acsa

Balsa Wood Man

Posted on August 29, 2012

Balsa Wood Man, Balsa Wood Man, doing the things that balsa wood can…

A little figure made from balsa wood. We were asked to make a small human model demonstrating our understanding of how a figure would appear based on eight-head high proportions. (Most people are actually less than eight heads tall but this was for convenience.)

To understand what I mean when I say “eight-heads tall”, observe how the height of the figure divides into eight equal portions, each the size of the figure’s head. Along those portions are particular landmarks, eg. the start of the torso.

Some of my classmates used modelling clays and one even made hers out of a bread and PVA mix.

Mine has rotating limbs!

Creation

Posted on August 25, 2012 1 Comment

This piece was the major homework assignment from my life-drawing classes last year.

: The piece started in class with a drawing done from observation…

: We were invited to introduce a sense of context to the scene, drawing from the surroundings of model. However we were also encouraged to make the image as busy as possible, so many of the objects and surroundings here aren’t actually drawn the way they were found in the classroom. The pot plants, for example, came from the other side of the room.

: The model took up another pose and we were asked to redraw her in the image. She didn’t have to fit in the perspective or context of the scene. Some of my classmates drew the new pose over the old one. We had opportunities to add a third pose as well however I felt my image was sufficiently busy at this point.

: The image was divided into nine sections and we were given a few minutes to work up each section individually. It was interesting to see the works evolve by bringing each section to different levels of polish.

: For homework, we were asked to cut up our image and then enlarge each piece. The desired effect was to introduce some slippage and distortion.

: The new pieces would then form the basis of our work. We laid out the pieces in ways that would allow for interconnecting lines or concepts to be drawn across the image.

: It took me a few tries to settle on something I felt comfortable with…

: Eventually I felt that trying to fit all nine pieces in wasn’t serving me well so I took a few out. Here are my first attempts to link the pieces together and pull together a concept. The drawing process is pretty stream-of-conscious from here…

: Feeling the image was top heavy, I turned it upside down and continued…

: Here I introduce a bit of depth with black gauche. The image was pretty chaotic at this point as I hadn’t got in my head what I was doing yet. By blacking out a busy section I was able to get some of the clutter out of the way and concentrate on building up shapes and form.

: The white paint steps in here!

: This step feels much more cohesive than the previous ones. I’ve worked up a good range of tones and it feels like this has some real depth and flow to it. A a little yin-yang symbol appears. It’s a little scribble that I make while I try to remind myself to stay on task. I don’t really have a theme for the image yet, so it’s an attempt to find a conceptual direction… balance again?

: The yin-yang felt poorly placed, compositionally. With reminders that this was a life-drawing class and some encouragement to “find” people and body parts in our image the yin-yang evolves into a little person. With a focal point now found I have no idea what to do with the rest of the image. I’m feeling a little lost, but I soon work out what to do…

: I find a second person in the lower sections of the image! (You may need to view the large version to see my initial face scribbles)

: Now my picture has some direction! It feels like this is turning into a story about creation – of art and of ideas. The squared shapes and edges will become picture frames and the swirling masses will become hair for my creation goddess. There’s the totally unintentional treble clef in there too.

: I try to find some way to link my upper figure to my lower one, both visually and narratively. For this image we were allowed to use white and black gauche and a single pastel colour. It feels as though the ‘magic’ here is flowing like water, so I choose blue.

: Some better lighting here. It’s funny how much the colours change under different lightings!

: Here I’m working to integrate the white from the paper sheets with the rest of the image. In some spots I blend white in the surrounding areas to integrate things and in others I just try to match things tonally.

: More blacks!

: I use photo reference to fix up the hands.

: The completed piece! I had been unhappy with the straight-down blue line in the image which ran counter to all of the nice flowing lines so I played with the shapes a bit. I could have polished this a bit more but I was feeling a bit nervous about how I’d tackle some areas and felt they’d probably be left ambiguous instead of introducing details that might ultimately just confuse the whole thing. Part of what I like is just the simplicity in some of the bold blocks of black.

Breathing space

Posted on August 22, 2012 Leave a Comment

A homework piece from life-drawing. We were asked to consider composition and the impact this has on the way an image is interpreted.

Theme and Variations

Posted on August 15, 2012 Leave a Comment

As a homework exercise for life drawing last year we were tasked with drawing a particular image in as many media and styles as we could (aiming for about 20 total). Here’s what I came up with…

Top left: Lead pencil.
Top Right: Felt-tip pen outlines.
Bottom Left: Brush pen.
Bottom Right: Highlighters.

Top left: Grey markers.
Top Right: Fine-liner pen, taking inspiration from Freud.
Bottom Left: Biro, trying to define the image using a continuous line across the contours of the face.
Bottom Right: An attempt to draw a net across the contours of the face.

Top left: Warm and cool planes of the face.
Top Right: Extended lines – every line enters and exits the image at the edges and the line width is modified where needed.
Bottom Left: Newspaper collage.
You can also see the grid I was using to reproduce the image in the blank bottom right area.

Left: ContÃ© and charcoal.
Right: Pastel, using only horizontal strokes.

Top left: Watercolour.
Top Right: Charcoal and white gauche.
Bottom Left: Wet-in-wet ink.
Bottom Right: Charcoal – the entire area was covered in black and then erased back to produce the image.

Some experiments with using a black background.
Top left: White contÃ©.
Top Right: White acrylic, using only horizontal strokes.
Bottom Left: White acrylic, I tried to paint out ‘pixels’ of colour however the black base I used kept bleeding into the paint I was laying down.

Black ink over wax scribblings.

Completed Kai

Posted on August 8, 2012 Leave a Comment

Continuing the trend of art-from-ACSA-homework that I started with last Wednesday’s post, here’s the finished Freud work. (last seen here.) Well, maybe not quite finished, but it’s what I handed up.

Doubt – Concepts and Experiments

Posted on August 4, 2012 Leave a Comment

Saturday is concepts/walkthroughs day!

Here are the sketches and scribbles that went on to become the painting I posted on Wednesday.

The original concept was all about the raaaage in the foreground character and didn’t focus so much on the background pair.

A first play with the ink.

Building on the composition and the characters.

Final thumbnail.

Some different style experiments.

Doubt

Posted on August 1, 2012 3 Comments

Blaugust is back, which means more blogging! I’m hoping to be able to provide lots of content this time, with the crutch of “old art” to help me fulfill that goal.

Click for larger view!

This piece is from my life drawing classes last year. The assignment involved drawing a self-portrait involving three figures composed in some kind of narrative. We were also supposed to take stylistic lead from another artist.

I chose to emulate Marlene Dumas’ ink drawings as I was at the time experimenting quite heavily with watercolours and inks. I combined her use of unpredictable washes with the sharply defined edges that can be attained by using masking fluid.

I got quite wrapped up in the narrative and the symbolism. I think our lecturer was specifically addressing me when she cautioned us against turning the assignment into an illustrative work. And although the assortment of (mostly) round shapes in the background on the right seem quite arbitrarily chosen, there is a meaning attached to each.

Life Drawing 10/11/2011

Posted on November 25, 2011 Leave a Comment

Just a quick post today. Here are some other drawings done in class as preparation for the collage work.

Collage

Posted on November 21, 2011 Leave a Comment

A project for life drawing this term was to use collage techniques to create an image. The term’s work has consisted of less representational drawing work and more exploration into extrapolation of form and figure as well as different materials and techniques.

Here’s the reference ‘sketch’ I made:

And here’s the completed collage:

One of the things that struck me about the source image was the striking light and the contrast between highlights and shadows. When choosing materials for my collage I chose to go with bright colours, reflective surfaces and contrasted them against a black background. The hi-vis material was pretty fun to work with.

Ovoids and planes

Posted on August 28, 2011 Leave a Comment

Images from my class on Thursday.

2-3 minute warmup drawings:

Figure drawn using ovoid construction:

Figures drawn using planar construction:

Hybrid images using both ovoid and planar concepts (no I’m not explaining them because… I’m lazy or something)