Part 3 - Assignment 3 - Final piece

I've been pretty frustrated about my success rate for Assignment 3 so I'm changing everything in the hope that I can kick start myself into a decent piece of work that feels satisfying.  I need to stop messing about and just get on with it.  Have I wasted my time with the water colour I wonder? Maybe not from an experimental point of view but certainly I have when I've an assignment to complete. 

I'm returning to the sketch I did of the Tumbledown Shed in Treswell Wood.  First there was an outdoor sketch and then a drawing completed at home.

Initial sketch of Tumbledown Shed

Drawing 1 of Tumbledown Shed

Having made the decision to pursue this I had one or two thoughts

• my tonal work wasn't wasn't good enough
• the foreground tree saplings looked as though they were crossing out the shed
• the large trees were ill defined so lost their impact (another tonal problem)

I set about working on the drawing adding dark tones and lightening up the pale areas.  While I was doing this the foreground saplings reduced in impact a bit.

This is where I ended up:

Tumbledown Shed with more definition

I think this is much improved by the additional tones and I'm going to use it to base my assignment on.

I had another go at watercolour but produced a piece of work my tutor will never see!  It can join the pastel I've not owned up to! 

I usually try to challenge myself (hence the water colour attempts) but an artist friend suggested that as I was working on an Assignment I should work with what I feel most comfortable with so I'm going to use graphite and charcoal. 

I have suitable A2 paper which is a bonus.

I have spent some time looking at the mark making of famous artists like van Gogh, Nicholas Herbert and Turner.  So I turned back to that work for a refresher before I began.

This work went well and I enjoyed every minute.  I can see where it might be better but generally I feel that the medium has suited the subject and that I have managed to make a wide variety of marks and tones.  There came a point towards the end where I felt I needed to stop introducing new elements for fear of making it too fussy.  For this reason the foreground logs disappeared.

The Tumbledown shed in Treswell Wood
Charcoal and graphite