My notes for these reflections have sat mostly-finished for weeks, as I struggle again with frustration and how that then affects my mental health. Fun.
As ever, I really appreciated my tutor's feedback. I find it so useful to get it to help direct my thoughts and next actions. At the start of this section, the exercises helped me to explore sketching when out-and-about. I really enjoyed discovering reportage artists and trying out some work to emulate their styles. This recommendation from my last feedback has proved invaluable in working out how other artists achieve their look and more importantly the kind of decisions they have to make.
My tutor recommended that I try and draw more from scenes involving a lot of movement. It's hard given my day-to-day to contrive those sorts of situations, so I have been thinking about how I could try and do this from video sources. My first sketch using ink and wash from the bus stop did give me more inspiration to sketch more often, and I have tried to make a conscious effort to take a sketchbook with me more often.
I hadn't considered how the environmental conditions might affect my choices. I don't mind discomfort when I am sketching out-and-about, but I really did find it difficult to work when it was so cold and wet, even with gloves on. I need to find ways of overcoming aspects like that which become obstacles and lean into them more. I get the feeling that I am scared to let emotional content bleed into my work. Which is ironic because it probably does anyway subconsciously. The more think about it, the more I acknowledge that there is fear there. I am scared of the vulnerability that will cause.
There is so much swimming around in my head at the moment, I know that my fear of putting these things down on paper (I know my sketchbook is a safe place, after all) is holding me back. I am getting into a catch-22: I am frustrated because I am not happy with my rendering skills. I know the best way to improve them is to experiment and play. But I am too scared to do that knowing that it will look 'rubbish'. It's a fear of rejection, even though I know rationally no one will reject me or the work. It's exasperating!
My tutor noted that I should invest more time into the people-sketching exercise to add more pages. This is something I think I'd like to do anyway, but I think I will revisit it closer to the submission window and/or through my normal sketching habit. I have to be conscious of how much mental bandwidth I have to use and focus properly; at the moment my focus needs to be on section four.
My tutor also recommended that I start thinking about more experiments with paint and light. I have noticed as part of other reflections that I am keenly drawn to lighting. My tutor, having seen some of my work in gouache thinks that this medium might be a good avenue to explore. I follow the artist James Gurney on YouTube; I am drawn to his gouache sketchbook work he does in the wild. He's an amazing painter and very generous with his wisdom and knowledge. You can tell he's an amazing educator. I have invested in his book dealing with light and colour [1], it's amazing!
My tutor also linked me to the gouache work of another artist I have followed, James Albon [2]. I found a related page where Albon used gouache from life in a life-drawing session. It has his signature brush marks but I really like how he's been able to use the medium here.
Echoing section three's structure of taking life sketches and developing them further the next post shows gouache work that he's developed in his studio. I love the sense of narrative to the piece below; it has a timeless quality.
There is an amazing use of light and colour in this work, so I think I will try and focus some of my sketchbook efforts into thinking more about light and colour. I have already taken an online course [3] which demonstrates these ideas in a digital painting. I am struggling with how my preferences translate to digital painting, so it will be good to try and do more there. I know I promised myself that I would try and make all of this course traditionally executed, but I feel like my skills are atrophying and not developing how I would like.
There is dissonance in my head between my propensity to use ink and line vs being able to render a painterly style. I am hoping by experimenting more with gouache that I can try out some options and discover something to set my mind at ease.
My tutor thought it would be really interesting for me to draw or paint memories from my life living abroad in Oman. I don't feel comfortable doing this at the moment as a lot of the memories are too indistinct in my mind's eye. I am visiting my mum soon, so I will see how much photographic reference I can find to fill in the gaps and start to recapture the fond memories more distinctly. Certainly, my work in this section has taught me the power of photos when added to my process, and so I should make the most of that. My work and photos display two different versions of the truth, and so when developing my work I can afford to select which composite truth I want to convey through a developed work.
All-in-all I didn't find public spaces much of a challenge I was happy to be there doing my thing, even during my assignment I was stood in the middle of the market sketching the people and things around me. I was like a stone in the river, people just flowed around me and I was not self-conscious at all. This is a great feeling to have, and might be a strength I can lean on?
I have found that when on location I work best with a fountain pen and a sketchbook with a nice, hard, cover. I have enjoyed using watercolours as part of this work, but I think I need to work out an efficient way of using water brushes so that I can work more quickly. It might be an interesting experiment to take a few water-soluble wax pastels with me as a way of laying down blocks of colour and texture when I need them.
I do seem to be quite impatient as a person, and so I think that I need to have a greater tolerance for imperfection. I am definitely getting better in this regard and it's something I can lean into. In its way, it is also a weakness and I should really focus on not losing too much detail from my work. I suppose it needs to be a case of creating a form of visual shorthand that I need to develop.
My tutor suggested that my night-time painting of the town hall might be a good candidate to develop further into a more finished piece. It did make me wonder if now was the time to start taking ideas from my sketchbook and developing them to more resolved pieces in their own right. This made me think particularly about section five and then on to formal assessment. It's not clear to me how work is assessed for this module, given that generally the coursework hasn't encouraged me to take things to a resolved conclusion. Perhaps as part of section five, I can start to do this as part of the culmination of the topics I have learnt throughout the course?
I was pleased with the final piece from the assignment, but I do tend to find that my characters can lose some of their energy. Weirdly I seem to be able to capture people quite well in person. Even when I create chimaeras of people over a period of time, they seem to be realistic and energetic, but when I so a 'made up' scene, they can get stiff and wooden. I think that I may need to invest more time in gestural drawing, particularly as a warm-up exercise.
I have found (and continue to find) it hard to identify my strengths. I have tried to research how other artists do this but have so far not come up with anything conclusive. I am pondering whether it might be useful to use this as a line of questioning for my tutor to give me some specific advice? My tutor thinks that humour is a strength of mine, which I don't quite see. It feels like another dissonant conflict between silliness and serious skills/realism. I am not sure what to do about it at the moment.
References
Gurney, J. (2010). Color and light. 16th ed. Kansas, Mo.: Andrews McMeel.
Albon, J. (2015). Gouache in the studio. [online] James Albon. Available at: https://jamesalbon.wordpress.com/2015/04/09/gouache-in-the-studio/.
Smith, S. (2020). Learn the color and light fundamentals – Blurone. [online] Blurone.es. Available at: https://www.blurone.es/en/courses/learn-the-color-and-light-fundamentals/.
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