WHAT?

This was a two-hour session led by Greg Humphries from the St. Ives School of Painting. The focus was life drawing based on the work of Jenny Saville, with a clothed model. We were encouraged to work as large as possible, ideally in charcoal; however on this occasion circumstances dictated my working at A3 using a mix of 4B and 8B pencils plus an eraser. I started with my left hand but found the task itself very difficult, so moved to my right to help myself out.

SO WHAT?

The first half of the session looked at JS’s way of drawing over existing drawings. First activity was three consecutive three-minute poses, and it was suggested that we draw on top of the first drawing for the second and third. I found it really difficult to ignore the lines of the first drawing when making the second, and when making the third, I probably cheated by turning my page through 90 degrees.

The next activity was similar, but each of the three poses was 15 min; three seated poses, first looking left, second straight on, third looking right. It was here I changed to my dominant hand to give myself a chance. We were encouraged to erase any lines which we didn’t want or which were incorrect as we went along – it was stressed that, if we became aware of error or inaccuracy, we didn’t “fudge” it, but should erase it and get it right. Greg was very good at modelling the process of measuring, and showed how he actually drew his “plumbline” in and marked off points against it – it was helpful to see this done in words of one syllable so I could really follow the process.

In any gaps while the model rested or changed position, we were encouraged to go in with the rubber to edit out unwanted lines, or to emphasise any lines which we particularly liked.

The second half of the session looked at the issue of foreshortening, which JS uses to great effect. Again, the process of measuring was modelled, Greg stressing how key this is in this situation, and also showing that the plumbline doesn’t have to be vertical but can be diagonal.

We were encouraged to spend quite a bit of time basically measuring everything against everything to get the composition accurate, before building up the tones.

NOW WHAT?

I found this a challenging but highly instructional session – it’s good to be told about things like plumblines and the importance of measuring, and even better to be walked through it step by step and be able to work alongside.

Takeaway points:

• Plumblines really do work and they don’t have to be vertical
• When drawing a highly foreshortened figure (or anything) it’s vital to measure carefully first, double check it and then trust your measurements, as halfway through it will look weird, only coming together at the end.

WHAT?

This was a 90 min Zoom session with Sarah, who wanted us to free ourselves of the need to make detailed, exact copies of the work of famous artists, but rather to use their work as a jumping off point to finding our own way of working – as she said, to finding our own handwriting style.

SO WHAT?

Throughout the drawing work today, I worked with my left, non-dominant hand using a 4B pencil.

We did several loosening-up exercises – often useful to do if you are blocked or haven’t worked for a while – blind drawings (based on work by Faith Ringgold), continuous line drawings (based on work by Gajin Fujita, who makes amazing images by cutting, reassembling, painting over with spray paint, his mother helping out and his brother adding gold leaf), mark-making from a very tightly cropped extract from an image (which turned out to be an extract from a Rembrandt etching).

We looked at mark-making masters, such as Rembrandt and Auerbach, as well as Goya, one of whose works was selected for us to try drawing upside down, focusing on the negative space:

We looked at work by Hokusai, who continues work across two framed spaces on opposing pages, and at Ithell Colquhoun’s experiments with automatism (drawing from out of your head) and superautomatism (refining drawings done from the imagination.

We had a go at Ekphrasis, which is the ancient Greek practice of describing an image only using words, using a drawing by Frances Macdonald as an example.

We also looked at Hadieh Shafie’s calligraphic paintings which use text as image, and a work by Minjung Kim which used burnt hanji (traditional Korean paper) arranged following perspectival lines to create a collaged image.

NOW WHAT?

An inspiring session with a great mix of ideas and references from known old masters right up to exciting present day artists using such a mix of practices.

My takeaways are:

• This idea of “finding your handwriting” – I really like this handle, I’m going to hang onto it
• Apparently the archival distinction between a print, a drawing and a painting: anything that needs “machinery” to make it is a print, and anything on paper (that’s not a print) is a drawing – the rest is painting! Who knew? So basically, no need to worry any more about how I categorise my work!

WHAT?

 This hour-long session (apparently attended by over 600 people around the world) focused on the 1912 painting by George Bellers (American) entitled “Men of the Docks”, part of the NG collection.

SO WHAT?

An informative summary was given of the artist’s training and the situation leading up to these gritty paintings done by a group of artists in New York at the start of the 20th century. We then moved on to a series of drawings:

1. A blind continuous line drawing of the whole image in 2-and-a-half minutes:

2. A five minute look at a cropped section of the image, focusing on the group of workers in the bottom right, thinking about shapes and direction of strokes to indicate form:

(c)  Finally, a longer session (probably about 20 min) to tackle the whole image; we were urged to work with light marks to place the different elements before increasing the strength of the marks to bring out form, identifying the lightest and darkest areas. I used a 4B pencil throughout.

NOW WHAT?

• Actually trying to draw a whole detailed painting in 20 min was quite a challenge. It helped to have had some time at the start to mentally walk through the painting together, getting the main features in one’s head. 
• I worked loosely, using my non-dominant hand and trying to hold the pencil partway down, which I often forget to do. This helped me to vary the amount of “press” I applied to my marks, but I still feel that my marks lack some variety and control.

WHAT?

Sarah is an art historian, having worked for many years in the British Museum prints room.

SO WHAT?

Sarah gave some short lecture sessions about use of existing artworks from the Old Masters to the present day, interspersed with some timed drawing exercises:

Points arising:

• Appropriation is “taking something for one’s own use…”, but an acceptable/positive use would be to use another artist’s work to explore and develop a storyline of a narrative of your own.
• Everyone has their own experiences, ideas and influences of other artists and cultures – these combinations will make your work unique
• We are connecting, not competing, with other artists
• Copying from or referencing is not making your work the lesser or inferior part of the partnership; we all generate work from within ourselves
• You can copy directly to improve your skill base (as Michaelangelo did from Giotto, developing motifs which he used throughout his artistic life), but it is also good to draw from a picture, take bits and experiment, maybe combining it with other bits or sketches from other places and play around – this is not a waste of time, it’s where the creativity can happen
• We looked at (and drew from) a range of different artists, including Michaelangelo, Rubens, Mireille Kassar and Kara Walker

NOW WHAT?

• This talk reinforced the idea that there’s nothing new under the sun, but it’s what you do with/change/combine/interpret from what’s in front of you that makes your work different from everyone else’s.
• I’d like to do more drawing from existing paintings, something I haven’t done much of hitherto, to try and build my visual vocabulary.

WHAT?

This workshop was open to OCA students of all disciplines, and ran over two Zoom sessions, with a curation task in between. We each had to attend prepared with two works which we regarded as finished.

The project was to work together in small groups to think how we could show our work together in a way that made sense and was interesting, and come up with a group proposal to make a 5-min professional pitch to a gallery manager for an exhibition.

Curation is a creative act – so think about how these things are going out into the world, and how they are affected by their neighbours (contamination). We could look for commonality, points of difference, or a point of view.

SO WHAT?

Being unsure of what we might be required to do, I chose two very different pieces – my portrait of Frank Auerbach and my painting of eggs on an eggbox in egg tempera.

We each had to show our works to our group, and then decide how to curate them.

My group- mates were:

• Annalisa, a second-year student in drawing; her pieces were text-based, one about reading between the lines, and the other about how text could be changed by physical actions
• Kathy, a first-year student on the same Painting module as me – her works were part of a series of self-portraits, investigating how the persona you show is often very different from how you think and feel inside
• Thomas, a first-year photography student who put in a self portrait melded from his different personas, and also a video which he had submitted as an assignment on his reaction to the Covid lockdown

I felt my “eggbox” piece was a bit too frivolous and offered to change it, but fortunately they were keen to keep it in; discussion eventually took our theme round to “Vaccine”, and

 vaccines are based on eggs – so, far from being out on a limb, my eggbox became a central point of the whole exhibition. 

We collaborated via padlet, putting up our work and ideas, eventually coming up with a proposed exhibition layout. We had a separate group Zoom meeting to agree details and divide up jobs; I drew an exhibition plan and researched “Vaccine” in different languages, Kathy prepared an exhibition booklet and text, and Annalisa prepared a Powerpoint. We were ready to go!

On the day, all seven groups had prepared digital “pitches”, each with a different style and emphasis. Much useful discussion about curation, digital “nous” and other points from Bryan and others…..

• Bryan: “Doing things because they look good is a good enough reason.”
• Ours was a “constellation frame” in curation terms – we had made a frame of each artwork to stand or fall alone
• Bringing a bit of theatre into an exhibition is no bad thing
• You have to have confidence that your work will survive in the world
• Causing some disorientation in the mind of the viewer is fine!
• “Yes, and….” and “Yes and what if….?” are really good ways of collaborating; you surrender your work as raw material to the greater work
• Be careful about including sound in an exhibition as it can be heard all over the exhibition unless you provide headphones or the gallery has sound cones
• It was really useful to share skillsets and especially digital knowhow: three things for me in particular:
  • www.flipsnack.com – makes booklets – free unless you want to export pdf – maybe useful for submitting work for assessment?
  • OTTER – free – you speak and it transcribes
  • Stuff can be moved from a padlet into a Powerpoint and then exported into a video which you can upload to Vimeo for playing
• It’s good to have images on a press release – make sure you state very clearly what your work IS, not just waffling about what it’s about
• Episodic framing is another way to curate – over time
• Using quotes from other people can be very effective IF it is done with subtlety
• Subliminality of words flashing up too quickly to read them all can be a good tool
• One group pitched a virtual exhibition based on cabinet of curiosities and Marcel Duchamps’ exhibition in a suitcase – Bryan suggested that, in this world where the blockbuster exhibition is on hold, could develop this idea so that you hire a suitcase of art to have in your house for, say, a month, keep any you want to buy and send the rest back.

NOW WHAT?

I learned a huge amount over these two sessions and the intervening work. Four big takeaways:

• I am new to curation, but this is an aspect of an exhibition I shall pay attention to in future
• First time I have collaborated with a group like this – it’s not so scary; you have to let go of any niggles about lack of contribution from some members and assume they have life/work issues which prevent them; be positive and affirmative
• Doing things because they look good is a good enough reason
• You have to have confidence that your work will survive in the world