Drawings: OCA Part 2: Assignment 2

Final Piece

Watercolour and Pencil - A3 

For this assignment I knew I wanted to produce something full of colour, so I started playing around with drawing and sketching different pieces of fruit like onions and chillies, trying out different media as I went.

I initially really liked the idea of the chillies and went ahead with the idea, adding in some green herbs to enhance the colour and using the same view point (from above) that I thought worked well in the fish on plate piece from earlier in the project. I like these pieces but having reviewed the criteria for this assignment again, I was not confident that I had really completed it as well as I could with the composition or colour, probably because I rushed into doing it.

I was not particularly enthusiastic about doing another ink piece at this point so I went back and tried using a combination of pencil and watercolour on some small drawings of fruit. I really liked the way these turned out so I continued with this idea. I also thought a lot longer about the composition I would use, sketching out different ideas first. I added a simple jug that had quite a natural curve like the fruit and eventually a pot plant at the back that gave the arrangement some height and presence. Once I had finalised the composition I produced a couple of studies to make sure I was happy with the lighting and positioning of the all the items and then started on the final piece.

I first sketched the whole thing out in pencil, ensuring that the scale and shading was right. I used the cross-hatching method because I knew it would help to define the shapes well. With the watercolour, I built up layers of separate tones, building it up most where the darker tones were present and leaving the highlighted parts almost bare. It took quite a while to do it this way but I am fairly pleased with the result.

 Study of Red Onions

Watercolour and Biro - A4

 

Initial Studies and Sketches

 

 

First result that I was not happy with

 

 

Starting Over with some Watercolour Studies

 

Playing around with Composition

 

Practice before Final Piece

Watercolour and Pencil

 Pros:

-          My favourite thing about this piece is definitely the colours; I specifically choose the lemons, limes and satsumas because I thought the colours contrasted well, giving each piece of fruit its own separate form.

-          The cross-hatching works well to define the shapes.

Cons:

-          Despite all the planning for it, I’m still not entirely happy with the composition; I think I preferred it in some of the study pieces as opposed to the final drawing.

-          Looking at it now I think I should have thought more about filling in the background to give the piece a better setting.

Drawings OCA Part 2 V: Project - Drawing Animals - Fish on a Plate

Final Piece - Two Mackerel

Ink - A3

 

The name of this exercise is pretty self explanatory, I had to buy a fish, put it on a plate, draw it, job done.

Not being a fish aficionado, I decided on using a couple of mackerels, I quite liked the silvery blue patterns on their skin and the simple profile they have. I started out with a couple of pencil sketches before trying an ink sketch which I really like. I used a couple of different sized nibs to vary the marks I made, using a very fine nib to produce some detailed cross hatching while reserving the larger ones for the areas of heavier and darker tones.

I decided for my last piece to go for a view looking directly down on to the subject, giving a prominent presence to the plate as well as the fish, allowing them to play off against each other, fighting for the viewers attention. I tried to be bold with the colour and line to match the strong composition using a limited palette of blue and black ink, varying the tones by diluting it. I really wanted to produce something eye-catching for this piece and I am definitely not disappointed with the result.

First Sketch

Pencil - A4

Second Sketch

Pencil - A4

 Mackerel in Blue

Ink - A4

 

Learning Log

What were the main challenges of drawing animals?

It was difficult to capture the proportions and to get the anatomy right quickly enough before the animal moved. It was almost impossible to predict how long the subject was going to stay in the pose or even the same place. There were plenty of times I’d look down at my sketch for a second, only to look up again and find that I no longer had a model as they had scarpered.

The texture of animals also presents its own challenges, I tried my best to pick out the details of the fur on the deer’s and smoothness of the fish scales with varying degrees of success.

Which media did you enjoy using most and which did you feel were the best for the subject matter and why?

I am relatively happy with all the media I employed to complete this exercise. When drawing in Richmond Park and other places, pencils and charcoal lent themselves well to the nature of working outside. I needed to use media that would allow me to work quickly and be able to cover a basic sketch without having to stop to clean brushes or allow anything to dry. Charcoal was especially useful for this as well as conveying the texture of fur fairly well.

I enjoyed using inks as well, first in the park where I produced a couple of rough sketches using a nib pen and blue ink (See http://andrewperugia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/drawings-oca-part-2-v-project-drawing.html) I then used inks again for the second exercise of drawing the fish on a plate, where the slightly glossy qualities of the ink were very useful for showing the shiny smooth skin of the fish.

 

Where can you go to draw more animals? Think about the sorts of places that will give you the opportunities for animal drawing. Have you tried drawing a moving animal yet?

I think it would be interesting to try and draw some birds, so by a canal or the local duck pond would be a good place to try and sketch some ducks or swans.

I have not tried drawing a moving animal yet so it would be something to try out in the future.

Drawings OCA Part 2 V: Project - Drawing Animals - Grabbing the Chance

Deer Resting in Richmond Park

Charcoal - A3

 Deer in the Grass, Richmond Park

Charcoal - A4

 

Definitely an easier said than done task, animals don’t tend to want to stay still, especially with me sitting next to them scratching away with a pencil.

Like the last exercise, this is another subject that I am not overly experienced in working with, but after doing a bit of research into artists like Mark Adlington and how they have responded to the subject I at least felt a bit more enthusiastic about tackling it.

My favourite part of this exercise was visiting Richmond Park where the fallow deer were surprisingly accommodating to having me sit and sketch quite close to them. I also quickly learnt that they were more likely to stay still for a longer period if I drew them from behind or while they were dozing in the sun.

There also some more sketches below that I completed for this exercise of a donkey and a puppy.

I really like the loose feeling in the ink and charcoal drawings of the Richmond Park deer, I think this was unintentionally achieved by me adapting to drawing outside with limited tools and the need to capture something quickly before my models ran away.

 Deer Resting, Richmond Park

Blue Ink - A4

Deer Standing, Richmond Park
Blue Ink - A4


Deer in Richmond Park Sketches
Pencil - A4

Sleeping Puppy Sketch

Biro Pen - A4

 

Donkeys Grazing

Pencil - A4

Donkey Resting

Charcoal - A4

Drawings: OCA Part 2 IV: Project - Drawing Plants and Flowers

Exercise: Negative Space in a Plant 

Second Drawing

Biro - A3 Paper

 

First Drawing

Pencil - A3 Paper

 

Flowers and plants are certainly not my favourite subject which is probably why it has taken so long to put these pieces on my blog, I am ashamed to say that I think this lack of enthusiasm for them may show in some of my drawings.

I did find the first exercise quite interesting and it was quite a systematic procedure of just filling in the gaps once the features were planned out. I definitely prefer the second piece in biro; it is more interesting to look at and to complete, probably because it fills the page a lot better than the first.

Coloured pencil is also far from my favourite media to work in so needless to say the combination hasn’t produced my favourite results. I started the A2 piece and right from the beginning I really did not favour this piece one bit, this definitely shows unfortunately. I did come back for a second go, returning with a vengeance and a few sunflowers. I had a lot more determination to produce something better this seems to have worked. I tried a smaller scale and thought about the colours beforehand.

I found some interesting flowers in my garden and did some studies in coloured inks to start the third exercise, I quite like the piece with the three red flowers (I believe they’re tulips) but have mixed feelings about the other results. I experimented with combing coloured pencil with charcoal to produce the very dark piece with the poppies and the jug, the colours work well and I am satisfied with the shading.

 

Exercise: Plants and Flowers in Coloured Pencil. 

 

First Drawing - Poppies

Coloured Pencil - A2

Second Drawing - Sunflowers

Coloured Pencil - A4

Exercise: Drawing with other Coloured Media

 Tulips

Drawing Inks - A3

Daffodils

Drawing Inks - A3

Tulips

Drawing Inks - A3

Flowers in Stone Planter

Drawing Inks - A3

Poppies and Jug

Coloured Pencil and Charcoal - A4

 

Hanging Plant

Drawing Inks - A4

Learning Log

How will your experiments with negative space help your observational drawing in the future?

Concentrating on the negative space has helped me to understand how objects, like plants with their tangled stems, interact on a two dimensional plane. It helped me to start drawing what was actually in front of me more than just what I thought I was seeing.

What techniques did you use to ensure you drew your plants in proportion?

On these particular exercises I would start by deciding on a single feature such as a flower head and from then on I would compare the scale of the other objects and adjust the accordingly. This didn’t always work spectacularly but in a way it did help to maintain the natural feel, like the drawings were growing from a point.

How did you achieve an effect of three-dimensional space in your drawings?

I am not convinced that I did successfully achieve the effect in all of my drawings. It is achieved in some of them where I have controlled the tones and shading to describe shapes and to highlight the features that recede into the drawing and those that project forwards towards the viewer.

Drawings: OCA Part 2 III: Project - Drawing Fruit and Vegetables in Colour - Part III

Exercise: Drawing Using Oil Pastel

& Learning Log

 

 Final Drawing: Apples, Lemons and Baby Tomatoes

Oil Pastel - A3 Yellow Textured Paper

 

For this exercise I first started to play around with the composition, I was using a couple of tangerines and apples to try and get some strong contrast between the greens and oranges. I found a composition that I was happy with and attempted a quick drawing of this with oil pastels on a piece of A4 paper. I like the result and I think the contrast works really well, however there isn’t much range in shape or size so I added some lemons into the arrangement.

I decided to try and use a textured green coloured paper but it soon became apparent after I had started filling in some of the colour that I had made the wrong choice. I did a quick experiment on some textured yellow coloured paper and found this worked much better. I also made a last minute decision to swap the tangerines for some baby tomatoes to vary the range of shapes and sizes a bit more.

I used a chrome yellow to sketch in the main shapes as it was neutral colour that was not too heavy and was apparent in all the pieces of fruit. I then used a Van Dyke Brown to pick out the darkest areas before getting started on the rest. I used a bit of vermillion in the baby tomatoes, yellow ochre in these and the lemons. I found that a yellow grey pastel I had was the perfect tone for the apples as well as the shadow cast by everything. I was aware of how colours from some pieces of fruit were reflected in other, such as the green from the apples being seen in the lemons too, this helped to intensify the colours a bit more, giving a much stronger visual impact. I found that the colours worked really well together and against the yellow paper, it did take quite a while to build up the layers on it but I am very pleased with the final result.

 

Composition studies

Charcoal - A4

Study of apples and Tangerines

Oil Pastel - A4

Learning Log

Your composition should occupy most of the paper’s surface. How much negative space do you have left?

In terms of the way the composition fits onto the page, I would say I have done quite well. The subjects in my pieces sit quite comfortably without feeling like they are crammed onto the paper but also not getting swamped by extra space.

The piece I did of the apple with two lemons using the dip pens is a bit tight as the shadow is quite near the left edge, this is because I didn’t plot out the shadow before I went ahead with it so it could do with shifting to the right a bit.

I purposely left some negative space between the fruit in the final pastel drawing. I did this so that I could get a balance between drawing the pieces of fruit individually as well as allowing them to intersect each other in places.

What have you learned from drawing the details of fruit and vegetables?

I have learnt to try and think about the objects a lot more before I begin to draw them, and to work out how some will work well together and others maybe not so much. It was also interesting to try and capture the different textures of each individual piece of fruit whilst trying to maintain the relationship between them and keep the feeling that they are all part of the same drawing.

What did you find the most challenging about this part of the course?

It was difficult to know whether a composition would really work until I started to actually draw it, this is where doing the sketches for the last piece first really helped.

 

Experiments on Coloured Paper

Oil Pastel - A4

 

 

 

Drawings: OCA Part 2 III: Project - Drawing Fruit and Vegetables in Colour - Part II

Exercise: Using Markers or Dip Pens

 

 Orange, Pear and Lemons

Marker Pens - A4

Apple, Pear, Orange and Lemon

Marker Pens - A4

 

 Apple, Oranges and Lemons

Marker Pens - A4

 

I really enjoyed this exercise, both the process and the results captured my interest. Using coloured marker pens to draw with was a fairly new thing for me, I have never tried sketching anything out with them properly, so it was with a bit of trepidation that I began this exercise. It all turned out fine though and I became engrossed in building up the hatching, using the bold lines that are inevitable with marker pens. I had quite a good range of markers to utilise in these drawings and after some experimentation i dicovered that layering the dark blue and red close to each other formed a great dark tone for the shadowy parts.

 

I also produced a couple of drawings with the use of ink and dip pens. I have used dip pens before in my first assignment, but I stuck to black and sepia then, unlike in this exercise. I approached each drawing differently intentionally. With the first one I washed some rather bold strokes onto the paper with a brush, layering the red over the green where it was darkest and sketching the details in afterwards with a dip pen and black ink. The second drawing I did completely with a dip pen similar to my marker pen pieces, building up the hatching on different planes.

 

 

 Two Apples

Washed Ink and Dip Pens - A4

 

Apple and Lemons

Pen and Ink - A4

 

 

Drawings: OCA Part 2 III: Project - Drawing Fruit and Vegetables in Colour

Exercise: Using Hatching to Create Tone

 

 Studies of an Apple and Oranges

Watercolour Pencil - A4

 

 Studies of a Banana and an Apple

Highlighter - A4

Two Oranges and Lime in Wooden Bowl

Colour Pencil - A4

 

Redrawn Close-up of Previous Drawing 

I started this exercise using watercolour pencils in the first piece, beginning with the lighter ones and building the lines with darker ones like the purple and royal blues. I also experimented with highlighters though I can’t say I’m particularly pleased with the result but it was interesting to do.

 

I then positioned two oranges and a lime in a bowl and used colour pencil to draw this arrangement. I placed the bowl near a lamp to cause some strong tonal contrast and I think the highlight with the white pencil show this particularly well.

 

Just for curiosity as to whether this technique would also work well on a larger scale I used a viewfinder on the drawing and produced another one that increases the size of part of the original.