Assignment 3: Something very personal, and reflections on tutor feedback for this assignment

27 August, 2015. I have to force myself to concentrate on course work. It is difficult to describe the anger I feel after just having received the devastating news that our little son was not only MADE deaf, but also an epileptic with unavoidable cognitive regression going on and to continue in the next few years. The whole team of doctors responsible for this catastrophe have nothing better to do than ignore us despite having acknowledged medical maltreatment in written form many years ago. Not only do we have to face the everyday consequences, WE have to find and pay expert witnesses to do the necessary tests, write down the obvious and force the hospital to give us the help we so desperately need. At the beginning of this blog I stated that I am a person who rarely feels angry, but it is different now. How can I make myself draw a piece of cloth hanging on a chair while thinking about my lovely son facing such an unfair fate? It will have to be knitted barbed wire to reflect my feelings.

But speaking of reflections: At the same time I still manage to feel immensely happy about yesterday’s Google chat tutorial and feedback on Part and Assignment 3 of this course. I am on my way and I feel that my technical and conceptual skills are developing. Following the talk there are some aspects I will need to pay particular attention to in the last part of the course:
What I will have to change is the way I choose my supports. This I normally do in an intuitive way and I often use “scrap” paper just to see the effects of some drawing materials. The problem is that a good drawing on a non-ideal piece of paper will always be limited by the effect of its support. So, from now on I will take care to always use good supports, especially when using water.
I will have another go at my assignment piece for Assignment 3 in preparation for assessment. My original intention of providing a “real-world” framework (orange houses in foreground and background) for a no longer real scenery (blue) did not work out in the way required for assessment. Since one of the main goals of Drawing 1 is a correct representation of foreground, middle ground and background, I will try to make this drawing again with particular regard to this skill.
Yesterday I bought a beautiful colour range of the water soluble pastels suggested by my tutor and I am looking forward a lot to trying them out straight away on a non-barbed piece of cloth ;o(.
As suggested by my tutor I intend to be both rigorous and energetic in progressing through the exercises in Part 4 of the course. What a great chance for me to express certain feelings via the human body and face. There is no such thing as coincidence.

On the results of the suggested reading and research I will report in a separate post.

Assignment 3: The finished drawing and a diversion

15 August, 2015. Today I finished the official drawing for Assignment 3. The places where I had ripped off the tissue I used to place the ghosts of the two old owners and their cat. I hope that this creates the impression of them always being there, but below the surface. In some places I increased the contrast and added rising dust, although I found that the latter interfered with the sketch of the demolished part of the house and so I had to be very selective here. Overall I think that I managed to stick to my plan and be inventive, using techniques new to me (e.g. charcoal on acrylic, black oil pastel and rubber etc.).

Assignment 3: finished piece
Mixed media: watercolour and conté pencils, acrylic colours, acrylic modelling paste, crushed willow charcoal and charcoal pencils, various tissues and papers

Assignment 3, detail: reflection

Assignment 3, detail: persons and cat “below the surface”

Self-assessment (p. 7 of the study guide):

1. Demonstration of technical and visual skills: I take care to make good use of the skills acquired so far in the course. Composition still isn’t a particular strength of mine, but with careful planning and experimentation I think that I can arrive at something interesting.

2. Quality of outcome: I try to be coherent in developing my stories from scratch. In Assignment 3 this included photographic observation, visiting the site, talking to the new owners, sketches and experimentation with different media. By including a fourth dimension (time) into an otherwise 3D view I hope to have created and communicated an emotionally interesting story. I will have to experiment a lot more with different backgrounds, in particular when using various papers to draw on. In Assignment 3, in some places the folds and creases produced were too prominent and had to be taken off, which on the other hand allowed me to make use of the unintentional new structure.

3. Demonstration of creativity: I think that by experimenting on a large scale I am starting to develop a personal voice, although there is so much to discover that at this stage I want to embrace every possible chance for development, even if it means abandoning a budding personal voice.

4. Context reflection: I have made a habit of researching artists, techniques and art history before embarking on a new project and in order to be able to make more informed decisions during projects. I also put down my own thoughts in my learning log in a consistent way.

---

When putting on the final layers of my assignment piece I knew that there was something else I wanted to do, using my new-found wild style of drawing and ideas from the set books. So I took some smooth white paper (the one coming with the frames for my exhibition, with green print on one side) and produced the following with lots of water and a bit of colour, ink and several drawing tools (sticks, pens). I did not look at my sketches or photos at all, but tried to draw what I felt at the moment of drawing without lifting the pen. I think that this exploratory type of mark-making is a bit like sculpting and this is why I want to try and enforce in Part 4.

Exploratory drawing of assignment subject
Watercolour, ink

Exploratory drawing, detail

Assignment 3: Preparations (stage 3: exploratory sketches and testing materials)

12 August, 2015. In order get a feel for the proportions and layout of the future drawing I first made a quick sketch of the outline of the demolished house as it had been in real life. The last piece of intact wall, which I want to be central in the finished drawing, is the facing corner with parts of the walls remaining on the left and right (hatched in the sketch). This piece looks – and was – fragile and insubstantial while still part of reality, which I want to express. At the same time it is the only fragment defining what had been there only a moment ago. The question is how prominent to make this fragment (e.g. by shifting the perspective to ground level). The house had been very small by modern standards, the old owners are long dead, so I feel it would not be a good idea to turn it into an “heroic ruin”.

Ink pen sketch of torn-down house on photo

In a preliminary sketch I tested both how a longer vertical would look, i.e. by stretching the view leaving out the sky and have the houses in the background reach as far as the top edge of the paper.

Pencil and marker sketch testing a change in paper format

I think that this view is better, although the demolished house looks stretched while less high. For this reason I want to give special emphasis to the wall fragment without making it larger than it was (acrylic paint, strong colour, texture). Both the parts already gone and “ghosts” of the previous owners will inhabit the garden as shadows, white dust will be rising behind the house. The houses at the back I want to provide the stage/frame for this scenery. I am thinking of preparing a background resembling the picture by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham on p. 102 of the study guide. In this respect I will have to think about the light, which will be provided by the evening sun coming from the right side.

14 August, 2015. Yesterday I started my experiments with different materials on an A2 carton. Since the different areas of the drawing will have to accomodate different media, I decided to have a first go at the drawing itself while experimenting. Here is a series of photos of the stages so far:

Rough sketch

Adding the background with acrylic, crushed willow charcoal and white conté pencil

Sticking on wrapping paper and transparent tissue as well as acrylic modelling paste for the ruin

Going over the foreground with white acrylic

Colouring the ruin and plot

Completing the house with ivory black conté pencil and drawing the previous owners in a space created by ripping off some tissue

I am not unhappy with the progress, so I am thinking of keeping this version to develop into a finished piece of work. This I want to do by carefully selecting areas to refine by drawing with conté pencils and pastel crayons as well as by adding or removing colour.

Assignment 3: Preparations – Getting to grips with the ephemeral (stage 2)

All websites mentioned in this blog were accessed on 11 and 13 August 2015. Any images shown are in the public domain.

13 August, 2015. At the moment there is little time to work for more than half an hour without getting interrupted, so I took the opportunity to do some research on how contemporary artists approach the ephemeral. I will have to decide on a suitable technique before drawing the part of the house already gone and the previous inhabitants.

I was very impressed by the way Jane Wilton makes visible the energy and path of the human breath (e.g. http://www.bespokeframing.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/lr-Sing-HH-MG-ILP0.jpg) and also liked the digital imaging project by Jing “Scott” Guo on https://www.behance.net/gallery/24290213/Processing-Model-of-an-Ephemeral-Drawing-Process. Both techniques evoked in me the impression of being witness of something casually and naturally transient. Monika Grzymala’s “Raumzeichnungen” (e.g. https://sofiliumm.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/miles-and-miles-of-sticky-tape-by-monika-grzymala_01.jpg, http://www.t-r-a-n-s-i-t.net/2015_%20Lodos.html) do the same, and in a very different, more delicate way John Wolesey’s Murray-Sunset refugia with 14 ventifacts
2008-10 (https://artblart.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/df110417_detail2.jpg) or even using something as basic as snow spray to draw on a window (see https://www.flickr.com/photos/44398757@N02/4854115811).

This is of course only a very tiny snippet of a vast field of interest. There seem to be as many approaches to the subject as there are artists and in one way or another many are fascinated by the paradox of finding a way to catch something transient, make it permanent for others to see and still not to lose the ephemeral feeling. I know that this will not be easy to convey. At the moment I am experimenting with a number of supports and drawing tools. Since I want my finished drawing to be a mixed media experiment, I also did some research on contemporary artists working with ruins.

Pictures of ruins are often so fascinating, because not only are people naturally drawn to symbols of mortality, but because they also offer very unusual insights and perspectives, as well as an intense interplay with the light, e.g. on http://sammlungenonline.albertina.at/?query=Inventarnummer=%5B14755%5D&showtype=record:

Ruin
Joseph August Knip (1777 – 1847)
Watercolour drawing

Inevitably, the depicted ruins belong to either the romantic or the tragic category. Both together in one picture I found in Gottfried Salzmann’s wonderful watercolour “Ground Zero” from 2001 (http://www.salzburgmuseum.at/635.html?pmid=93). The same applies to work by Tacita Dean (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/dean-the-wreck-of-worthing-pier-p20257) shown in 2014 as part of the Tate exhibition called Ruin Lust (http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/ruin-lust) or the Pergamon Altar by Christian Wilberg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pergamon_Altar#/media/File:Ruins_of_Pergamon_by_Christian_Wilberg_in_1879.jpg):

One picture by Lowry probably comes closest to my own subject (http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/lowry-and-painting-modern-life/lowry-and-painting-modern-life-roo-3):

The techniques differ, of course, but they have in common a great sense of desolation, even, as is the case in Lowry’s painting, in the presence of humans. In my drawing I need to have the memory of two people present. I have a first idea for a solution (transparent tissue) to this problem, but will need to see whether it is practicable.

Assignment 3: Preparations (stage 1)

08 August, 2015. Time flies and since I have got much less time available during the summer holidays than planned I thought that it might be sensible to start the preparations for Assignment 3 straight away, to switch between exercises and assignment.

A few days ago an old neighbour’s house was torn down to make room for a more modern house. It was fascinating to watch and take photos of the various stages of the process, which took no longer than a total of about 15 hours. I would have liked to prepare a sketchbook, but the giant caterpillar and his immensely skilled operator worked so efficiently that I had no chance. Never mind, I have a good photo series of the events and will use them to create a large-scale drawing combining before and after impressions to scrutinise the value of the tangible assets of a lifetime, in which I hope to include all the skills learned so far.

Here are the key stages of the event. These I will use as the basis for my preliminary sketches: