Category: Coursework

We were asked to choose at least six objects of different sizes and shapes and loosely describe the collection using one colour. I used charcoal having enjoyed working with it in the previous exercises and worked on an A2 sheet not a dissimilar size from the group of objects themselves.

I drew sections of the arrangement from three viewpoints and found that as I worked my drawing became more linear and bold as I became more confident with the medium. I prefer the bolder slightly more simplified drawings – worth remembering to try to do warm up sketches in future to build confidence before embarking on an exercise. The more linear drawings worked particularly well for the black plastic bag and it could be a good subject to go back to and draw on its own to build up that style. The small knitted bear I included thinking that it would be a difficult texture to translate onto paper and I don’t think that was particularly successful, though it gives something of the feeling of it.

For this exercise I took four textures from around my home and depicted each one using frottage, pencil drawing and ink. The textures I used were wood, the underside of lino, a woven plant pot and a decorative tin bowl.

I was interested in which medium would best articulate the feeling of the texture rather give the most accurate depiction. I had expected frottage to give a more immediate feeling of the textures but this wasn’t really the case, in all except wood the feeling of the texture comes across really well in the more simplified ink pictures, as well I think as the more accurate detailed pencil drawings. I particularly like the repeated patterns of the woven plant pot and underside of lino, these would look good scaled up – I can imagine using them as an element of a big colourful screenprint at some point!

For this exercise we were asked to spend time inhabiting four different emotions one at a time and with each emotion creating four non-objective images using four mediums; in my case charcoal, ink and a stick, pastel and marker pen.

The emotions I worked with were calm, anger, joy and grief. I found this exercise immediately educational as I initially set out to work on calm and though I spent a good amount of time focusing on that emotion I got half way through and realised I was way off the mark. I’ve just been through a separation from my husband and so this is a time of very marked emotions for me and however much I tried I was I couldn’t on that particular day reach the level of calm required. I also had the radio playing and although the music had been reasonably calm when I started by the time I stopped it was playing really upbeat dance tunes! The resulting images were all over the place, it was a bit of a crash course in the importance of environmental factors as well as taking note of your own emotional state and working with rather than against that.

Here is my initial attempt that I abandoned:

A couple of days later I came back to it on a day when I was feeling completely on top of everything, I switched off the radio and put on a specific playlist, gave myself a few minutes to wind down and tried again. Music really helped and I used that as a tool for each of the emotions.

Calm

Anger

Joy

Grief

I was struck afterwards by how unidentifiable some of the images were; joy for example was so present while I was creating those images but in looking at them from the outside the majority of them could just as easily be said to represent anger, calm or grief! The medium affected the images greatly too; charcoal seemed to portray the emotions best in all except joy for which I think marker pen is the only image that really conveys any sense of joy. I really enjoyed working with ink and stick too and love how those images came out, perhaps not quite as recognisable as those emotions but more successful as finished artworks. The least successful in every case was the oil pastel which is not a medium I would have chosen although it worked to some extent for anger.

This exercise again forced me to work in abstraction and I loved the freedom that came with that, I would like to take some of these images as starting points for future studies  creating a new series of abstract images based around emotion or perhaps a series looking at separation and the emotions that brings up.

I chose to use rice on a baking sheet to create my temporary drawing and really enjoyed the unpredictability that the surface gave – akin to iron filings reacting to a magnet. It was a lovely warm up to push me straight into in a more abstract direction than I would usually go, and there was a sense of freedom in knowing that it wouldn’t be permanent.

I really like the pattern created here and would like to revisit it later it in a different medium.