For the first asignment we were asked to choose objects that trigger an emotional response and set up a still life which we’d then draw using a variety of drawing tools and utilising some of the experimental mark making from earlier exercises. At this point I realised I should have been more experimental in the previous exercise but I worked with what I’d got and used charcoal, conte and ink with pen and brush for the assignment. Other than the last exercise which touched vaguely on it I’d had no experience whatsoever of mixing media so I took a couple of pages of my A4 sketchbook to experiment with layering.
I came away from it feeling really excited about the assignment; mixed media had connotations of naff art you might find in charity shops for me so it was a surprise to see the potential for really exciting work! For another work I’d like to play around with really simple shape based drawings taking inspiration from print and using the bottom row as a starting point, but that wouldn’t quite have worked for this assignment! I worked on A2 paper and for my subjects I chose a jar of sudocrem, a banana and a champagne saucer. I placed them on patterned fabric and included my curtains and a cushion so that the whole set up was alive with patterns – in part because previous exercises had made me really want to start working with pattern, partly because I wanted to push myself with a more ambitious composition and also because I wanted the still life to be a window on my life right now and my life and home is full of big bold patterns. I have an 8 month old baby Ottilie who is the centre of everything for me right now – all of the objects I chose relate to her; the sudocrem for obvious reasons, the banana which Ottilie loves so much at the moment that every meal includes it and the champagne saucer both for Ottilie in celebration of her life but also because it was a wedding present and another big current theme for me is my separation from Ottilie’s father which happened very suddenly in September. The champagne glass therefore is symbolic of a new life for me too but also holds a poigniancy in its relationship to my past life.
I went through so many stages of loving and hating this picture as I was doing it, I found that although on the small scale tests the conte worked better in combination than the charcoal, on a larger scale it just didn’t have the lovely silkiness that charcoal has. I persevered though starting with broad shapes in watered down ink then basic hatching across the picture in conte then dip pen details and then a lot more work in charcoal and ink and brush. Before the charcoal I didn’t like where it was going at all but it seemed to grow tenfold from that point and coming back to it now I really love the effect of the combined media. I’m pleased too with print quality that the patterns have added, that’s something I always love in other peoples work and it’s exciting to make space for it in my own work.
Looking at the assessment criteria
- Demonstration of technical and visual skills
- Quality of outcome
- Demonstration of creativity
- Context reflection
I think the real strength in this piece is probably its representation of my developing a personal voice – as far as demonstration of creativity goes I feel like I’ve pushed myself further towards the sort of work I’d like to be doing while also going completely out of my comfort zone in terms of media so I’d like to think that I’d do well in this section.
I find it hard toseparate myself enough to see how much this demonstrates technical and visual skills, I think perhaps it does show my ability in terms of visual awareness – design and composition etc. but probably isn’t such a strong example of my technical skills. I certainly felt less confident working with mixed media than I would have say with charcoal alone and I think that you can see that in the muddiness of some of the darker areas. I think if I were to do the whole thing again I could give it more clarity by using conte only in specific areas that were going to involve line work with a dip pen and building up other areas more with charcoal alone. That being said I think the quality of outcome is good; I like the overall feeling of the picture even including the more frenetic quality of the layers and layers of hatching in different media.
As far as context reflection goes I think although it was certainly beneficial to experiment with mixing media before setting out on the asessment I could have done more of that and it would have only improved the result; more sketchbook work in mixed media would have been a good idea.I did however draw alot from the previous exercises and other research that I’d done and I think you can see that in the piece.
Flora OCA drawing 1 