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