In our Google Meet discussion on my Assignment 2, my tutor and I agreed that my original submission did not really tick the “expressive” box – very much as I had indicated in my blog reflecting thereon.

I said as part our our discussion that I wanted to take bringing more expressiveness into my work as a target for my next unit – so, in that spirit, I decided to rework the Assignment piece. I went bigger (A2 as against the previous A3), choosing Canson pastel paper in a yellow shade which served two purposes – it was almost exactly the shade of the background walls reflected in the mirror, and also it acted as a light mid-tone rather than working on stark white.

I wanted to work more loosely as well – I became quite “buttoned up” and obsessive about colour choice with my coloured pencils – so I decided to set myself a little rule to just work with whatever was on my art table – serendipitously this comprised of a rather battered inch of charcoal and a handful of Conte crayons in white, greys, blues and browns – perfect, I thought. I decided that, rather than setting up the composition again, I would work from the photograph of my original – a good test of its accuracy! – but I simplified it by taking out some of the background clutter in the mid-section and losing the lipstick, which I had struggled with before. I also moved the pear right to the front edge of the picture to make a kind of pathway in – not quite sure whether this has completely worked as the natural diagonal of the composition is the other way, led by the angle of the mirrors – but worth a try as I think it’s made a bit of a zig-zag in now.

I didn’t have a yellow or green on my art table when I got to the fruit, so I just grabbed a yellow gouache from the nearby box (I had been using the white for my Part 3 cloud studies). This proved to be a lovely vibrant colour for the lemon and, mixed in with a bit of charcoal, made an acceptable green for the pear.

I tried to work quickly and loosely, although there was a need for some control as the mirror, with each section set at a different angle, was quite a complicated structure, and I wanted to convey it with some accuracy. It was definitely a good idea to simplify the central section; this was quite cluttered in the original.

The whole thing took me about 2 hours, rather than the two days of the first effort. Am I pleased with it? – yes, I think so – I certainly enjoyed doing it much more and I hope this shows through. I think perhaps the completed assignment should comprise both pieces as fairly distant points on a continuum from “tight detail” to “loose and free” – I’m not sure I could have gone too much further toward the “loose” end without making the structure of the mirror unclear.

What have I learnt from the re-working? First of all, trust your gut – when I was slogging through the pencil drawing my gut kept saying “Stop this and try something else” but my brain kept saying “You’ve put all this time in, you need to finish it.”

Also, I’ve learnt the value of starting again – I’ve always been someone who likes to finish a task and move on – but I have enjoyed going back and think I have improved as a result.

• Tutor was generally pleased and positive, especially with the scrapbook, which she had had most time to look at
• Need to become more efficient in referencing research on work, and vice versa – just a note can be enough
• Consider using a colour wash as a frame or a background, and draw over the top
• Also consider putting down rough areas of tone and do line drawing over this (as, e.g. in the bark, moss and lichen line drawing)
• Drawing from unusual angles, as in the house interior drawings, is going well; tutor particularly liked:
  •  the one from the top of the stairs – maybe try again with better foreshortening
  • The sketch in the bedroom with diagonal bed worth also working up, maybe in charcoal?
• Tutor was interested in the research referencing “meaningful objects” – explore (both research and trying out) a self-portrait made from meaningful objects
• Also reference to research – the curved staircase – consider a picture which contrasts correct/incorrect perspective
• The inside/outside contrast, and light, are possible aspects of interest for me to develop
• Saying I can’t draw fabric! – task to draw a screwed up piece of paper as a start; also using a charcoal background and rubber are helpful with folds and fabric
• Try more pastels and more charcoal
• Don’t worry about my “scribbly” style – can be used to create tone – need to find a way to use what I naturally do – embrace what I am! – don’t just focus on meeting the course tick-boxes
• Think more about the surface I am working on and what it can do and whether I need to adapt it
• Assignment 2 picture – she had hoped for more on the basis of the work that had gone before (e.g. the reflection in the lamp, which she really liked), and frankly I so had I – we discussed how I fell into the final piece and found myself a bit trapped in it by time constraints –  suggestion was to re-work it in a different medium to give it some zip, possibly considering some asymmetrical cropping
• Target: I chose “work more expressively” – make the tasks suit me, not me suit the tasks – make my style and materials do what I want them to do. 

• Demonstration of technical and visual skills – materials, techniques, observational skills, visual awareness, design and compositional skills
  • I have expanded my range of materials and techniques since Part 1; I have had a bit more of a go at using marker pens, I have experimented with mixed media, I have completed whole drawings in Conte crayon, finally dug out my Chinese brushes and inks and used them to pleasing effect, and I particularly enjoyed drawing with a putty rubber into a charcoal ground. My observational skills are quite good when I concentrate, although I am still having to consciously analyse perspective, which I suppose leads on to my visual awareness; I often used to think I walked around with my eyes shut, being so involved with what was in my head – but I found myself yesterday brushing my teeth whilst looking out of the window and analysing the perspective of the roof tiles on the house across the road, so the visual must be improving. My design and compositional skills are developing, particularly towards the latter end of this Part of the course.
• Quality of outcome – content, application of knowledge, presentation of work in a coherent manner, discernment, conceptualisation of thoughts, communication of ideas
  • This Part of the course has been very spread out and disjointed for me – I started it waiting for the arrival of my granddaughter (gorgeous, thank you), had a long interruption caused by serious illness and a prolonged stay in hospital, and have slowly had to gear myself up again to studying. I suppose I have developed much more of a sense of what might make an interesting composition; subject matter which seems quite mundane can be made interesting with thoughtful composition. I hope my work is presented coherently. Conceptualisation of thought and communication of ideas…..I think I began this Part very much with the mindset “here’s a group of objects and I’m going to draw them”, but I do feel now, approaching the end of this part, that I am on the edge of something  rather more nebulous, which I’d like to talk about more in the two sections below.
• Demonstration of creativity – imagination, experimentation, invention, development of a personal voice
  • I have to say that, the first time I read this criterion, I quailed as I thought that, frankly, I didn’t have a creative bone in my body. However, towards the latter stages of this Part, I have felt braver to depart from the norm, free up and try some things out. I really want to do some more Chinese brush painting, which has the potential to be wildly free and gestural yet minutely exact at the same time.  I also want to do more work with charcoal and a rubber; I listened to a podcast the other day, when the pencil artist Nina Mae Fowler was talking animatedly to Nick Park (of Wallace and Gromit fame) because she’d finally found someone who would be enthused about her wide collection of rubbers, and I felt a bit like that, having recently discovered the joys of the Derwent battery eraser. The red monochrome drawing was a departure for me in that I was not completely just drawing what I saw. Project 4 has made me look closer at things which have been in my house all this time (e.g. the lamp and the dressing table mirror), see them differently, and attempt drawing which I would have considered beyond me at the start. Not sure the personal voice is there yet, I still feel there are far too many avenues to explore, but now I at least see the potential for it.
• Context reflection – research, critical thinking (learning logs etc)
  • My tutor has modelled the conscious use of research – hand on heart, I have not achieved much of that in this Part because of it’s broken-up nature and the need to crack on with the exercises. However, what I have found is the effect that my reading and research has had on me on a more subconscious and intuitive level; I have found myself interested by particular images and wanted to try out some aspect of them myself. I think this is a good thing and a development; my tutor described my research notes in Part 1 as book reviews, which is exactly how they felt to me – whereas now I feel I am on the road to understanding the point of research, and hope to move forward to being able to use it as a proper resource and jumping-off point for my own work.
  • I have found writing about my thinking has actually made me think in the first place. My writing can be a bit rambling and stream-of-consciousness, but I have always found writing a good way to work through a difficult place or problem; so, helpful for me, although possibly tiresome for the reader. My next step is more joined-up progress of thoughts – at the moment I am a bit like a child in a sweetshop, jumping from one thing to the next and forgetting what I had just discovered a few minutes earlier.

The subject of my drawing is a triptych-type mirror which sits on the dressing table in our bedroom, including the reflections in the three separate mirrors (all of which are facing in different directions) and a simple still life composition placed on the dressing table in front of it – see photo below.

My influences in setting up this particular still life/interior were many, and I can’t in all honesty say they were necessarily in the forefront of my mind as I put it together; images and ideas I have liked as I have worked through this section have obviously seeped into the subconscious, and it was only when it was set up that I have put everything together and thought, “Well…this is like that, and that reminds me of this…”. Not sure if that’s the way it’s meant to be, but there we are. Looking at the piece, I see bits of:

• Bonnard’s way of including a figure or part of a figure in a half-glimpsed way, so they are not the main focus of the picture but rather the viewer comes across them almost serendipitously (see A3 sketchbook) – this WAS an intentional feature of the set-up
• I liked the combination of plain drawn areas with coloured areas in Gary Hume’s “Flowered Hat” (see blog post on Positive and Negative spaces), and have tried it out here; this idea emerged part-way through
• I have been drawn to views looking through windows and doors (see A3 Sketchbook and Project 4 research blog post), so again this was an intentional part of the composition; also the use of devices for the showing of a wide range of the interior space as in the Anthony Green image in the text and the David Hockney Large Interior (see blog post on History of still life genre); also again the idea of representing an object from a variety of viewpoints (see research on the History of still life blog post, esp. Picasso and Braque)
• I really enjoyed doing my Project 4 Exercise 3 drawing of the reflection in the lamp

My reasoning for and construction of the exact composition is as follows:

• The basic idea came when I noticed repeated reflections in the dressing room mirror as I was passing. The motif of repeated images was talked about in the course notes as a way of drawing the viewer’s attention but is not something that I have consciously used much thus far, so this seemed like an opportunity to try and build it in – hence the vase, lemon and lipstick all appear at least in part 3 times
• By changing the angles of the side mirrors I found I could see through 2 doors (one out into the passageway and one into the bathroom) and a window
• I wanted to keep the still life aspect fairly simple (just the vase, the lemon, the pear and the lipstick) and try to do it well. The pear was included as I really like drawing the shape of pears; the lemon to give a bit of a colour lift, as the dominant colour is terracotta/wood; the lipstick because someone from an art group told me that paintings should always include a little patch of red to draw the eye; and the vase because I recently bought it in an antique shop and was keen to use it in a picture
• I wore a blue top for the self-portrait element to complement the orangey wood
• I drew the image over several days; the light was coming from the windows behind me, but the days were overcast and I wanted some clear shadows, so I set up a spot-lamp looking down diagonally from behind the top left corner

How have I done against the criteria for the work?

• The use of colour in drawing:I feel I have done fairly well in replicating the colours of the objects in the composition, often by blending and overlaying the coloured pencils. The use of the complementary blue has, I hope, lifted what is quite an orange/yellow/brown mode. The thing I really found difficult was replicating the gold of the lipstick, and I don’t think this has been as well done as I would have liked.
• The most appropriate medium for the subject: my original intention was to use line and wash on A3 cartridge paper as the composition has a lot of straight lines which I thought would be tricky in pastel or charcoal and could become confused/confusing; however, when it came to it, I decided that lots and lots of ink lines would not give the right feel, so decided to go for coloured pencil. I’m pleased with the overall choice of the pencils, but I did find that progress was very slow as I havered over exactly the right choice of pencil for each little section of wood.
• Composition and context: I wanted the foci of the picture to be the still life elements with the sections of interior, so didn’t try cropping the image any further, and kept everything else very simple. If I‘m honest, I think that, in my desire to get the proportions correct, I have made the image too small – I envisioned it filling the page a bit more.
• Mark-making and contrasts of line and tone: my marks within thecoloured part of the image are quite uniform, with much blending and overlaying. The lines in the uncoloured part I have tried to keep continuous – my natural default drawing style is somewhat sketchy and scribbly, but I felt this would take focus away from the coloured section. I coloured the whole thing in and then revisited with tone in mind, just to darken the darks and lighten the lights. The idea of the “floating” shadows came to me part-way through (to be honest, the pear was looking a bit dodgy and I thought I should get that bit of the image finished before the pear went off, and then I rather liked the stand-alone shadow, which then was the inspiration for the rest of the uncoloured section).
• Accurate and expressive depiction of form: generally I am pleased with the accuracy of the image – there are a few bits not quite right, e.g. the top surface of the mid-section of the mirror which is misshapen – the side panels of the mirror were set at unfamiliar angles (one back and one forward) and the mid-section was tilted ever so slightly, which made several parts not quite as one would have expected. Is it expressive? – I think my rendition has been very controlled, which I felt necessary at the time of working due to the need to make the interior sections clear with the medium I had chosen, and this was hampered by the fact that the whole thing was a bit smaller than I had intended – so possibly not. A bit of a learning curve here – I was a bit pressed for time so I pushed on with what I had – possibly choosing to start again with a larger and free-er drawing in a different medium would have made for an equally, or more, expressive outcome. 
• Experimentation with idea, material and method: I have covered some of this above. Despite the fact that I have nit-picked the faults in my work, I feel the concept of the drawing that I have come up with is unusual and has arisen out of my learning over this section of the course – it is certainly experimental for me, and is something I would not have dreamt of tackling beforehand. 

• Was really pleased to see that my enjoyment of the course is showing through
• WOULD like to submit for formal assessment eventually – NEED TO TELL tutor when submitting next assignment for advice
• PERSPECTIVE – aarrgh!! Well, I’m not very good at this, and it’s a bit key, so will need to do lots of sketchbook work on it, drawing in the eyeline as per tutor’s examples so I can really see which way my lines are converging, and where necessary exaggerating the “front” line lengths till I have got much more of a feel for it. Just little things like the lower ellipse in the pot being more rounded because it’s further away from the eyeline – so obvious, yet I hadn’t seen it before.
• Research– I totally agree I’m not using it enough or building it into the development of my own work. I need to pick a couple of threads to take through into exploration in my sketchbooks (e.g., as mentioned, the use of shadows, which I found interesting to read about but haven’t really done anything with)
• Backgrounds and viewpoints – I am not really thinking enough about these – my “still lifes” float and I need to think more about how to set them within a defined space and reflect on the angle from which I view things (rather than just sticking them on the table next to me and drawing them from there)
• Sketchbooks – I don’t think I am sketching nearly enough (have already bought and read the Scheinberger recommended text) and think I am still trying to keep my sketchbooks too “nice” rather than using them as a tool – have bought some smaller ones to try and use much more regularly and to feel freer about experimenting in.

   I have been an inveterate bibliophile since I was a child, and my husband will tell you that I cannot pass a bookshop without going in – hence our house is full of piles of books. I am also a lover of random teas, and a bit of a teapot collector. In fact, what better way to spend an afternoon than sitting in our garden room with some books and a brew…….

….so this seemed an obvious still life setup for me. I liked the curves and ellipses of the pots, contrasting with the rectilinear shapes of the books, and have tried to arrange it in a fairly pleasing triangular composition.

See what you think……

   I tried to select my materials to match the different objects:

• My favourite ink and a stick for the oriental ceramic teapot, to give it solidity and to evoke ritualistic tea ceremonies/Chinese brush painting
• White and grey conte crayons for the rather fugitive and ghostly glass teapot
• Charcoal for the “wood-derived” objects – the books, the table and the shelves in the background
• I chose a mid-tone sugar paper as support to allow me to focus particularly on the lights and darks

So, how did it go?

Overall, I am pleased with the composition and think I have produced a fairly vibrant drawing.

I am particularly happy with the ceramic pot at the bottom foreground – I enjoyed this the most (maybe because I feel quite free using the ink and stick – it is such an unpredictable medium that I feel able to go with the flow and not panic at unexpected splodges and blots, just trying to weave them into the image).

I have done a bit of practice with the glass teapot and feel happier with its shape than I have hitherto; I am slightly concerned that it does look rather too ghostly and floating, but it gave very little shadow to anchor it down.

The pile of books – aarrgghh! – thought this would be the easy bit but it always seems to go slightly awry, I think I have a bit of an issue with perspective which will need work as the course progresses. I sprayed the drawing with fixative and put it on the floor to photograph it, when I immediately saw the angle of the right-hand corner of the bottom book was not right – I have tried to draw over it and improve it, but didn’t want to make too much of an issue with it as it would spoil the rest of the drawing.

I have just suggested the table, shelves and wall in the background to fix the objects in space, as obviously the books and pots were my focus. I’m never quite sure how much to put in, and will often just indicate tone contrasts between background and focus objects, rather than making the background too fussy and detracting from what I want the viewer to concentrate on.

Learning outcomes

• Demonstrate drawing skills using a wide range of media
  • I have used charcoal, dip pen and ink, stick and ink, palette knife and ink,  oil pastel, chalk pastels, Conte crayons and pencil throughout the course of this first part of Drawing 1. 
• Use drawing, tone and colour to represent three dimensions
  • I have used line and  various shading techniques such as hatching and blocking to show tone. I haven’t investigated colour much – believe this is to come.
• Explain the rudiments of linear perspective and other drawing systems
  • This isn’t something which has specifically come up as a requirement; it is certainly something I have grappled with when setting up and representing still lifes; foreshortening is an aspect which needs work
• Reflect perceptively upon your own learning experience
  • I certainly feel I have learned over the course of this first part, and have tried to incorporate notes to this effect, either within my blog, or as notes on my sketches

Assessment criteria

• Demonstration of technical and visual skills – materials, techniques, observational skills, visual awareness, design and compositional skills
  • I have used a range of materials and drawing techniques (see above). I am learning the importance of careful observation; I certainly go around now looking at everyday objects and thinking about how I would represent them on a page. I think my sense of design and what makes a good composition are things for me to be more aware of – I was having tea with an artist friend the other day and she randomly exclaimed what a great composition a blue vase of orange tulips framed by a doorway would make, and as soon as she said it I could see it was very Vermeer-like; but I haven’t got to the stage of automatically seeing these things for myself yet.
• Quality of outcome – content, application of knowledge, presentation of work in a coherent manner, discernment, conceptualisation of thoughts, communication of ideas
  • I believe the quality of my drawing has improved over the course of this part, and I have enjoyed using and applying techniques and materials I had not tried before; particularly using ink other than with a pen, and using charcoal or crayons to create blocks of tone. I hope my work is presented in a fairly orderly manner organisation-wise, although the presentation of drawing on a page is not always quite what I intended, sometimes not the size I originally intended or centred as I had meant it to be – usually because of the first element in the drawing being mis-sized or mis-placed on the page. “Conceptualisation of thoughts and communication of ideas” I have taken as meaning having an idea of what to draw and then conveying that as a realistic image – I think I am in the early stages of this – I not longer cast around for what to draw, having fallen in with the idea that anything is fair game for drawing – but I need a lot more work on taking it further and conveying a mood or a message.
• Demonstration of creativity – imagination, experimentation, invention, development of a personal voice
  • Hmm….I wouldn’t say I am able to demonstrate much imagination as yet, my work is still very representational. However, I have enjoyed experimenting with different media and I hope this shows in my work. Invention…I have tried bits of this when doing the experimental mark making; it was fun, I enjoyed it, but I can’t say I was always delighted with the quality of the outcomes. Development of a personal voice…. Again, don’t think I have a lot of evidence for this – I think I have a default style of drawing, but this is not the same thing.
• Context reflection – research, critical thinking (learning logs etc)
  • I have enjoyed thinking about what I have done, and putting critical thoughts into words, more than I thought I would – hitherto I would paint a picture from a photo and either think “yes, that’s not bad” or “back to the drawing board”, and cast about for the next photo to copy. My research so far has included books recommended by my tutor, books on the essential reading list, and other texts I have found from libraries (both the OCA online library and the Plymouth University library, which I have joined for a year.) I feel my reading has been quite scattergun at the moment, there seems to be just so much out there to lap up and take in; I have tried to absorb and use some key messages (keep collecting good examples, try different styles of drawing, think about composition, mood and message), but early days yet.