dealt with mostly via blog feedback below. Summatively your sketchbook work is strong, and shows many exciting avenues to take further – this you need to get on top of so that you fully benefit from the project research finding its way into your assignment development. The assignment is not a separate thing – it should grow out of the knowledge you have acquired throughout the project research in your sketches. In the sketchbook you demonstrate both skill and creativity often to high levels – the latter can sometimes subvert skill as experimental work is often less skill based and more exploratory. How to balance this inventive capacity with skill is of course the old dilemma – to succeed on this course you need to strike a balance.

Learning Logs or Blogs/Critical essays 

Context 

 

The Blog works very well, is laid out clearly and shows a good balance between images, reflection and research.

Project 1 Proportions – good documentation of your life drawing class in Bethnal Green. The two model situation seems very useful to you, and I also noted the emphasis your tutor has given to the relationship between model and artist/ drawer. This appears a sensitive and thoughtful set up. The quality of your drawing is energetic and confident.  You understand how to grasp essential form quickly, and you put weight and mass in convincingly. There is a sense of dynamism about all those poses, even the longer ones.

Project 2 Form: Essential Shapes you have been trying out different life drawing class – a good idea. I am trying to work out if that has made a big difference to the way you draw? I noted in David’s class you seem to work with ‘ghost-lines’ more, contributing to the overall form (this reminds me of Diebenkorn’s charcoal drawings).

Working more close up also makes you fill the paper more, and consider positive / negative relationship (think back to parts 1 and 2 of this course where this was pretty much hammered into the learning approach). There is room to push this a touch further to create stronger dynamics in composition, also through cropping (again Diebenkorn a good teacher for this). The ability to include detail but under duress (10 minute pose) creates a satisfying tension – there is not enough time for you to get overly involved with detail, but you are putting a bit of definition and tone into the drawing.

In your own comments you focus mostly on getting the proportions right, but it is better if you can expand beyond this, as you do with the 25 minute pose where you mention abstraction and make reference to Bacon. This re-viewing in terms of composition, quality of drawing and overall appearance, and cross-referencing to contexts is good. The drawing is also very satisfying in my view- the tonality of the charcoal allows for sensitivity, and you explore marks with charcoal positively via outline, and through scratching, erasing / deleting.

Good work on legs and feet – very difficult subject to tackle and you got this done in a convincing way.  Your reflections strike a good balance between self-critique and acknowledging where you have achieved something. You challenge yourself. Excellent. You say that you are getting used to the head as measuring unit, yet one of your most impressive drawings here is one where the head is not visible! (? So?)

 

Form: Essential Elements: Here I like the study sheet format (in a sketchbook). This is liberating as you need not get everything right. See for example Rembrandt’s sketchbooks). Check and log good – you show criticality and you have selected a strong life drawing – I agree that this is a good life drawing and that you managed to convey the pose and personality of the model (his ‘baggage’) well.

 

Project 3: Stance

This you have already explored above through observation. Reading up on anatomy has given you context knowledge to apply. Has this benefited your work or made you move on you think?

Gesture: good that you push yourself into other media, that is brave. The results you have selected for your blog are far from unsatisfactory, the colour brings new energy to the drawing, pastel also brings a soft porous texture to drawing and plane. It’s a great mediator towards painting.  I like the freedom you demonstrate in this gesture section, how you have experimented and tried things out of comfort zone. I wonder if gesture could also be extended into drawing a model gesturing – so this would be less easily achievable in a shared life class, unless you can convince the group or tutor that movement was desired as part of a challenge. Gesture can be something as simple as someone moving the hand a bit, but otherwise remaining static. Or it could be a head shaking. Or someone running, walking, doing something quite repetitive like a mechanical tool operation acted out with a hand/ arm. How does one portray that dynamic? It’s an old problem and an interesting one.

 

Two references here; one from early photography where the long exposure time made the photographed subject at times blurry (so you can see that in early Victorian photography where a child might move and the rest of the family is standing still) – this then extending out to Futurism – Bragaglia – where action is portrayed through blurry line – (see also Bacon who employs this in his paintings). Your own context references to Jenni Saville also relevant here, as she adopts blurring to create a sense of movement, gesture.

 

The other in relation to animals ––up until the invention of photography horses galloping were always portrayed wrongly with their four legs stretched into opposite direction. This was an optical illusion, and really only Muybridge’s photography was able to demonstrate that there is always one hoof on the ground when a horse moves. Muybridge also very important to Francis Bacon (you mention this in your context research so you are aware of this). This has been addressed by E H Gombrich in Art and Illusion and you will also get interesting material on art and photography in Aaron Scharf.

 

Project 4 Structure really good effort. This is quite a step up from the isolated figure in a life class, and so while I agree with your bullet list of criticism and positives, I also want to commend you on taking on this difficult subject. Perhaps too difficult (the angle of the little side table is differently situated to the overall room perspective, so this creates tension and of course different vanishing points, the side table is also set askew to the chair – this makes the composition look uneasy). You can set such interiors up so you can tidy up angle of furniture prior to drawing it, or you can simply choose to eliminate aspects not essential. For me the little side table is not necessary – but the armchair is central. So you could zoom in on this, thereby getting rid of extra problems of interior perspective and narrative detail not essential to the actual task.

You are also commenting un-favourably on the self-study with the long mirror. This again is a truly difficult subject you have tackled, made even more difficult by using yourself as a model. I think it is great that you challenge yourself, but don’t aim too high in one step. Here, for this part of the course, the exercises you have done in your sketchbook of structure of body are sufficient and of good quality. However, I think it is really interesting that you started to address environment. Often this can be liberating for students who struggle with proportions, but in your case it may have brought up insecurities about perspective drawing? Not sure as I have not seen your part 3 for Drawing 1. In the human form you are capable of grasping essentials very quickly which makes you a strong life drawer. When drawing interiors you seem to want to get more detail in. But remember you can simplify these contexts and be selective. The mirror study is in principle really fascinating –you would make it a lot easier if you could get a mirror into one of the life drawing classes you attend – that way you can focus on all the complications of reflection and distortion, without having to document yourself and the shifting movement that additionally presents.

 

Research point anatomy and structure More than sufficient and mostly relevant context research done here. Best way to understand anatomy would be to have a 3 d model of a skeleton or a medical model of muscle groups – as this is unlikely to be handy there is only limited value in looking at books in my view, as they flatten the structure of a human body. Perhaps a local museum has skeletons of humans, or even apes? You did plenty of research work on anatomy and seemed to have got really hooked on this – all the extra research pages in your blog attest to this. It’s applying all this knowledge now… I wonder with your interest in old masters, would you consider doing what old art school did and draw from classical figures (British Museum for classical sculpture for example)? You have drawn extensively from drawings and paintings (Veronese for example) – the extension of all this would be to work from sculpture, which you also did with Virgile Ittah, however I  noted that the results you produce actually flatten the three-d element more than your other drawings!  I find that very interesting to note, as the actual sculptures by her are almost hyperrealist and very plastic. Why is this you think? This reminds me also of sculptor’s drawings – August Rodin’s lovely line drawings with wash come to mind which are very flat and almost reminiscent of the later Schiele –yet Rodin’s sculptures were so muscular and three dimensional. More food for thought here.  HYPERLINK “http://www.musee-rodin.fr/en/collections/drawings” http://www.musee-rodin.fr/en/collections/drawings

 

Project 5: The clothed figure:

I agree that a long-term study of drapery would probably benefit your observation skills further. Once a visual problem has been fully understood one can normally draw more quickly as this knowledge then becomes hardwired. Going by your blog this section could be expanded a bit. Old graveyard sculpture often excelled in drapery (although the movement element would be out of the question). 18^th C figures in churches might be good for drapery. You can also make up a human shape  a dressmaker’s mannequin would be great) and that way study drapery without worrying about a model. Also consider drawing people in flowing garments moving – perhaps draw from TV? A catwalk with fashion models for example? This brings me to the moving figure – project 6:  the sketchbook work is good, honest, it shows a sense for people in landscape settings. I noted that most of the people were far away, not sure if you could get a friend to walk up and down (staircase for example) – or dare to get a bit closer to the public when doing these. Perhaps a zoo is not such a bad place (noted the elephant drawing). Most people are so engrossed with watching the animals they would probably not even notice you drawing them! Plus you could draw animals in movement. The answer to all this is to find settings were people are too preoccupied with things to notice you – this might be shopping, fun fair could be interesting, outdoor sports would be excellent (for example a tennis court in a public park). Yes, very nice clouds!

You are on to something with the brush drawings – as you replace line with tonality and plane (Epping Forest) – worth considering if you are going to attend a life class and draw the model with a brush? Ditto for animal studies to come. Rembrandt (again) did some very effective drawings of people with quilt and ink – possibly also with brush. Looking at under-drawings of painters can also be very revealing – as the pre-step to painting is often an under-drawing with a brush. This is quite an interesting article I thought?  HYPERLINK “http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/loose-vs-tight-underdrawings.html” http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/loose-vs-tight-underdrawings.html

 

“The charcoal comprehensive pays dividends because you’re not trying to solve basic problems with paint. It’s much easier to do either a line drawing or a full-on tonal study as Lovell tended to do. On top of that, it really helps to do small tonal studies and color studies.” James Gurney

 

Project 7: self portrait:

Here you are more experimental than in any of the other sections. You play with different coloured grounds, with textures, mark making, colour contrasts, and resists, and you just let rip in areas. Not such a bad thing to do at times. Perhaps you felt you could do it to yourself, and not to others? Rembrandt good to research here as he did a series of self-portraits, drawings, etchings and paintings, throughout his life. You mention the etchings in your research point, but it might be worth looking at his paintings also as there you find the costume versions. Rembrandt apparently habitually dressed up. This might also be liberating – if you dress up or change identity through costume or outfit you may not find it so difficult to draw yourself – after all you need not recognize yourself then!

 

The exercise where you reconstructed Lucien Freud and Whitaker are pretty good in my view. The question for me is – is this all about likeness? What is likeness in a portrait? How can we in one  painting or drawing or photo encapture the different moods and ages of a person? Francis Bacon was not concerned with likeness, yet I have not doubt that he had full command of anatomy and proportion. Lucien Freud’s portrait of Queen Elizabeth II is fascinating – but does she look like this, or has he brought out a particular view he has of her? And those status portraits of her, or other aristocracy throughout history, area always idealised…. So the question for me here is, what is a portrait for ? Context will determine the vantage point, projection or degree of idealisation.  HYPERLINK “http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1723071.stm” http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1723071.stm

 

Research point: really good contexts chosen there – I have mentioned some of the artist you looked at before I got round to that part of your blog, so you have pre-empted me! Freud is superb to study, also because he was so versatile and could handle line and paint/ tone very well. Bacon ditto, also for emotion and abstraction. You interpret the self-portraits very well, and make good comparisons (Munch/ Goya). You also make references to the importance of Muybridge in context to Bacon, so you are already familiar with his work. Rembrandt, of course.

The artists you show after above list of heavy weights are technically very competent and versatile, and I am sure you can learn a lot technically from Louise Smith, however, on a note of caution, these artists lack the psychological depth the likes of Goya, Bacon, Freud etc offer. Give me Gwen John any time over a Louise Smith. The others i.e. Hero Johnson– yes again there is a lot of technical bravura which in my view gets in the way, but there is psychological scrutiny also which makes it stronger in my view. This reminds me a bit of Ian Cumberland –  HYPERLINK “http://www.iancumberland.com/” http://www.iancumberland.com/

I wonder how you feel about my opinionated polemic here? Why do you think do I (and probably quite a few establishment people – i.e. gallerists, tutors, art historians, critics) prefer someone like Lucien Freud to Hero Johnston, or Gwen John to Louise Smith? Is this simply snobbery? My response would be that with artists who are commercially successful a sense of being formulaic can enter the vocabulary and then they are really repeating what they have learned and can do so well, without searching for new challenges. I never see that with Rembrandt or John, or with van Gogh, or with Freud. The latter if not all of these four were so tortured in their striving for whatever they were aiming to achieve that their work could never become slick or perfectionist. It would be interesting to see what you think of my thoughts, and whether you disagree with me and why (which is of course welcome). This brings me to Jenni Saville and at least we can shake hands again – she is fantastic and your research is very good – the use of partial quotes and also the way you interpret the works. I like the freshness of your analysis – however, the style or tone of writing is probably a little bit too much like spoken, and so as a word of caution, when you move onto the next level course you will probably not be able to continue a colloquial way of writing, and have to adopt a more sober and probably also more boring academic style of writing. Good compromises are rare, but sometimes you get it in high quality journalism (review pages Guardian, Financial Times, some of the art journals like Art Monthly or Modern Painters). Some TV broadcasters who have published their work afterwards strike a good balance; Robert Hughes (Shock of the New)  HYPERLINK “http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2004/jun/30/art1” http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2004/jun/30/art1, Simon Schama The Embarrassment of Riches  HYPERLINK “http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Embarrassment_of_Riches.html?id=L8W9oB6Ab8sC” http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Embarrassment_of_Riches.html?id=L8W9oB6Ab8sC;  Matthew Collings  This is Modern Art (very readeable) compare that to his rant style interview in  HYPERLINK “http://www.3ammagazine.com/litarchives/2002_mar/interview_matthew_collings.html” http://www.3ammagazine.com/litarchives/2002_mar/interview_matthew_collings.html Not to be copied, but certainly worth having a look at even just for how to avoid it! 

A point you rightly make about Saville is the importance of her gender. Gender specific histories of art are also worth looking at – there is Linda Nochlin, Griselda Pollock for example, to name some of the classic feminist art historians. They set off a trend (for better or worse at times). Certainly this helped to unearth many forgotten women in the history of art. In contemporary terms you may also enjoy Paula Rego.

 

You have used Saville as context research for your final project. Yet I would caution you about this a little as her work is a strange mixture of almost photographic likeness (her children inserted in the Leonardo copy/ homage) and deconstruction (almost a bit cubistic) to lines and planes. In your assignment development you fail to insert your considerable ability to draw illlusionistically – although you demonstrate this in your extra curricular work very well. The reduction to line and energy lines appears a little too reduced in my mind and is lacking the tonality and areas of depth and clustering Saville is so good at in creating even in line based work. You have achieved so much in the projects where you explore energy and essential shapes, and you pushed experimentation with media if not wholly successfully, though nevertheless in a daring way in your self portraits. Saville is a very ambitious context to chose, and so you need to look back and analyse in how far you have paid homage to her in your ways of working.

 

Have a look at this hyperlink – this student, or graduate, has just finished/ completed her degree with University of Ulster, and I was involved with one of the modules Sheila had to take.  HYPERLINK “http://thepaintingcorner2014.wordpress.com/sheila-lavery/” http://thepaintingcorner2014.wordpress.com/sheila-lavery/

I was responsible for her professional practice not the studio, but as a result I know a lot about her interest in history of art, and Saville, and also Gentileschi (Artemisia) are some of the contexts she is consciously referencing in her own work, plus of course Paula Rego.

 

General point: documentation, selection of visual material and quality of images are very good – also your comments are intelligently written and demonstrate self-criticality. At times you rush typing your entries and this shows up in omitted letters or misspelling- your earlier entries were more carefully checked I think than your later ones. I realize that spell checks are not perfect and don’t account for linguistic context. If you can, leave time up until the end / completion and then check over your writing once more (or if you can get someone to proof read? even better.) Dyslexia irrespective – I suffer from rushed writing, and my reports can be full of spelling mistakes. I find that I overcome this best when I sleep over the report and then go back to it with a fresh eye the next day. (Maybe that could work for you too?)

 

 

Suggested reading/viewing 

Context 

Rembrandt’s sketchbooks – also for the way he portrays animals. British Museum Catalogue a good search tool for investigating people and animal drawings. Reliable source also.  HYPERLINK “http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/publications/online_research_catalogues/rembrandt_drawings/drawings_by_rembrandt.aspx” http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/publications/online_research_catalogues/rembrandt_drawings/drawings_by_rembrandt.aspx

Go into objects in the drop down list and you get the whole catalogue with thumbnail images.

 

I noted this artist when searching for a good, reliable website for you – Thomas Sully who extensively copied from Rembrandt’s sketchbooks – interesting….

HYPERLINK “http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/16323” http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/16323

 

Art/ Photography/ gesture/ movement:

Bragaglia Change of Position  HYPERLINK “http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/283267” http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/283267

Muybridge  HYPERLINK “http://www.eadweardmuybridge.co.uk/” http://www.eadweardmuybridge.co.uk/

(you should be able to check other animals he documented including dogs

– have a look:  HYPERLINK “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB70BMwLdAc” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB70BMwLdAc

Gombrich, Ernst H. (1977)  HYPERLINK “http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0691070008/semioticforbegin” \t “_top” Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. London: Phaidon

Gombrich, Ernst H (1982)  HYPERLINK “http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/071483243X/semioticforbegin” \t “_top” The Image and the Eye: Further Studies in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. London: Phaidon

Scharf, Aaron (1968) Art and Photography Allen Lane

 

Pointers for the next assignment

 

As with animals part of the charm no doubt will be direct life observation, I would caution from aiming for a too finished type of drawing. Perhaps study unfinished paintings or preparatory drawings for paintings, Manet and Degas come to mind here, where the under-drawings or the unfinished work is often more compelling that finished work. Cave drawings also interesting – Chauvet for example.

See  HYPERLINK “http://barber.org.uk/edouard-manet-1832-1883/” http://barber.org.uk/edouard-manet-1832-1883/ for an unfinished Manet and for Degas check this  HYPERLINK “http://www.theartistdirect.com/jockey.php” http://www.theartistdirect.com/jockey.php lovely Jockey drawing – note how much it helps if not everything is finished – it creates that sense of actuality which makes the drawing come alive. However, you do not really suffer from the bug of having to finish everything off in your project work, nor in your assignment work you have submitted here, so I am pointing this out more to reinforce an approach you already have in you, as I think it will be more effective for animals, then a ‘realistic’ natural history style of drawing which can deaden the subject.

 

Furthermore: consider the pointers about how to develop assignment work after discussion of project work in progress, I made above. Work with a wide range of media. I would not artificially separate extra curricular studies from your final assignment and projects – most of the figure related research pages you submitted separately on your blog (but included in your sketchbook) seemed very useful for your project development. So all the work on gesture, the life drawing classes, the classical drawing workshop, the Saatchi gallery visit, Veronese ….  So show some confidence and discrimination and include context and extra curricular where it is of relevance to your project development, and take out of it were not (for example the studies of flowers, no matter how lovely but irrelevant to assignment, or visits to Barbizon and St Ives harbour. These were truly extra-curricular and so stay best put outside in a different sketchbook or a separate blog page – as you already do.

 

Most importantly: dare to be as inventive in your project and assignment development as you allow yourself to be when you do ‘other’ work. It all adds up.