PART THREE OUTDOORS

PROJECT 1: TREES

EXERCISE 1: SKETCHING INDIVIDUAL TREES

I started this exercise by drawing an apple tree from my garden, looking through my kitchen window. You can see that the viewpoint is from a height because i am looking down at it, from my house. Then I moved to a different window, where i saw a huge light contrast on my Cupressus tree. You could not see the branches, just the needles. I only concentrated on how the light built the shape of the tree. I realised that i should’ve put more dark in the darkest areas, but i could not achieve that with the pencil i was using. I then did a slightly bent over pine tree. This pine tree was quite far away from my window but it intrigued me because of the shape.

 

EXERCISE 2: LARGER OBSERVATIONAL STUDY OF AN INDIVIDUAL TREE

My first study was with charcoal. I was sat at the edge of a cliff, where a tree was growing from the bottom. I drew what i could see straight on with my viewfinder. The next one a big tree growing on a field. I did not show a lot of detail, however, the tree altogether had a nice atmosphere and a lot of branches tangled in each other. It had something to it that made me unable to concentrate on the details too much. Then i did a pencil drawing of another old tree. The light was very bright, and covered most of the tree so there was not much shadow, so it was harder to show the form in 3-dimension. The next sketch is a fragment of a tree, and it was in a more contrasting light in more detail. It was easier to present in the space.

EXERCISE 3: STUDY OF SEVERAL TREES

I changed my medium to felt tip coloured pens to practice different mediums. I started drawing several trees, with a huge old tree on the first plain. I tried to build the shape of a tree using a high contrast. I added some yellow to the parts of the trees that had the most light covering them. I also tried to show that there are trees in the background but less important. Then i drew another several trees from the distance. In that space there were a lot of pine trees mingling with other types of trees. I tried the same view, with the pine trees only with a big tree in the front, using pastels. I should do more detail on the front tree because the branches do not stand out from the trees in the background. Next i did a pathway between the trees trying to show perspective. I had a problem as that pen ran out, so couldn’t add more black to the drawing. The right side of the drawing was in shadow more than the left, so i should’ve added more black to that side.

PROJECT 2: LANDSCAPE

EXERCISE 1 CLOUD FORMATIONS AND TONE

I couldn’t do that exercise properly as it was always bad weather, or when i came home from work it was dark so i tried to catch some clouds from the window and i did one drawing in charcoal of storm clouds where the clouds were very dark but you could see the sun shining through in some parts. In the next drawing i tried to draw the sun shining through in a 3b pencil. I then did some different formation of clouds using a pencil. This is a combination of clouds that travel very fast in the sky towards my direction so we can see the big clouds over our heads but the small ones are travelling in our direction from a distance. I should add some landscape context to that drawing to show that cloud in bigger perspective.

EXERCISE 3: 360 DEGREES STUDIES

I did three drawings concentrating on trees, changing the viewpoint  and observe how the setting of the tree changes. So i have completely different viewpoint of background but the same tree in the middle and i know now, using the different viewpoints, how to make the drawing more dynamic. The viewpoint was changed only slightly but each drawing is different because of this.

PROJECT 3: COMPOSITION

EXERCISE 1: DEVELOPING YOUR STUDIES

For this exercise i used soft pastel on sugar paper and i tried to add to my previous drawings by adding more detail and colour. Overall i think for a detailed study this medium was not appropriate. I only added some colour to previous drawings. I thought i could concentrate on detail but this medium was not letting me be precise. I caught some light on the branch and on the tree and the fence but that was all that i achieved.

EXERCISE 2: FOREGROUND, MIDDLEGROUND AND BACKGROUND

For this exercise i chose the same landscape as the previous exercise but i came closer to the trees. So i did the first tree on the first plain with more detail, another one with less attention and a third tree with much less attention. I tried to achieve perspective in that landscape. I live in a hillside area so there is not much sky in the background, just hills. I think you can clearly see the foreground, middleground and background in my work.

PROJECT 4: PERSPECTIVE

EXERCISE PARALLEL AND ANGULAR PERSPECTIVE

For this exercise, i went to Jervaulx Abbey because i thought it was a good place to look for some perspective in the ruins and I did some sketches using pen. For some of those sketches i tried to define the distance using a bold mark, and the far end i would use gentle lines. I had to draw quickly because the light was changing fast and all these elements looked different every minute. Next i did two drawings of the gallop track where the fence turned. I find looking through the perspective view interesting .

EXERCISE 3: AERIAL OR ATMOSPHERIC PERSPECTIVE

The first drawing was of the ruins near me and then I did some charcoal drawings looking around the estate where i live. I concentrated more on the tonal valuation than the line drawing.

Next i did an old railway track which was interesting because the railway tracks illuminated with light and gave an perspective of massive distance when they disappear.

PROJECT 5 TOWNSCAPES

EXERCISE 1: SKETCHBOOK OF TOWNSCAPE DRAWINGS

I am not happy with that part of this project because doing this i needed to use some old photos to complete this exercise as i work very late and live in a deep countryside therefore i cannot get to a town quickly. I used photos from my Whitby trip and i selected some interesting places. Another thing i wasn’t confident with was doing the 10×10 cm drawings. I did a couple of these drawings and cropped some interesting objects from my my photo,but to be honest i am not happy because I had to draw from the computer screen not from what i could see directly.

EXERCISE 2: STUDY OF TOWNSCAPE USING LINE

For this exercise i found an interesting backstreet where a lot of barrels from the beer stood and the whole street was interesting because it looked very unkempt and it had plenty of dramatic effect with the guttering pipes sticking out from the buildings. I did two drawings using pen and the final drawing was using ink with bamboo stick. I wanted to use a nib but i found out that it was broken so i couldn’t use it. I made a lot of mistakes and couldn’t draw very precisely using the pen. In the end i watered down the ink by painting over the drawing with water.

EXERCISE 3: A LIMITED PALETTE STUDY

For this exercise I used my Whitby photos again. I did my first drawing in charcoal. At first it was meant to be a primary sketch for colour but i ended up finishing it in black and white. I wasn’t happy with the composition so i changed to portrait view and i used only 3 colours on grey paper. The most important thing i wanted to show in this picture was show the lightest places, like the white block on the building. I found that part of the drawing very interesting.

EXERCISE 4: STATUES

For this exercise I had a big problem with finding a statue so i drew some chimneys. The three chimneys looked like statues on the block. Next I found a cross on the church roof This drawing is not perfect because i looked at the cross from quite a distance. i was looking in the direction of the sun and i didn’t see any elements other than the outline. Sometimes the light changed for a few seconds and I thought I saw some different dimension but everything moved too fast with the light so it was difficult to catch the moment. I tried to catch it with a soft pencil. Next i went to a cemetery and i drew what i saw. The difficulty was that some stone was very wet and therefore looked darker and others were dark because of the shadow so they had the same shade.

John Virtue

John Virtue

John Virtue is a landscape painter who mostly paints black and white acrylic painting where he joins line drawing with abstract elements.

His work is mostly done on canvas and I am familiar with some of his work featuring urban architecture and sea side scenes. My first impressions were that the works were done in chalk or charcoal but they are paintings. The artist uses his own language to show expression his work is dynamic and appear to be moving, you cannot concentrate on individual elements we can only see the painting as a whole. We see constant movement in the town, sea and sky.  The perspective and proportions are visible but are not clear, the buildings are often hidden in the darkness or clouds but then appear again sometimes moved or transformed but this does not bother us. Looking at his work I had a significant but unexplained feeling and I had a feeling that everything important in this course was not significant but that you can find them later in a different shattered meaning.

Landscape No 710, 2003-4, by John Virtue

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/great-works/great-works-landscape-no-710-20034-by-john-virtue-8485446.html

John Virtue. The Sea

http://wsimag.com/art/12166-john-virtue-the-sea

Tacita Dean and George Seurat

Tacita Dean and George Seurat

I would like to compare these two artists and show different approaches in landscape.  Comparing the work of Tacita ‘Fatigues’ to the work of Seurat ‘Landscape with Houses’ can be very hard as we are comparing the works of a modern artist, who uses photography and a modern approach to her work, with the works of an artist who used a different medium in a different time period.  The work ‘Fatigues’ which was done in chalk on blackboard has excellent depth and in a way reminds us of a good black and white photo. The drawing is a panoramic format where the mountains are central and bound by the black frame of the background and this distinguishes it from a photograph where we normally have a composition that is open. Here the artist has picked the most interesting elements and has given the piece a very dramatic feel through the right selection and composition.

Seurat used conte crayon which is a completely different medium in with which lines are softer and it is harder to achieve shadow. In his work we have to look for shapes, it is hard to define the different elements and the vanishing point disappears softly. In his works we do not have a distinguishing factor between foreground, middle ground and background. The exact proportions shown in his works help us find a perspective even if it is not clear at first. His work is very dark and without tonal evaluation, they have a nostalgic character which gives us delicate and poetic feelings not like in Tacita’s works which are more dynamic and expressive.

You cannot see any connection between the two artists but they can both focus the view on the most important part of the drawing and evoke emotions.  For example George Seurat in his work ‘Landscape’ focused our attention using conte crayon showed perspective and focusing our attention to the telegraphic poles without using too much detail and lines. On the other hand in the work of Tacita shows great depth in itself and we can see great distance. This is an example of a work where the artist has not included a foreground and has done this on purpose and well as this is a sort of manipulation where the artist has avoided the inclusion of the foot of the mountains and thanks to this the work looks very impressive.

Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer

German artist during the renaissance (1471-1528). An artist which has some sentimental value to me as when I was 15, so a long time ago, I had a chance to see Durer’s work at an exhibition in National Gallery in Krakow it was the year 1988. In a period of time in Poland in which there only existed two television channels, there where there were not many colour editions of albums and there wasn’t internet the society was very interested in any larger cultural events. So I also was interested in seeing this exhibition and after seeing his work I started drawing and decided to go to art collage. This is why it will be a great pleasure to write this short essay.

Albrecht Durer came from Nuremberg in Germany but after traveling you can say that he inherited Italian style especially Venetian mixed with original Northern European, this style had a large influence on art. The artist was versatile and did paintings and graphic work in which he showed animals, people and landscapes. In landscapes everything fascinated him, not only did the whole picture had a meaning but the little details such as plants, animals and anything out of the ordinary. His work has a lot of symbolism I am mostly fascinated by his apocalyptic views, the emotion in these works with conjunction to intricate drawing, he used expressive line and showed the smallest details but yet he still managed to link everything with the norm for renascence art such as soft detail of faces and add ancient architecture and show its perspective with every visual effect. Durer very often showed elements of the New Testament where the people were portrayed in scenes containing architecture modern to that period which to the perspective of the viewer special meaning.

In his watercolour works he was able to show in great detail different kinds of herbs, shapes of leafs, small branches and many shades of green. While looking at his work you could say that he drew every individual bit of grass with great detail. With every little detail he created a great composition. Such observational skills require a great deal of patience. In the times of renaissance artists did lots of sketches from nature as sketching things from nature such as animals and plants they were than able to use these in later works. In our times we can document nature using photographs but is it the same?

The study of landscapes done in a very realistic way was mostly backgrounds for a religious scene but they were also very time consuming and were also very important like the rest of the elements. Durer was always precise to create the perfect painting; his attention to detail is a great example to show during this course. He used the rules of Vitruvius when looking at proportions and the rules of Seneca while looking at composition which said to look at the most interesting objects and people to create a masterpiece.

In conclusion at the stage of this course I can say that the artist was excellent at observing nature, he knew how to use perspective to create effect and knew how to get proportions right. For me the artist will always remind me of his series of Apocalypse work s where the artist was able to show things like fire, lightning, thunder clouds and also show emotion and even what people are thinking and saying.

The Knight Death And The Devil

Great Piece of Turf

View of Arco