Part 2 Project 5 Ex 3

This is a completely different approach using line and tone to create a feeling of volume and movement. I thought about how animals can be depicted in dramatic ways and that led me to recall an incident in the garden where an owl swooped down on the cat.  The cat and the observers were all shaken but unharmed.  The memory is a strong one.  I thought that because it was "real" I might be able to make it live.

I looked on the internet at owl images that might evoke the sense of drama I remember and I found this by Nolon Stacey.  Whilst I don't want to copy it, it gives me the proportions and feeling that I want.

Barn Owl in flight -  Nolon Stacey - pencil drawing

http://www.nolonstacey.com/photo_11052124.html 

I chose some grey Ingres paper, pencils, graphite sticks and white pastel.  I didn't bother with too much close detail because I wanted to show energy and speed.

Once again I have the problem of the page being too big to scan.  I had to scan in two parts then stitch the images together.  I printed the page on A4 then scanned again so what you see here is a well altered image.  However, the idea hasn't transferred too badly.

My owl

Owl photo

Although I find photographing my work very difficult I tried to take a picture of the owl.  The difference between the scan and the photo is very marked.  The scan, in spite of the manipulation gives a more accurate representation.


The owl was drawn very quickly and has the energy I was striving for.  The white highlights made a huge difference when I added them at the end of drawing.  I haven't made any marks that look like feathers yet there is no doubt they are there.

Part 2 Project 5 Ex 2

This exercise asks me to select an object, either bones or shells, that will lend itself to strong tonal handling.  As I have no bones in my collection it has to be a shell.  The one I've chosen is quite large with bumps and stripes.  It is suggested that this work might take 2 hours.  I have a lot of trouble drawing quickly so I was pleased to have finished with a few minutes to spare.

A shell with strong tonal values

At first I didn't know where to start but after I drew an outline everything slipped into place and I'm quite pleased with the outcome.  I think the shell looks round and the inside looks deep and mysterious. I was unsure how I was going to show the bumps but in the end they just appeared as I put in deep tones and highlights.  Because it rested on its far point light came through from underneath the shell.

Part 2 Project 5 Ex 1b

Animal line study

I wanted to see if I could apply the same framework principle to my sitting hare photograph.  I began by using the skeleton image from the last post.

I drew in the framework

And then put flesh on the bones.

This isn't the most brilliant depiction of a hare but I feel that I have established a way to draw not only a hare but most animals.

I think the next thing to do is to try to get some life into my hare.  I used my pastels and tried to put into practice what I have learnt.

One startled hare

I stupidly began my image too high up the page and ran out of room for the ears - the most distinctive part of the hare!  I think I've been a little to heavy handed with the whiskers but I'm pleased with the texture and the colours of the fur.  I like the eyes as well.

My final task in this exercise is to make a large drawing using the knowledge I've gained in my close look at a hare.  I've chosen to use white A2 paper in portrait format and decided to draw a hare in a pose of alertness that would emphasise its power. I don't know whether I was having a bad day but at first I just couldn't get anything even approaching a hare with attitude. Eventually I went back to a method that's worked for me before - I taped a pencil to a long stick and just drew.  (First I lightly drew my framework).

Free drawing at arms length plus a bit

This felt a bit better and I built up a texture of fur by holding my pencil at the very end.  I needed to tweak some of the shapes a bit but slowly my hare came to life.

I used pencil, soft pastel and conte crayons for the hare. Unlike my photo I thought it would be more interesting to make the surroundings more varied than just grass.  I found it tricky to differentiate between the grass and the undergrowth so I did it by using colour in the form of a red berberis and a few flowers.

The garden was done in two parts.  Part one was the top which I printed with watered acrylic paint using a bit of packaging.  Later the flowers were done in soft pastel. The grass was a base of rubbed soft pastel overlaid with a combination of soft pastel and conte crayon blades of grass.  

I felt happy with my hare portrait but I don't get the same feeling about this.  I think maybe the idea of giving the hare a context was a bit daunting and I didn't give it the amount of care I should have. When I look back at my photo of the hare I have managed to capture the alertness the hare showed to its environment.

My photo

Ready for action

If I'd felt more confident about it I think it would have been wiser from the composition point of view to have the hare at an angle to the viewer.  This is another first - I've never drawn animals before so I'm not too unhappy.


I remembered seeing a famous painting of a hare a long time ago and it took me some time to find it.  It is by Albrecht Durer and was completed in 1502 and is in watercolour and gouache.

Young hare by Albrecht Durer - 1502
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Hare

The text told me that Durer faced the same challenges as me - the hares fur lies in all directions and it is mottled all over with a variety of colours.  He made a very good job of his work - it's almost a scientific study.

I also found this lovely site showing lots of animals:

http://vlstudiovisits.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/kimberly-santini-capturing-light-with.html

On the site Santini offers us another image not of a hare but a rabbit.  It is treated in a very different way.

Rabbit by Kimberley Santini

I couldn't resist this by Aaminah Snowdon.

Hare by Aaminah Snowdon

http://www.artistsandillustrators.co.uk/featured-artist/animals-wildlife/1061/featured-artist-aaminah-snowdon

Lucy Newton is a wildlife artist I admire and she too has drawn a hare.

Hare by Lucy Newton
http://dalliancedesign.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/artist-lucy-newton.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Hare
http://vlstudiovisits.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/kimberly-santini-capturing-light-with.htmlhttp://www.artistsandillustrators.co.uk/featured-artist/animals-wildlife/1061/featured-artist-aaminah-snowdon
http://dalliancedesign.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/artist-lucy-newton.html

Part 2 Project 5 Ex 1a

Animal line study

Nowadays we don't have any pets but we do have a whole range of wildlife that is welcome in our rural garden.

In the shed

Eating the slugs I hope

On the bird table

Stealing the bird food

Watching

It's always special when the hare turns up so I've decided to do some studies of hares although I'm afraid I only have this one photo of my own.

I thought understanding the basic framework might help a bit so I looked on line and this site was useful because it gave both a sitting and an erect hare skeleton.

http://www.dkimages.com/discover/Home/Animals/Mammals/Rabbits-Hares-and-Pikas/Anatomy/index.html

Sitting hare
http://www.dkimages.com/discover/Home/Animals/Mammals/Rabbits-Hares-and-Pikas/Anatomy/index.html

Erect hare
http://www.dkimages.com/discover/Home/Animals/Mammals/Rabbits-Hares-and-Pikas/Anatomy/index.html

Hare running
http://www.skullcleaning.com/skull-cleaning-services/3/Skeleton-Articulation.htm

The running hare is in a very similar posture as the Golden Hare of Jackie Morris on my previous post.

Golden hare - Jackie Morris
http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/gallery/2013/oct/04/how-to-draw-hares-jackie-morris

I also found this site which takes me through drawing a hare in great detail.

http://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-draw-animals-hares-and-rabbits--cms-21262

This image shows the muscles of a hare.

Hare muscles
http://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-draw-animals-hares-and-rabbits--cms-21262

This image shows me how the artist "clothes" the animal in muscle and then skin and fur.

This is my own image of our garden hare:

The hare was very alert to everything around him but took a fairly laid back approach to hiding in the shrubs. It's position is like the sitting skeleton. His eyes were huge and his ears, long and dark.

In my research around drawing animals I have found an essay on poses; once again it's design.tutplus

http://design.tutsplus.com/articles/how-to-draw-animals-the-importance-of-drawing-a-pose--vector-24537

The basic premise is that any animal can be drawn if attention is given to its framework - the skeleton. The author uses big muscle masses and bones to define the shapes and then adds flesh.

Hare framework
http://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-draw-animals-hares-and-rabbits--cms-21262

I had a go at using this and was surprised at the result.

Hare using the framework - pencil

The framework I used is just about visible.  It seemed to take all the doubt out of my drawing.  The essay suggests that any animal, in any pose can be drawn in this way.  A knowledge of perspective is helpful when things start to get a bit more complicated but the same principles apply.

I tried again using the running hare as my model:

My rear circle must have been too small because the back legs are not powerful enough.

I continued using this method of creating a structure and did these sketches.

Pencil and fine liner

Pencil

Feet in fine liner

Ears in pencil and charcoal

Eye - graphite and pastel

Drawing these components has been really useful in helping me to understand how the hare is put together.



http://www.dkimages.com/discover/Home/Animals/Mammals/Rabbits-Hares-and-Pikas/Anatomy/index.html

http://www.skullcleaning.com/skull-cleaning-services/3/Skeleton-Articulation.htm

http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/gallery/2013/oct/04/how-to-draw-hares-jackie-morris

http://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-draw-animals-hares-and-rabbits--cms-21262

http://design.tutsplus.com/articles/how-to-draw-animals-the-importance-of-drawing-a-pose--vector-24537

Part 2 Project 5 Research point

Contemporary artists who include animals in their work.

Kohei Nawa

Nawa is a Japanese artist who has recently produced a series called PixelCell (2009 - ).  These images use taxidermy animals including deer, cheetahs and coyotes.

PixellCell rabbit - Kohei Nawa

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2011/09/glass-pixel-cell-rabbit-by-kohei-nawa/

The taxidermy rabbit was covered in transparent beads.  Nawa says of his work "by covering the surface of an object with transparent glass beads, the existance of the object itself is replaced by 'a husk of light', and the new vision 'the cell of an image' is shown." 

There are lots more, some with colour:

Toy bird - Kohei Nawa
https://artsy.net/artwork/kohei-nawa-pixcell-toy-bird

I'm not at all sure I would want to work with taxidermy animals but the approach is certainly original.

Jackie Morris

http://www.jackiemorris.co.uk/

I happened across this workshop on the internet and it highlights the very specific stages Jackie Morris goes through in the creation of her illustration.

http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/gallery/2013/oct/04/how-to-draw-hares-jackie-morris

The Golden Hare - Jackie Morris

http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/gallery/2013/oct/04/how-to-draw-hares-jackie-morris

When I looked further I found that Jackie has illustrated books for both children and adults and that some of her work is quite magical.

Jackie Morris
http://www.jackiemorris.co.uk/blog/kids-need-read-usa/jackie_morris_lrrh_blog-2/

/

Jackie Morris
http://www.jackiemorris.co.uk/blog/help-musicians-calendar/5h/

Nolon Stacey

http://www.nolonstacey.com/section378791.html

Quite different is the work of Nolon Stacey.  This self taught artist uses graphite pencils to render wildlife in very believable situations.

Otter - Nolon Stacey
http://nolonstacey.smithykettlewell.com/otter/

The images take many hours to complete.

Hare portrait - Nolon Stacey
 http://nolonstacey.smithykettlewell.com/hare-portrait/

It's hard to think these are pencil drawings - they look like photographs.

http://www.jackiemorris.co.uk/blog/help-musicians-calendar/5h

http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/gallery/2013/oct/04/how-to-draw-hares-jackie-morris

http://www.jackiemorris.co.uk/blog/kids-need-read-usa/jackie_morris_lrrh_blog
http://nolonstacey.smithykettlewell.com/home
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2011/09/glass-pixel-cell-rabbit-by-kohei-nawa
https://artsy.net/artwork/kohei-nawa-pixcell-toy-bird

Part 2 Project 4 Ex 4

Monochrome

I have always thought of monochrome as being black and white so I was surprised to find from the various dictionary definitions I looked at that it can be various tones of one colour.  I checked to see what artists of some renown had done with monochrome and wasn't surprised to find that black and white predominated.
Here are some that I liked.

Pablo Picasso (1881- 1973) used monochrome to make a powerful political statement in Guernica

Guernica - Pablo Picasso. 1937
http://www.pablopicasso.org/guernica.jsp

Yves Klein (1928-1962) was concerned almost exclusively by the colour blue.  He spent years researching the colour and ultimately developed International blue.

Yves Klein - Large Blue Anthropometry  1960
http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artwork/27

Ben Nicholson 91994-1982) made a series of white reliefs.

White relief by Ben Nicholson. 1935
https://www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/artists-a-z/n/artist/ben-nicholson/object/1935-white-relief-gma-2149

Onkar Singh Kular is a British designer who became fed up of being served his drink too milky.  He designed a set of 128 mugs following the Pantone brown colour range.  The colour of the mug indicates the amount of milk taken. Good fun.

China mugs by Onkar Singh Kular
http://we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2005/01/british-designe.php#.VDQZyfldWxo

I've certainly had to put some thought into what I might draw.  My instructions say I have to combine natural and made made items and I want to try something that requires me to depict different textures.   I decided to keep it simple and draw a boiled egg in a metal eggcup on a plate.  I made  sketch.

Boiled egg sketch

At first glance I didn't see the very strong reflections from the egg cup - once I'd seen them they were very hard to ignore because they were so dominant.  The metal of the egg cup made highlights in very unexpected places.  The spoon handle is too long.  I found that once I had the tones in place the white plate has disappeared and it looked more like pewter.

I decided to see what happened if I drew a plate in white pastel on grey sugar paper.  I got the tones with black pastel which I blended.

Plate in pastel.

This approach gave me a plate I was pleased with - it was white but also had some depth.  I see good reason to use a tinted paper although the sugar paper rubbed up in an unacceptable way.

I tried a variety of sketches in preparation for my monochrome image.

I put my plate on a tray to get some sort of context

How the egg sits in the egg cup

The spoon - not quite right

Choosing my medium

I chose a mid grey pastel paper, soft pastels, conte crayons and my graphite sticks.

The image is necessarily cropped because my scanner will only copy A4.  However, I think the crops have an interest as there seems to be something "unsaid" or unknown.

Boiled egg (1)

Boiled egg (2)

I enjoyed doing this and there are parts that work well.  The plate has depth and the complicated reflections are interesting.  The plate is set on the left hand side of the tray but this is balanced by the (almost) empty space on the tray to the right.  I've tried to get the smooth shininess of the plate to look different the that of the egg cup.

I'm not sure there is enough contrast between the tray and the background colour and the perspective is a bit awry.  There are points where I've blended with my finger rather too enthusiastically and in doing so lost some texture.

http://www.pablopicasso.org/guernica.jsp

http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artwork/27

http://we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2005/01/british-designe.php#.VDQZyfldWxo

https://www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/artists-a-z/n/artist/ben-nicholson/object/1935-white-relief-gma-2149