Part 2 Project 6 Ex 5

Mixed media

For this exercise I returned to a sketch I'd done earlier.  It's of my favourite armchair; one where I can curl up and all becomes right with the world.  It's my bolthole and feels very safe.

My bolthole

This is drawn from a point at the dining table.  The perspective isn't good so I determined to try again and do a better job.

In this piece of work I need to explore mixed media and ones that are outside my comfort zone.  Being the coward that I am my first attempt was in pencil and so awful I threw it away.  The next image is my second attempt, again with pencil.  I decided that I wanted to show the context but that the chair really needed to be the focus.

My bolthole in pencil

This was done in just a few minutes using a cube as a basis for my chair shape.  Other than taking out my faint cube lines there was no additional use of an erasure.  This is something I'm very proud of as it was an entirely necessary piece of equipment just a few weeks ago.

My bolthole in conte crayon

This was done without any cube to guide me and no initial pencil sketch - just straight into conte crayon.  Although I've used conte crayons a little I don't really find them easy to use, they seem quite scratchy.  My marks were made quickly and I ignored what I thought was "wrong" and just did it "right".  I used three colours and no other medium.  What I ended up with was a rounded looking chair that is in proportion and looks as though it sits in the corner of the room.

My bolthole in water soluble pencil crayon

This also was done quickly and it's starting to seem as though I get better results when I work that way.  It goes back to what I've thought before - I need to stop labouring and just do it!

I drew in crayon and then used water to soften the edges a bit.  I did a sort blue wash throughout and it is effective.  I decided on blue because the chair is blue and although it is a cold colour the chair still looks inviting.

My bolthole in ink 

To say I'm scared of my dip pen and inks is something of an understatement so I bit the bullet and drew with a broad nib.  The work I did in the previous exercise helped.  I used both the wide part of the nib and the side of it. I mixed a very well watered cobalt blue ink wash for the chair and used some fine liner marks for the fringe on the bottom of the chair and the floorboards..The walls were a pale black ink deepened for the shadows.  The wooden floor is in pencil crayon put on in lines the direction of the boards.  The sideboard looks insignificant which I don't think is a problem.

My instructions say that I should be looking at my subject from a variety of viewpoints and I'm very aware that I haven't done so. I tried to see the chair from a different aspect but I found I could make precious little change because of the position it's in.  The straight on position is all I could realistically manage.

In pencil to get the feel of the chair

I didn't toil over this and the shapes are getting easier to draw - not just this shape but generally I'm finding I can look and make make better judgements.

Fine liner and felt pen

This was real scribble.  I used fine liners in various gauges to get tone.  It's a very curvy chair.

Oil pastel and soft pastel

I find oil pastels aren't my favourite medium and I don't particularly like the effect.  Here I used a mixture of both oil and soft pastel.  The oil didn't like drawing over the soft pastel (predictably).

My final effort is to start with a water colour wash and then wash my chair in a deeper tone of the same colour as the wash (raw sienna).  I end up with a chair shape that I outlined.  I wanted to indicate the pattern on the chair fabric and did blue marks that I wasn't happy with.  I soften it with a cream pastel and it looked a bit better.  The dark wall shadows are in ink.  This was an experiment that didn't particularly work but it is shows that that I am less afraid to try out new things.

Water colour, soft pastel and ink

In this exercise I have gained some confidence with unaccustomed media without having to worry too much about anything else.