For this Assignment we were asked to do three pieces: a reclining figure (A1) focusing on tone, a seated figure (A1) focusing on line and a portrait or self portrait using a combination. I’ve so enjoyed this part of the course and was really keen to push myself with these assignments – I’ve done studies like this numerous times so I wanted these to be different to show that my work has really grown and developed as much as I feel it has.
I started with the reclining tonal portrait. I asked my housemate to sit for this, we tried various poses and viewpoints before I settled on the final composition.
I had expected to prefer the alternatives but I just really liked the simplicity of this pose and the flow of the shapes. I wanted to use charcoal but to force myself to smudge as this is a technique that I’ve always kept a distance from in the past. It can look SO naff but I’ve realised that lots of really wonderful artists aren’t afraid of smudging and that as part a whole it can have a really brilliant effect and make for a much softer drawing. I experimented with this technique beforehand, with Egon Schiele in mind to help take me away from my usual hard-lined approach.
I still wanted to keep my lively drawing – but to add another dimension to it.
The Assignment piece itself took a couple of hours and I worked on quite smooth paper from my big roll, cut down to the right size and pegged onto a board. The smoothness lends itself to smudging – helpful for this technique although not so helpful for storage! Here it is.
I actually really like this, I decided beforehand to allow myself freedom with my lines – I didn’t want to feel restricted by worrying about making it just so and end up with a stagnant picture and I wanted to be able to exaggerate lines that I felt added structure to the drawing and draw out the soft shapes that worked so nicely in the initial sketch. It’s worked in as much as I’ve made a drawing that I love, it has the essence of Joss, it works as a portrait of him as a musician and gives some of his poise and character but the downside is the Guitar has stretched into slightly silly proportions! I liked that as I was doing it – there was intention in it but I wonder now if to anyone else it just looks like an error. Being critical his head should probably be smaller too from this perspective although again I quite like the added prominence this gives him – he looks regal. What I am really pleased with though are the hands and feet. These sort of hands – quickly and simply drawn, paw-like with focus on positioning rather than details – I’ve always loved in other peoples charcoals but hasn’t ever worked for me so that was really pleasing. The feet too – much closer and more detailed – work really well with the new smudge technique, it gives them a real roundness and body.
Second I did the portrait – I chose to do a self portrait and I wanted to revisit colour in this one. Being a portrait I thought particularly carefully about what I was saying about myself. Thinking of “At the dressing table” I included elements of my home – books, a photo of my baby, a little pot with a handle and with Gauguin’s self portrait in mind I included some of my drawings as well as one of my baby’s. Cutter, colour and pattern are all part of who I am and I wanted that to show. Remembering Kathe Kollowitz I included my hand too – also because I’ve had a few weeks of extreme stress and drew this at the end of a long day so the pose was absolutely appropriate! I played with the Kathe Kollowitz pose and colour beforehand.
I was looking at using different coloured papers but in the end decided to keep to white for the background. Here it is (A3):
I can’t tell you how much I love this! It is by far my favourite portrait/self portrait and actually I think my favourite drawing full stop! (I know I’ve said that before – which gives me hope, I should be continually producing better!) I looked at some of Matisse’ portraits and nudes at the start of this and loved his easy simple line and use of colours and this has something of what I like about his stuff. My lines felt really confident in this which isn’t always the case, and I love the colours. I also like the distortion that my hand brings to the face too, so that it’s both recognisably me and slightly off. I used quite a different technique in this – building up layers (ink first then pastel) with charcoal between each layer so that it wasn’t only for sketching positioning but was intrinsic to the picture as a whole and gave the final details. I’ll definitely use this technique again.
For the seated figure I wanted to use a coloured background, I’ve done quite a lot of playing with inks on fluorescent paper and I love that effect so knowing I wouldn’t be able to find the colour I wanted otherwise and wanting to play with canvas shape I joined up smaller pieces of paper – it’s ended up slightly longer than A1 but the same width. I worked from life using watered down white acrylic ink with a dippen first, then full strength again with a dip pen and then after the model had left I worked the image up using a paint brush and then red marker to finish it. I wanted it to be bold and fun and to keep the proportions but also to have a naevity to it. I love picasso’s line drawings such as the portrait of Igor Stravinsky which I’d made a recent sketchbook copy of and I had that in mind as I did the final work in red liner. I kept the background much less detailed to draw focus to the figure. I love using dip-pen and am always fairly gun-ho with drops as to me it feels luike they make the image fizz with energy which I love.
Picasso copy (drawn upside down):
Self portrait practising line:
Final piece:
Assessment Criteria:
Demonstration of technical and visual skills: I think these are my strongest assignment pieces yet, particularly the self portrait which is exactly as I would want it to be. I think My strength is in drawing people and I think these show it well -the proportions are all good though there are small changes that could be made in the reclining figure to show better perspective. That is my mind the weakest of the three and least interesting composition (partly that’s personal taste though – it’s not busy enough for me!) but I’m pleased with my technique in all three.
Quality of outcome: The portrait is really strong, I think the reclining figure seems less interesting when put next to the other two but I was very pleased with it initially – I change my mind! All three came out as I had intended and feel quite striking when seen in person.
Demonstration of Creativity: I think I should score highly in this one – I really pushed myself to do something different and particularly the line drawing and portrait are in quite an unusual format more specific to me.
Context reflection: I thought more about specific art works and artists as I was working in this section – probably because I am more familiar with portraits and so lots came to mind and assisted my process, hopefully that will have shown although I would have loved to do more gallery visits during this bit.
Flora OCA drawing 1 